Yep, those were different times.
Battlecruiser 3000AD. This advert was later revised and they drew black knickers on the model.
Psycho Pigs UXB. Another British classic?
Now i want to see the reviews for Psycho Pigs UXB because it cant have been very memorable.
Well-placed censorship of pictures was the best purpose of a Battlefield 3000AD box. That was one of those games where the drama around it was far better than the game itself.
Isn’t this the game that had to run full page adverts claiming a new, updated version was available and “the bugs have been squashed!” Obviously this was pre-internet, so updates like this were quite uncommon.
Might have been. That game was so bugged that the installer crashed for a lot of people. Once it got patched enough that you could actually play it–which took years–it was supposedly pretty good, but nobody cared by then.
It was a super gross and embarassing era.
Media today might be less sexist but I think part of it is also that it became drastically more sex averse. Mortal Kombat is gorier than ever for anyone to see, but god forbid anything shows a nipple.
Characters with big breasts must be inherently sexist, or else we can’t explain why characters who used to have big breasts now need to have them toned down.
However, it’s perfectly okay if the supposedly feminist prequel you’re going to release has references to the female player character being about to be sexually abused if you lose, because nothing speaks about female empowerment like threatening the player with turning their character into a SA victim if they don’t play well enough.
The thing that gets me about the Tomb Raider reboot is they toned down the sex appeal, but apparently graphically brutalizing Lara is perfectly okay.
Sexy Lara: Sexist!
Beating the ever loving shit out of Lara: Not sexist!
I’m still waiting for John Romero to make us all his bitch.
He can’t do it without his friend Superfly.
My favorite old school game ad is one for Quake 3 Arena:
Im still a little bit miffed they didn’t give me any compensation for using pictures of my setup
This German ad for Quake is awesome too!
Ah, fun for the whole family. Very wholesome, that Quake game is.
And people make fun of that one ad where John Romero was going to make us all his bitch.
To be fair, Daikatana sucked so the ad is mostly funny in retrospect because it didn’t make everyone his bitch. If it had, I’m not sure we’d be making fun of it.
Is there a high res version of this anywhere?
but why is he wearing a diaper?
No kinkshaming please…
I can’t even process what’s going on with the reflection in the mirror being from an angle at about head height over the bed. I like that they didn’t even trust teen gamers to understand the allusion of a woman standing in a bedroom doorway without comping in this extra element.
In order to make the reflection work the bed would have to be angled against the wall.
It’s funny how the brain instantly notices that the perspective is nonsensical but can’t really pinpoint the issue ^^
It’d also need to be pressed against the mirror I think…?
Yup it sure looks like it.
Not if you’re a literalist exec that saw the creative and didn’t think it was clear enough - “where’s the target audience? How are they going to see themselves in this ad?, she’s clearly out of our average user’s league”
Man, 90s video game ads were wild lmao
I thought they were cringy even then.
I was hitting puberty, this was prime material
Am I the only one cringing at the perspective in the mirror more than literally anything else in the ad?
Since she’s a a Tomb Raider, a dungeon crawler, a spelunker, does that mean he wants her to peg him? Color me interested.
I’ll fight anyone who says 1998 is retro. I’m getting old, but give me a few more years damn.
You mean the late 1900’s
Those few years between 1992-1998 were as … game-changing … for games as probably the two decades that followed. We started it with side scrollers, Dune and Doom and ended it with Diablo II, StarCraft and Half-Life.
For the kids here who haven’t experienced Half-Life, you should play Black Mesa. For the retro farts who have played Half-Life, you should also play Black Mesa. It’s the Half-Life you couldn’t have in 1998 because of the slow hardware. I weeped from feels playing it.
Old fart here. I played Wolfenstein 3d, then played the shit out of Doom and Duke Nukem 3d but missed out on Half life until recently. Knowing the context of the era it came out in, I can totally see how amazing it must have been. Hell, it’s still incredibly fun for me in this era.
Blizzard used to give me such warm fuzzies.
Now they just price gouge you, and sexuality harass the employees.
I spent sooooooooo much time on StarCraft and Diablo II. First video game I remember playing was Wolfenstein 3D, then Duke Nukem. Found RTS soon after.
I remember upgrading my PC from 4MB to 8MB, just to be able to play Duke3D, cost me a pretty penny as well
You and me both, but to be fair it’s a year closer to the creation of console gaming to modern day. So I’ll let it pass.
People who call my music vintage or classic can get right the fuck back, though.
Bro, we lost that fight. I was watching a Youtube video of a guy clearing games from his Steam backlog and introduced one with, “So, many of you watching probably weren’t alive when this game came out. Everyone talks about what a classic this is, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has actually played this game.”
I died a little inside when it turned out he was talking about the first Half-Life.
Hate to break it to you, but they play rock from the 90s and 00s on the CLASSIC rock stations now.
Bro, 2010 is retro now
If you really want to get depressed, Farmville is probably retro for some people.
Hell, I can remember when the word retro meant something new inspired by something older. Now it just means old / classic.
Bro that’s so last century
Last millennium, even.
If in 1998 you would have argued that 1972 is retro, then I’m sorry to tell you that 1998 is retro
I understand saying you don’t feel like 2010 is retro, but 1998? That’s been retro for a long time. You’re in a really extreme place in your head when you stick to not calling something that’s 25 years old retro.
and above all - sexy new outfits
The most important part of a game.
Oh, man, you have NO idea:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/15/games.advertising
Oh my god, this is dark.
This would’ve been great for a game like DOOM.
[Here lies your loved one]
“Ah! Fresh meat! Journey into Tristram and see what the Butcher is up to today!”
Hahaha, yeah, that one was great.
Also the one where they paid parents to name their baby ‘Turok.’
I sometimes wonder what those little Turoks are up to today (at least a half dozen parents took them up on it IIRC).
The shock advertising campaigns around games really were something. They worked - got a ton of free media coverage. But this was also at the time that video games were the Boogeyman like rock n’ roll had been to a generation before. The media loved nothing more than a “look how terrible video games are” story and PR firms were playing into that environment.
So campaigns like this were basically the equivalent of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat.
As games became more normalized, the campaigns shifted accordingly and - like Ozzy - tamed quite a bit out.
Please be the onion…
Sorry, but Acclaim really was that wild for a bit there. They also had a promotion where you’d get a free copy of one of the Turok games if you named a newborn child after him. For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone took them up on either offer, but it certainly brought in the publicity.
I currently work with someone who worked with acclaim back then and Virgin at one point too. The stories he tells me of some of the game Devs of the time. Insane. Some of them Devs still exist to this day and knowing what happened behind closed doors I have no idea how they got more business.
I feel that you owe us some anonymous gossip now.
One UK based dev that worked on some edgy PC games had a “Red Room” at their offices that was purely there for them to take drugs and trip inside. It was just a room completely painted in red.
Bro, using ads in the graveyards this is new for me…
I bet this will make a comeback…
I remember TR3 was a huge disappointment after 1 and 2. The new mechanics weren’t very good and the level design was more confusing. I remember they added the Desert Eagle pistol and it was a giant brick (seriously the model consisted of probably 3-4 polygons total).
It really felt like they were just milking the franchise at that point.
milking lara croft? 🤔
let’s not kink shame…
