Video Game Ads of the 90s

One of my favorite things ever was advertisements in magazines and such as a kid.  Being a kid/teen in the 90s, I remember them quite well.  Video games sort of exploded in the 90's.  Kids at school were talking about them on the playground.  I think they are so common now that kids don't even really talk about them, but back then you were cool if you did.  Kids had their favorite games or systems and were almost violent in their defense of these products.  I almost got punched so many times for liking Street Fighter 2 over Mortal Kombat 2.  There were movies coming out based on games too, it was everywhere.  So today we are going to look at some of these advertisements and talk about them a bit.  Prepare thy selves mortals, it's gonna get weird.

It might be hard to read this one, but it is for a game called A Fork In The Tale.  It is an FMV game and the ad claims to give seamless 15 frames per second video, even on a 2x drive.  Wow, youngsters would probably not be able to play this game then.  The game claims to be funny as they hired comedians for the roles in it as evidenced by the smiling disembodied head in the lower left corner.  Also it claims to have beautiful babes in fur bikinis trying to kill you.  I like FMV games in a way, but I am not interested.  Moving on.

This has a cute dog and video games on it.  When I was a kid, I didn't have a portable gaming device, but I played both of them.  I liked the Game Boy because it had Yoshi's Cookie.  So I guess dogs are cool because they like Nintendo Game Boys?  Or maybe dogs are lame because color doesn't matter to them.

This ad says that there's only one thing more torturous than playing Deathtrap Dungeon, and that's not playing it.  I agree that there is only one thing more torturous, actual torture.  This looks like a man is chained to a wall and forced to continually watch the opening and demo game play of the game while a dominatrix woman does kinky things to him.  Well at least there is a distraction.

So the Godzilla game on Game Boy has the King of Monsters destroying rocks to get to the next stage, exciting.  More importantly, somewhere among 64 screens, Minilla is confined.  That is a good enough reason not to play.  Isn't Godzilla always telling him he should fight his own battles?  So just don't save him.

What?  I don't even get it.  What the hell is going on here.  This is an ad for Virtua Cop 2.  Fun game but I feel like a serial killer is just staring at me and asking me to tell me I love him.  I don't think that happens in the game.

This ad leads us to believe that Ice Cube's head is like Saturn and that he is some sort of Cosmic God that created his own solar system entirely based on the Sega Saturn.  One of the planets is Virtua Fighter 2 though, so I guess it's well worth visiting.

In this ad we see that Patrick Bateman has stopped sleeping with prostitutes and torturing them, and instead become obsessed with Neo Geo.  I guess the Neo Geo is pretty cool.  She has cool undergarments though.  I would not have a hard time deciding between the two myself.  Blonde girls aren't really my thing, but I love King of Fighters.

I love this ad and I really want one now, especially the yellow one.  I never had a Game Boy as a kid and now I feel pretty sad.  Clearly I was missing out on the most extreme thing next to Surge.  Where is that bottle of whiskey again?

I guess in the 90's, people of every creed played basketball, especially punks.  The woman with the ball is on roller blades.  I am not sure if that is cheating, or a huge detriment.  Here is a question, if you are gliding around on wheels and don't dribble, is it still travelling?  I know technically you are travelling faster, but what if you take no steps?

Double Dragon 2 claims that it is a Martial Arts Explosion.  It is right too, this game is awesome.  Look at how cool this is.  Billy is beating some punk on the ground and Jimmy is following him down the stairs with a woman in his arm and grabbing a whip that has just attacked him.  A helicopter is also chasing them down.  Man this is some intense stuff.

Anyway, game advertisements were pretty awesome back in the day.  I love all the crazy stuff going on.  I barely scratched the surface of these ads too.  Maybe some time in the future I will do another of these.  Certainly some of these are good at grabbing your attention.  I am more into older gaming than new, so maybe I will go get one of those yellow Game Boys and save Minilla.