This time I couldn’t actually narrow it down to five, so have a couple honorable mentions first. (For those of you asking, “Wait, why couldn’t you just do a “Top 7 Video Game Trailers,” then? Because shut up, that’s why.)
Honorable Mention: Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
Oh trailers, how you manage to make truly awful video games look so good. This trailer makes the 2006 abomination known only to Sonic fans as The Game That Shall Not Be Named look like it should be one of the best games of the series.
Honorable Mention: Resident Evil 6
Throughout the entirety of this trailer, I couldn’t stop thinking, “Oh my God, this is happening. Oh my God, this is happening. Oh my God, this is happening.” The trailer starts out with enough of a bang (pun intended) with Leon confronting a zombified President of the United States, and the action just keeps escalating until the real reveal: Chris. Leon and Chris? In the same game? Not to mention the trailer looks more like a trailer for a high profile action film than for a video game.
5. Portal 2
I remember seeing this trailer for the first time. I was about to watch a video online (I don’t even remember what the video was), and I was in the middle of a sentence about how I hated how you have to watch commercials before everything online now, when I suddenly stopped midsentence because the robot head looked vaguely familiar, and the gasped aloud when GLaDOS started talking. The music and pace of the action in this teaser is perfect.
4. StarCraft II: Episode I: Wings of Liberty
This is another one of those “Is this for a video game or a movie?” trailers, and as an added bonus was for one of the most highly anticipated games of all time. It also inspired a My Little Pony mashup which is both incredibly random and still one of my favorite things on the internet.
3. Halo 2
The primary requirement for a Halo trailer is that it be completely badass. Although the “Believe” television spots for Halo 3 might be superior in some respects, this Halo 2 trailer clearly wins the badass category.
2. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
This trailer and others like it in the franchise’s history are basically my strongest argument that Legend of Zelda should be a damn movie already. We’ve had two Final Fantasy movies (one good, one terrible), and we can’t manage this? Come on.
1. MLB 12: The Show
How often does someone take a real life event that you’ve been dreaming about for decades and bring it to life with the production values of a decently good movie? It took me a solid month to be able to watch this with dry eyes.
