Looking for an intergalactic bounty hunter? I’m your man!

Some people really should read the job adverts a bit more thoroughly:

Nintendo is no stranger to viral marketing, having dabbled in it during the N64 days with Perfect Dark and Majora’s Mask, but the marketing technique has recently had a spotlight cast on it thanks to Microsoft’s well-publicized ilovebees campaign for Halo 2. Nintendo, not to be outdone, orchestrated their own viral campaign for Metroid Prime 2 that spanned multiple websites for fictional companies, blog entries, and more.Perhaps most interesting of all was the seemingly innocuous (at the time) posting of a ‘Bounty Hunter’ job entry on Monster.com. Although plenty of Nintendo fans got the joke and sent in “applications” of their own, over 90 serious applicants expressed interest in the job. Yes, over 90 people submitted applications to become an intergalactic bounty hunter.

Bounty Hunters Having Trouble Finding Work?
A quick glance at Nintendo’s initial posting on Monster would tip off most readers that something was amiss: “Candidate must also be comfortable using high-tech (some would say alien) weaponry… Experience operating in subterranean, low-oxygen, zero-gravity or other harsh, unforgiving environments is a definite plus.” The obvious tells that all was not as it seemed didn’t stop the genuine applications from rolling in.

“Many of the serious applications we received came from users who reply to job postings without carefully reading the job description. Most of these applicants are ex-military, and they jumped at the chance of working in an exciting and high-risk field. As for the alien technology and other out-of-this-world references in our job posting, perhaps these ex-military personnel know something about government weapons research that we don’t?” Nintendo’s Senior Director of Public Relations Beth Llewelyn told GameDAILY BIZ.

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It didn’t take Nintendo long to realize that the response to the job posting wasn’t going to be strictly the net-savvy Metroid fans that they expected. “Within the first day of posting the job, we had several replies from real applicants who seriously wanted to be an intergalactic bounty hunter for a living. The skills and experience these people listed went beyond surprising into the realm of frightening. We never expected such a wide array of replies from so many people who were actually pursuing interviews for gainful employment as a space warrior. However, Metroid fans did start to catch on and submit applications,” Llewelyn said.

I supppose that it’s a bit late to use Iraq as flypaper for people whose skills and experiences go “beyond surprising into the realm of frightening” [sic]. Maybe they can at least be used to soften up some of the remaining dictatorships – how about large cash prizes for those who kill all enemies in the first three levels of Metroid Prime 2’s Teheran map?