This is probably going to seem wildly low-effort compared to my usual posts here, but I’ve found a bit of a treasure trove of print media gaming ads from magazines and sites. And they’re amazing. I found it so fun to see what companies used to do to promote their games.
Things have clearly changed a lot over time, some of them are insensitive or even outright sexist, but if you just look at it through a lens of being a time capsule, it’s fun.
This one’s going to be very image-heavy. If you’re using Boost on iOS then you might struggle to scroll through this (or maybe not? It’s happened with all my other posts though, so you’ve been warned), if that happens just visit using your browser :)
Game Boy Advance/SP:
The ‘feet’ collection were from an ad company in Stockholm, in 2005. I think it is to mean you’re using hands to play the GBA, and only have feet left to use for real life:
PS2:
Nintendo Game Cube:
And that’s that! Just interesting to see a time when gaming was a little more experimental and edgy.
I’m surprised you didn’t post that PSP ad with the white lady beating the shit out of the black lady…to promote the sale of a white PSP.
The kirby choking one has to become a meme template !
This is probably going to seem wildly low-effort compared to my usual posts here
My man, you just compiled tons of obscure posters from the corners of the Internet. I admire your dedication, and this does take an effort.
*Miss, not man!!!
(I’m just glad people enjoy all this weirdness as much as I do!)
My apologies, I missed that one!
deleted by creator
PS3 did some wierd shit, too.
And PSVita… The PSVita had this:
I hate to say it actually depicts the concept pretty good
Those PS2 underwear ones are fucking wild
They had bizarre TV adverts as well. You could never accuse early 2000s Sony of not getting weird with it.
I don’t know if any of it really helped. It rode in on the already wildly successful PS1. It had a DVD player in it back when a DVD player was quite expensive. It had SSX and Tekken Tag at UK launch. It could play all your PS1 games and “upscale” them. The only competition it had at launch was the Dreamcast. It was going to sell anyway.
It’s wild how crazy ads. The Mouse one for the GBA Micro still pops up into my head every once and a while. And my friend group still debates whether Mario is hiding a Tribal Tattoo somewhere
The nineties was the best decade.
Not low effort posting IMO, this is a part of our culture & has historical value.
this isn’t low effort. These are freaking great!
Whatever we gained by losing these, it was not worth it.
Thanks for this one, a really valuable find:
Ironic!
This is the purple shade of the GCN, and its one of the ‘hero’ size images available to use, on SteamGridDB. I just liked to grab one image in that size to separate each ‘section’ in this post.
But…I know, it looks like an error -___-
The gameboy with the tribal tats is killing me.
I like the Nintendo ones, there were ‘risky’ ads here, now they’re very conservative
My thoughts exactly. Some of these ads are just plain weird in a way that they would never dare today.
They were always conservative. A few years before these ads Nintendo participated in Senate hearings where they advocated for censoring the entire medium. They just had a “fellow kids” period in the early 2000s. Luckily, judging by the sales of the GameCube, most people weren’t fooled.
I need the Winamp skin
Thank you sir, may I have another?
I’m surprised you didn’t include this one:
Edit: Link to creator:
I just wanted to have actual, official ones shared!
This one is not official, it was done by a girl who goes by shy smith three years or so ago, she just tried her best to make a photo in the ‘style’ of the old Y2K era, and the days of PS2 ads and…everyone ended up believing it was real. She did such an amazing job of it, this one often gets shared as if it were done for Sony.
And…to be fair, the actual official ones got way worse than those I included:
Oh god how is that meant to boost PS2 sales 😂😂😂
Are you sure? That’s just a nude girl in the background. Where are they getting away with that?
France did the ‘panties’ ads, there were three of them all up.
Here is another which has explicit exposure, this one from Chile has exposed breasts, also. And far more obvious to the viewer
Heh this post blew my mind twice in one package: I was definitely one of those that believed it was a real ad. I distinctly remember some discussions about the sexualized nature of it or not. So as you said, super well done.
But secondly, the official ad you posted instead has three nipples at once? And one male two female on top? That almost seems weirder to me.
There is only one magazine video game advertisement I really remember from seeing in the wild in an actual magazine, and that was the Quake 3 Arena one of a computer in a crusty-as-fuck basement bathroom in front of a toilet with just a super dirty setup.
It feels VERY Quake-esque, too. So they nailed that image!
Wow this is incredible, thanks for sharing. I find it funny that Nintendo fostered their famiy friendly appeal seemingly right after the GameCube and GameBoy Advance. Those particular ads are saucy.
“go 'way!
baitingamin!”
What the fuck were the PS2 marketing team smoking?!
There’s more, but I suppose…back then shock was a tactic, the gaming industry wasn’t as clean cut and commercialized as it is now, and they were appealing to a certain demographic?!
Blame Nintendo.
Back in the early 1980s fresh off the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo was on the verge of releasing the Famicom in Japan, and needed a way to market the console in America.
There was just one rule. In America, video games were dead. A fad. Disco was dead, and so were video games. So it wasn’t a Famicom. It was a Nintendo Entertainment System.
In stores like Woolworths (think Walmart but not terrible) and Hills (think Target, but also a bit shady) they tried marketing the NES as an Entertainment system. It wasn’t a video game. It was an appliance. Like a VCR. It was the only way to get stores to agree to stock the damn thing. No store wanted the risk of a video game.
Well, after a year of selling, and research Nintendo found kids were the main target of their product.
So they shifted away from the electronics section and into the toy isle. There was just one problem. Toy stores in America were divided. Some isles carried toys for boys, and the other half of the isles carried the toys for girls.
A bit of market research showed that interest in Nintendo shifted slightly more towards boys. 55%‐45%.
What happens next is the key to the PS2 ads.
Nintendo chose to carry the NES in the boys section of the toy isles. Which had an IMMEDIATE influence over not only the marketing in America, but also the direction developers took their games.
There was a clear shift towards the games AND the marketing being geared towards boys 5-13.
Nintendo then DOMINATED the video game landscape. Seriously. If your mom today is roughly 80 years old, theres a pretty good chance she calls all video games “Nintendos” (regardless of brand), the same way she calls all tissues “kleenex”. Or if you’re from the south (especially Georgia) all soft drinks “coke”. Could be orange soda, it’s a coke. Just like it’s one of those Xbox 1080p Nintendos.
Well by the time of the PS2 days, that influence, even though Sony had nothing to do with it, had caked over. Video games were now very male centric, and the age range grew up with them.
In the late 80s, you were 5 years old playing super mario bros. In the mid 90s, you were 13 playing tomb raider and argueing with friends over the validity of a nude cheat code. And by 2001 you were 18 and horny, and…hey, look at these ads for the PS2. They’re edgy!
And that is my TedTalk on why raunchy dreamcast ads, and raunchy PS2 ads goes all the way back to the atari 2600 game crashing the whole industry worldwide 20 years earlier.
That, and puberty.
Good TedTalk. (Applause)
A bit of market research showed that interest in Nintendo shifted slightly more towards boys. 55%‐45%.
Need a source on this. The more appropriate action in those days with those numbers would’ve been to sell a blue version to boys and a pink version to girls.
I think Japanese companies didn’t care much about ad approval’s in foreign markets. Let them go a little crazy.