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15 HORRIBLE RETRO GAME ADS

12/2/2015

14 Comments

 
Picture"Suck on my frozen urine-stick!"
What's this? Adverts on Digitiser 2000? Why... we're so appalled we could swallow our own uvula. But wait! We've not sold out to the Money Monkey just yet: these are adverts for things what you can't buy no more, guy. 

You see, these are adverts from an earlier era, when it was considered acceptable to sell video games through the medium of awfulness. A more innocent time, a time of sexism, innuendo, and just plain wrongness - and we have chosen 15 sterling examples.

Bring on the Jeremies!

15. PANIC
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Shall we place bets on what the spume is that's exploding out of his nose? It's difficult to imagine a less attractive image with which to attempt to sell a product. Maybe if that foamy stuff was brown? We suspect that the photographer captured the subject just at the point he suffered an embolism. Lacking the funds to re-stage the session, they simply chose to retouch the picture to make the blood white. "Maybe they'll just think it's milk. Or sperm. Or something. Whatever."

14. PAINT N SKETCH LEVEL II
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"My Daddy bought me a Tech-Sketch Light Pen with its free Paint-N-Sketch program and instruction book..." is a phrase no child has ever uttered. But then, this is no ordinary child. This is Creepus: Demon Girl. Sure, she looks sweet now, but the second those dark eyes roll back into their sockets, and she starts trembling and speaking in tongues, you'd better run for your life.

13. STD "MEGA-ENHANCING" ACCESSORIES
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We don't quite know why this awful handheld gaming accessory was advertised with a boy doing the "full retard" (if you'll excuse the expression) - nor why nobody chose to suggest to the company that it might adopt a better name than "STD". Ironically, judging from the boy in the photo, and that loveless embrace, he's got about as much chance of catching an STD as he has of winning a Least Punchable Face competition.

12. POWER GLOVE
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Talking of punchable faces... look at that smirk. Rarely have we seen such smugness. Oh, how we would like to whack him in the mouth with a ping pong bat... but wait. That Power Glove appears to be malfunctioning! Look at that arcing electricity! Perhaps that grin isn't so smug after all. Perhaps his broken NES accessory has induced a stroke. We can but hope.

11. BATTLECRUISER 3000AD
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You have to admire the blatantness of this infamous early-90s Battlecruiser 3000AD advert - which was famously banned, before being replaced with a version featuring airbrushed-on knickers. There's really not a great deal to say... but it might've been somewhat less controversial had the stool featured a visible seat. Unfortunately, as it stands the image paints too eye-watering a picture to be anywhere near erotic.

10. CHAMPIONSHIP POOL
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This one has it all going on. "Chalk Up, Dude!" it proclaims, accompanying it with a suggestive, yet profoundly unattractive image, which evokes a prostate examination. And then we get the incongruous headline about "The Best Rack In Town!" - which is about as appropriate as scrawling the word "TITS" on a cat's back. There are also two suggestions in the text that this merely "feels" like real billiards, as if they're panicking that we might mistake this for actual billiards.

9. GAME GEAR
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Once handheld gaming became a thing, 90s games mags were riddled with adverts linking them to masturbation. The absolute nadir was the series that Sega ran in Viz, which aimed to evoke the style of the comic, while trying to sell us their Game Gear through crude imagery that seems to represent a frantically self-polluting mental patient. They failed in both respects.

8. GAMEKEEPER
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We like this one for the second, 'after', image which appears to show the pink-shirted boy screaming in terror at some off-camera horror... Perhaps a severed horse's leg?

7. BIBLE VIDEO GAME
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We'd never heard of the thrillingly-named Bible Video Game, but judging from the fun which has been brought home in the image accompanying this advert, we were really missing out. See those bears there, silently judging the Christians... Put a foot wrong, kids, and they're going to tell God...

6. GAME BOY POCKET
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Another recurring theme of game ads in the 80s and 90s was to imply that a product was so good that male gamers would actually choose it over doing rudies with a lady. However, Nintendo's Game Boy Pocket campaign took it a step further by apparently aiming the device squarely at the gaming rapist demographic.

5. CRYSTAL CASTLES
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"Bentley Bear is Loose!" they tell us. No... "Bentley Bear is Tripping His Tits Off". Crystal Castles? Crystal Meth, more like.

