The first Japanese commercial for Baten Kaitos was made by Nintendo before they even knew what the game was about

Here's a really interesting story from Yasuyuki Honne, director of Baten Kaitos. Way back in the GameCube days when the title was being worked on by Namco, Nintendo didn't even know what the game would be like. They were just super happy that Namco was making an exclusive RPG for the GameCube. This lead to a really unique commercial for the game in Japan.

“There’s one thing that’s really surprised me over the past 20 years: the first commercial for Baten Kaitos. Nintendo was extremely happy that we were making a GameCube exclusive RPG for them, and without even knowing what the game was about, they made a teaser commercial featuring a bunch of guys as blacksmiths to represent how we were vigorously making this game. I remember the tagline being, ‘Namco’s making an RPG with all their might.'”

Pretty crazy to think Nintendo went out of their way to spread the word on Baten Kaitos before they had any real clue about the game. I don't think something like that would happen today!