The figure at the center of NAMCO's popular arcade game Dig Dug was a character shrouded in mystery for most Americans. What was his name? Why was he the dig dug? Why does doug dig so much? It wasn't until the game Mr. Driller was released that we learned that Dig Dug, as we'd called him here, was actually famous Japanese driller Taizo Hori and the original Dig Dug arcade game portrayed an incident in which Hori saved Japan from weird tomato monsters and dragons. Later in his life Taizo became chairman of the Driller Council and his son, Susumu Hori, went on to fame in drilling. Whatever that is. Today we reported that Barack Obama was drilling for votes inside video games, leaving GothGirl to recall the first use of video game advertising in an election.
This worked well back in 1982 for Dig Dug's campaign for Mayor of Pookaville.
It didn't hurt that he used ACORN for his voter outreach efforts. Honorable mention to both Graverobber and Ash for their attempts at duplicating top ten list fame. [Source: wikipedia, Photo Technabob]