4. SPIDER-MAN
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Jack Wheaton apparently spends his whole day "chasing coeds", which wouldn't be so creepy were it not for the fact he appears to be about 36, and appears to be blind and brain-damaged following a terrible accident (an accident which wholly failed to give him super-powers). That girl? She's his carer - and she really wants him to take off his Spider-Man pyjamas so she can wash them. He's made a terrible mess... Oh, Jack Wheaton!

3. GAME BOY POCKET
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This is just disgusting. The horrible wall of flesh, with the protruding, circling tongues. The multi-coloured ones we can just about handle, but it's that one on the right - the sickly, pallid, fungal one - that really turns our stomach.

2. NEO GEO
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Here we are again. More sexy lady, more sex-ignore - this time he's so engrossed in his game that he doesn't even hear his lady's agonised screams, as she immolates herself in the bath. But what really stands out for us in the image is the way he's playing that game. Who holds any controller like that - least of all, the Neo Geo's massive joystick? Well... if we look closely, it appears to be Christian Bale in American Psycho. That explains everything.

1. VIC-20
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Do you know why we find this image so horrifying? No, it's not that man up in the window there, gesturing warmly to his special pull-quote... that's just TJ Hooker-era William Shatner. No - what really stokes our anxiety is the main image, and the fact those boys are doing their "computing" with a cup of juice right next to the keyboard and tape deck. NEVER DO THAT! NEVER HAVE A DRINK RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR COMPUTER, BOYS! DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT COULD HAPPEN? Do you think Shatner will look so kindly upon you  if you damage your Vic-20? No. No he will not. That gesturing palm will swiftly turn into a slap...

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
  • 10 MOST HORRIFYING VIDEO GAME COSPLAYERS
  • GAMING GADGETS with The Living Bum


14 Comments
Super Bad Advice
12/2/2015 03:04:00 am

I'm guessing the first advert - the one with milk snot guy - is a spoof of the US "Got milk?" ad campaign. So while it is awful, it's not quite as bewildering as it first appears.

That said, as it was from the 80s I immediately assumed the guy was supposed to be on 'Colombian head sherbet' before the penny dropped.

Reply
kristi
14/2/2015 08:01:19 am

Actually, since it's a sega CD ad, it would date it to the early - mid-90s. Which would make your theory make even more sense, since, even though I believe the ads had been around longer than that, the "Got Milk" campaign received most of it's pop-cultural popularity during that time period.

Reply
GigerPunk link
12/2/2015 03:29:38 am

What, no love for Psycho Pigs UXB? Just as bad as the Battlecruiser ad, stool-insertion notwithstanding...

Reply
Mr Smith
12/2/2015 04:04:44 am

I had seen the Battlecruiser ad before, but (rather innocently) never once considered there was no seat. Now I cannot unsee what was suggested. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Reply
Pete
12/2/2015 04:32:47 am

Eek. The tongues. THE TONGUES.

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Neilo
12/2/2015 06:47:25 am

I'd love to see a terry gilliam-esque animation of that last picture where he does indeed reach over and deal those kids a slap

Reply
Picston Shottle
12/2/2015 07:13:55 am

You missed out Barbarian - oil, swords, tits (both male and female) and dragons.

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Mr Biffo
13/2/2015 09:39:06 am

Ah, it was a conscious choice to leave it out, as I think everyone has pretty much seen that one.

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Matt James
12/2/2015 04:27:31 pm

Keep these adverts and games cover features coming, hilarious and very unique digi humour.

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Mr Biffo
13/2/2015 09:38:33 am

Hurrah for this! Cheers, Matt.

Reply
kristi
14/2/2015 08:07:44 am

I don't really get a rapey vibe from that odd game boy ad. More like consentual bondage, and she's miffed because he got playing his game boy and forgot about her. What bothers me more though is that those ads were mostly published in Nintendo Power... which was a magazine mostly aimed at kids... I like to think it caused some awkward questions for the parents. :P

Reply
David
15/2/2015 01:09:27 pm

Four Shades of Grey?

Reply
Deexan
15/2/2015 08:04:27 am

I like to think that the women in #13 just told the boy, "Timmy, it's your father. He's dead."

Reply
Frank Chickens
16/2/2015 01:43:57 am

I thought the Psycho Pigs UXB advert would of been a shoe-in but it was not to be.

Reply



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