GRcade

A couple more:




PSW magazine: the home of sluts.

Brilliant thread full of nostalgia... and boobs. Nice to see Jo Guest, and the Tomb Raider one is actually a great piece of video game advertising history that shows the maturing of the audience, as opposed to the unabashed titilation of them, like the old Barbarian with Maria Whitaker cover.


This Game Boy pocket advert I think is brilliant to examine as it is purposely targets an audience who identifies with dating women, male teens to young adults.. People who are a bit older might be able to see it with two perspectives, whereas as I suspect a younger audience will just make default complaints without seeing it in it's historical context!

So the intention of the advert is to show that here is this guy who has got this beautiful girlfriend waiting for him on the bed in anticipation of sexual play, the looser binding denoting more freedom of movement thus she is a voluntary participant. She has a look of disappointment on her face because her boyfriend has forgotten her because he is too interested in playing with his Game Boy Pocket! But looking at it with today's eyes!... Besides mah misogyny, it might be viewed as a woman fearful of a dominant male who has captured her against her will. But no chance of using that ad now! I vaguely remember a similar advert, no boobs, but it was something like [paraphrasing distant memory] 'remember when you had other things to worry about like whether she had taken the pill/ missed her period?'

Lagamorph wrote:

Classic Nintendo trying to advertise to the older audience always seems to come off as a bit weird... don’t know what it is, see also that GameBoy Micro advert.....you know the one.



Squeak

strawberry floatin' hell man the 90s were wild.

I also remember this one well;

Wow, these are great. Despite buying magazines on a near monthly basis, there are a huge number of these ads i don't remember seeing. Possibly i was buying the more moderate publications, though i'm pretty sure i picked up a few copies of PSW (or possibly there was another magazine that preceeded it and was also pandering to lad culture? I'm fairly sure 90% of the PS magazines skewed that way).

But yeah, its great to see these. Its funny how progress is made in such small steps that you don't really see it happening, and then when you look back its a step change.

Also, i really fancied Jo Guest. Its pretty much why i bought Loaded for 2 years.

KK wrote:

Is the chap in the bottom right pic following through for "fun"?

Crazy times.....

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:...pandering to lad culture? I'm fairly sure 90% of the PS magazines skewed that...

PlayStation Power was a great, unofficial mag published by Future. Around issue 21 it was redesigned and embraced that "lad" culture with a scantily-clad girl being plastered throughout the mag each issue. It was all a bit embarrassing but the gaming content remained good enough for me to keep buying it. For issue 50 it was redesigned again and named just "Power"... it was bloomin' awful and I stopped buying it a few months later.

jawafour wrote:

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:...pandering to lad culture? I'm fairly sure 90% of the PS magazines skewed that...

PlayStation Power was a great, unofficial mag published by Future. Around issue 21 it was redesigned and embraced that "lad" culture with a scantily-clad girl being plastered throughout the mag each issue. It was all a bit embarrassing but the gaming content remained good enough for me to keep buying it. For issue 50 it was redesigned again and named just "Power"... it was bloomin' awful and I stopped buying it a few months later.

Your a legend Jawa, that's the one i was thinking of. I feel our gaming paths are very similar!

The Broken Sword 2 and Red Alert ones are good

How about some N64 magazine ones!

I loved Arcade magazine. Happy days

That's not real! strawberry floating hell

Bloody hell, would love them to try and do an ad like that now... all those council estate mums would be pissed!

2005, from Midway:

That was "only" fourteen years ago and yet you can't imagine an ad like that actually being made now!

More hilarity from the late '90s to early '00s:

Amazed that "Wilst thou get the girl, or play like one?" hasn't popped up in here.

The 1990s were genuinely vile for games advertisement.

Corazon de Leon wrote:Amazed that "Wilst thou get the girl, or play like one?" hasn't popped up in here.

I always found it so weird that they had one of the most anticipated adventure games of all time and that's how they choose to advertise it. It's hardly what you'd consider a male orientated franchise (not that that would excuse it) and why were they using language like "wilst" and "thou"?