Nintendo Did the Impossible and Found a Way To Make Paul Rudd Look Old in New Switch 2 Ad

Nintendo just dropped an homage to its classic Super Nintendo commercial — this time around, featuring the Switch 2. It’s a picture-perfect recreation and a great way to call back to that incredibly cheesy era of advertisements. And I say that with love.

NINTENDO BROUGHT OUT THE UNDERTAKER COAT AGAIN

I’ve watched the OG Nintendo commercial a number of times. And I’ve always found it hilarious that they trotted Paul Rudd out there in a long-ass coat to play video games. Not to mention, it looks like the same street where Michael Jackson was attacked by zombies. That being said, I’d take 700 of these before the commercials we get today.

But this new one? Man, they tapped right into that cheesiness all over again. We all need to be a bit more shameless in being cheesy about certain things. They even slapped a damn wig on Paul. That’s right, 34 years later, and that kid never got a real haircut. The craziest thing about this is for all the internet jokes about Paul Rudd never aging, that wig did it. Congratulations, Nintendo, you helped him beat the vampire allegations.

And Boyle from Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Did they trot him out there to make Paul look less old? Didn’t work. But I loved the fact that they were self-referential. It would have been one thing to try to play it as a straight-up remake. But having everyone basically say, “Dude, what the hell are you doing?” while playing Mario Kart is a great way to poke fun at how ridiculous it looks now.

THis commercial does make me question one THING…

Remember the “Ask the Developers” series Nintendo just ran on the Switch 2? Where Kouichi Kawamoto said this:

“There were a lot of ideas for the name, and we really struggled to find the right one. We even considered ideas like ‘Super Nintendo Switch’. However, Super NES, which came out after the NES, couldn’t play NES games. Since Switch 2 can play Switch games, it didn’t feel right to use the same naming convention as Super NES.”

This commercial didn’t make me feel like that would have been much of a problem for the rest of us. I’m just saying. “Super Nintendo Switch” was an awesome name, and this commercial would have hit 1,000 times harder with it. Can’t miss a wide-open layup like that just because of a technicality. I have to call it “Switch 2” in these articles for searches and all that, but in this house, it’s the Super Nintendo Switch.