The Ad Game: Vanguard for Atari VCS/2600

Vanguard was an arcade game developed by "shadow" developer TOSE, and released in Japan by SNK in late 1981 and licensed for North America by Centuri.  It was an important intermediate step towards modern side-scrolling shoot-em-ups such as Gradius and R-Type, improving on a genre first formed by William's seminal Defender.

Today in the Ad Game we feature a TV commercial for the Atari 2600 port of Vanguard:

Vanguard was definitely a great arcade game, and the 2600 version a spectacular port that demonstrates the amazing things Atari programmers were able to pull off with the platform as it matured.  This ad, however, doesn't do any of that justice.

For instance, who trades off the joystick to their buddies in the middle of a game?  Hard to keep your concentration and momentum going with some jerk begging for the joystick.  Just wait until he crashes, it won't be long to wait.  Try shouting "The wall, the wall!" into his ear, that oughta speed up his destruction.

One of the big innovations touted in Vanguard was the ability to shoot in four directions, but in the ad the shooting looks pretty spastic.  The key to any successful shooter is the precision of your shots, and here it looks like the gunner is having a seizure.

Then, of course, we have the hulking Luthor, who's sole responsibility is to defeat the Gond, the boss at the end of the round.  A man of few words, it is rumoured that Luthor once, when a kid refused to give up the joystick to him, stuffed the poor bastard's hand completely into the cartridge slot.  We can only know his moods by his demented chuckling.

Perhaps Luthor is related to Beavis?

Hard Wares: Minimalist Tron Poster

This poster is freaking fantastic.  It has a great feel to it.  I was thinking that this is the way Disney should have gone with the promotion of their groundbreaking CGI video game movie from 1982.  Be mysterious with it, low key... instead of the "computerized Fantasia" they pushed.  Although, thinking about it, the poster feels a bit too 70's, a vibe that would probably have given the public the idea that the movie was dated even before release:

Still though, a great poster, designed by Mark Welser.  You can pick up a print over at Etsy.

For more information on Disney's seminal Tron, consult your local Dot Eaters article.

The Ad Game: Isaac Asimov and Some Fantastic Deals!

Isaac Asimov.  He was one of the most influential writers of our time, having written the Foundation series, along with other SF and non-fiction works, a list of which would be too exhaustive to repeat here.

He also knew a good deal when he saw one:

I have a feeling Mr. Asimov didn't say all those things. It must be a weird thing for an ad copy writer to put words into the mouth of Isaac Asimov, but they give it the old college try here.  "An exciting entertainer"?  "Just one of many fine computers from Radio Shack".  I also like him holding the joystick like someone just plopped it into his hand,  with a rictus grin thinking "What the heck is this thing?".

But still, you have to take it from Isaac.

source: knmoor, via his flickr stream

The Ad Game: Pre-Internet

Our ad today serves up an ad for a service that gave many people their first taste of electronic mass communication: CompuServe.  Back in the "good" old days, you had a couple of options if you wanted to go online: a local dial-up BBS, or a nationwide equivalent like CompuServe, one of the larger players in the forming market.  Here is the ad, from a 1985 issue of Compute's Gazette:

The "videotex" mentioned in the copy was an early system to deliver interactive text to users.  It's funny to me how the base uses of the Internet were all understood and ready to be delivered to a potential user base: news, banking, online shopping, email, games... all the concepts of what we do on the Internet today.  Of course, CompuServe has to couch things in a way people of the 80's would understand, so they compare their chat service to a "multi-channel CB simulator".  10-4 good buddy!  I'm also impressed by the image of a Zardoz-type video warrior armed with not only a hand blaster, but a light-sabre as well.  Guy's ready for a fight!

The CompuServe service still lingers on today as a web portal, in a collaboration between it and another prehistoric Internet fossil: Netscape.

The Visual Cortex: Joust An Ad

Today the Visual Cortex hatches an ad for the Atari 2600 and 5200 versions of Williams' arcade hit Joust: 

Click to enlarge

Running in periodicals in 1984, it's short on actual screenshots of the game, and heavy on artist renditions of the action. I also find it humourous how it tries to sex-up the "beasts of the air" you fly in the game, the ostriches from the original arcade game.   The ad copy starts off with an unusual, confusing take on the classic opening words of the Star Wars movies:

Well, which is it?  Long ago, or a distant future?  Anyway, I don't think I want to purchase a game that spits eggs out of my TV screen, from whence evil, sharp-taloned dragons attack me.

Witness an Ad for the Atari Jaguar Version of Doom

This is a holy-rolling TV spot from 1993 for id Software's seminal FPS game Doom, which I'm sure Atari had pinned as a system-selling port for their 64-bit Jaguar console.  I don't think you'd get away with selling a video game with such imagery these days.

The Visual Cortex: Intellivision Attacks!

Today the Visual Cortex is sporting an Intellivision magazine ad, featuring the system's well-heeled attack dog, author George Plimpton.

Plimpton featured prominently in a series of attack ads by Mattel that highlighted their system's advanced graphics capability, especially when compared with the anemic visuals of their chief rival, Atari's VCS/2600 unit.  You might be excused for thinking, "Why Plimpton?".   Well, Plimpton came to national prominence as a kind of high-brow intellectual for the Budweiser set, a sportswriter who would poke fun at his high-falutin' ways by attempting to play sports at the pro level and then write about his haplessness.  So he was a pretty good fit for the Intellivision, which specialized in sports games like NFL Football and MLB Baseball that blew away the Atari versions in terms of both graphical quality and realistic gameplay.  Here is the ad:

Plimpton lets Atari have it.

These hard hitting attack ads irked Atari president Ray Kassar so much that he complained about the "unfairness" of the comparisons to the TV networks airing them and threatened legal action.  Eventually Atari would come out with their own version of the highly intellectual pitchman; a child dressed up in a suit and glasses who would  point out the versions of popular arcade games that were absent on the Intellivision.  Of course, Mattel then struck back with Plimpton schooling their own version of the pint-sized pitchman.

As a couple of bonuses, here is John Hodgman's spoof on the Plimpton ad, used to shill his own book The Areas of My Expertise in 2006,  as well as a link to Newground's hilarious (and fun to play) fake web-based ColecoVision game George Plimpton's Video Falconry, created in 2011.

Hodgman plays ball.

Click to play.

For more information on the Intellivision and the Great Mattel/Atari Video Game Wars, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.

Celebrity Video Game Ads

Phil Hartman hot under the collar
over Activision's Ice Hockey

digthatbox.com has a compilation page featuring a plethora of links to video game ads featuring celebrity spokespersons.  Everything from Carol Channel shilling Atari to William Shatner hawking the VIC-20 computer.  There's quite a few "before they were famous" moments, with Christian Bale dancing to Pac-Man cereal, and Jack Black espousing the daring tales of Pitfall Harry.

You can check them out here:

via N4G.com

Rum Punch: Video Game Inspired Commercial from Bacardi

Here is a strangely funny ad shilling Bacardi rum, with a situation that seems similar to a certain famous video game protagonist:

via N4G and Electronic Theatre