Amazing vintage video game ads from the 1980s and 1990s

This extend­ed pho­to col­lec­tion dis­plays mem­o­rable old ads that run in gam­ing mag­a­zines in the 1980s and 1990s and show how rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent the video games were adver­tised 40 years ago.

This was the time when peo­ple used to get the gam­ing news from mag­a­zines which were usu­al­ly a few weeks old by the time a new issue hit shelves.

By look­ing at these ads, it is clear that many adver­tis­ers didn’t real­ly under­stand how to relate to gamers, espe­cial­ly when the video games mar­ket start to mature.

Tech-corp camp, goofi­ness, and the con­stant sub­text that all video game play­ers are imma­ture teenage boys over­flowed from the strange ad spots of the era. The result was a some­times amaz­ing, some­times sad, and some­times down­right weird.

The 1980s began amidst a boom in the arcade busi­ness with giants like Atari still dom­i­nat­ing the mar­ket since the late-1970s.

Anoth­er, the ris­ing influ­ence of the home com­put­er, and a lack of qual­i­ty in the games them­selves led to an implo­sion of the video game mar­ket that near­ly destroyed the indus­try.

It took home con­soles years to recov­er from the crash, but Nin­ten­do filled in the void with its Nin­ten­do Enter­tain­ment Sys­tem (NES), reviv­ing inter­est in con­soles. Up until this point, most investors believed video games to be a fad that has since passed.

In the remain­ing years of the decade, Sega ignites a con­sole war with Nin­ten­do, devel­op­ers that had been affect­ed by the crash exper­i­ment­ed with the more advanced graph­ics of the PC, and Nin­ten­do released the Game Boy, which would become the best-sell­ing hand­held gam­ing device for the next two decades.

In the ear­ly-1980s, arcade games were a vibrant indus­try. The arcade video game indus­try in the US alone was gen­er­at­ing $5 bil­lion of rev­enue annu­al­ly in 1981 and the num­ber of arcades dou­bled between 1980 and 1982.

The effect video games had on soci­ety expand­ed to oth­er medi­ums as well such as major films and music. In 1982, “Pac-Man Fever” chart­ed on the Bill­board Hot 100 charts and Tron became a cult clas­sic.

Fol­low­ing a dis­pute over recog­ni­tion and roy­al­ties, sev­er­al of Atari’s key pro­gram­mers split and found­ed their own com­pa­ny Activi­sion in late 1979.

Activi­sion was the first third-par­ty devel­op­er for the Atari 2600. Atari sued Activi­sion for copy­right infringe­ment and theft of trade secrets in 1980, but the two par­ties set­tled on fixed roy­al­ty rates and a legit­imiz­ing process for third par­ties to devel­op games on hard­ware.

In the after­math of the law­suit, an over­sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket result­ed in com­pa­nies that had nev­er had an inter­est in video games before begin­ning to work on their own pro­mo­tion­al games; brands like Puri­na Dog Food.

The mar­ket was also flood­ed with too many con­soles and too many poor qual­i­ty games, ele­ments that would con­tribute to the col­lapse of the entire video game indus­try in 1983.

By 1983, the video game bub­ble cre­at­ed dur­ing the gold­en age had burst and sev­er­al major com­pa­nies that pro­duced com­put­ers and con­soles had gone into bank­rupt­cy.

Atari report­ed a $536 mil­lion loss in 1983. Some enter­tain­ment experts and investors lost con­fi­dence in the medi­um and believed it was a pass­ing fad.

A game often giv­en poster child sta­tus to this era, E.T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al had such bad sale fig­ures that the remain­ing unsold car­tridges were buried in the deserts of New Mex­i­co.

The brunt of the crash was felt main­ly across the home con­sole mar­ket. Home com­put­er gam­ing con­tin­ued to thrive in this time peri­od, espe­cial­ly with low­er-cost machines such as the Com­modore 64 and ZX Spec­trum.

Some com­put­er com­pa­nies adopt­ed aggres­sive adver­tis­ing strate­gies to com­pete with gam­ing con­soles and to pro­mote their edu­ca­tion­al appeal to par­ents as well.

Home com­put­ers also allowed moti­vat­ed users to devel­op their own games, and many notable titles were cre­at­ed this way, such as Jor­dan Mechner’s Karate­ka, which he wrote on an Apple II while in col­lege.

In the late 1980s, IBM PC com­pat­i­bles became pop­u­lar as gam­ing devices, with more mem­o­ry and high­er res­o­lu­tions than con­soles, but lack­ing in the cus­tom hard­ware that allowed the slow­er con­sole sys­tems to cre­ate smooth visu­als

By 1985, the home mar­ket con­sole in North Amer­i­ca had been dor­mant for near­ly two years. Else­where, video games con­tin­ued to be a sta­ple of inno­va­tion and devel­op­ment.

After see­ing impres­sive num­bers from its Fam­i­com sys­tem in Japan, Nin­ten­do decid­ed to jump into the North Amer­i­can mar­ket by releas­ing the Nin­ten­do Enter­tain­ment Sys­tem, or NES for short.

After release, it took sev­er­al years to build up momen­tum, but despite the pes­simism of crit­ics, it became a suc­cess. Nin­ten­do is cred­it­ed with reviv­ing the home con­sole mar­ket.

One inno­va­tion that led to Nintendo’s suc­cess was its abil­i­ty to tell sto­ries on an inex­pen­sive home con­sole; some­thing that was more com­mon for home com­put­er games, but had only been seen on con­soles in a lim­it­ed fash­ion.

Nin­ten­do also took mea­sures to pre­vent anoth­er crash by requir­ing third-par­ty devel­op­ers to adhere to reg­u­la­tions and stan­dards, some­thing that has exist­ed on major con­soles since then.

One require­ment was a “lock and key” sys­tem to pre­vent reverse engi­neer­ing. It also forced third par­ties to pay in full for their car­tridges before release, so that in case of a flop, the lia­bil­i­ty will be on the devel­op­er and not the provider.