Game Ads: the weird and the whimsical

[Cosmiken]

The most perfect year of all time?

Post automatically merged: Jun 19, 2025

 

[Dyne]

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The most perfect year of all time?

What a time to be alive

 

[bjork]

Seeing that MGS ad reminded me of the one that ran in comics for the first Metal Gear

 

[Cosmiken]

Seeing that MGS ad reminded me of the one that ran in comics for the first Metal Gear
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Sooo friggin cool

 

[prnzoDraGoonZweiOrta]

Post automatically merged: Jun 19, 2025

me holdin the actuaL 'zine here - not an ad but a walkthrough but stiLL from a gaming 'zine - have a fvQTUNN of Gamefans, EGMs, Gamepros, n Computer Gaming Monthlys in storage but now relocated to meh backyard shed

Post automatically merged: Jun 19, 2025

xDDD

Post automatically merged: Jun 19, 2025

I personally loved GameFan growing up. To me, they were way superior to EGM, GamePro, and Nintendo Power, especially covering Import Games, and Anime with all the beautiful glossy, colorful pages showcasing the games with wonderful screenshots that were way superior to the other mags. They always advertised Die Hard Gamer Club, and later on Game Cave, which I think were the same company but with a name change, and their showcase pages were awesome as well. As a kid, I would stare at them and just dream. But them prices were insane. They were 1996-1997 prices, with inflation, well, I guess it's the reason why game prices today don't bother me as much. I dealt with way worse in the 90's. Remember those Anime VHS tapes that went for like $30 for only 45 minutes? Pepperidge Farm remembers. DBZ Hyper Dimension on the Super Famicom went for around $80-90 back in the day, lol.

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haiL Sushi-X! IIRC he jump'd ship from EGM to Gamefan? or some similar dude. I loved them too untiL they panned SoR 3's briLLiant sdtrk n one said "I think Spencer Nilsen has surpassed Yuzo" L O L - hindsight/legacy would strongLy disagree with that.

n the way EGM roasted Golden Axe III around the same time...

from a (in some ways) more open-minded standpoint, Game Informer was a step-up in reviewer quality than wut Gamefan n EGM were devolving into. don't even get me started on Gamepro xD but even G.I. rubbed me the wrong way far more than once...

I meLLowed n expanded my view later beyond rookie short-sightedness n learned to chiLL n laugh instead of gettin meh feathers ruFFLed by defauLt... but brutal health hurdLes have tested that sternLy in recent years yada schma-dadah

when I dig out my 'zine stacks amidst my comic book stacks n poetry/lyrics stacks I'll take a lot of key pics

 

[nyka]

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I was coming here to post the Paper Mario "Demo"

That thing lit my imagination up as a kid ;v; I did cut it out and played with it as long as the paper lasted! An ad that invited a young player to imagine the world through the mechanics of being paper and flat ;v; loved it loved it

 

[LightningLegs]

Old-school PC games had some pretty badass magazine ads back in the day

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

 

[ThunderBoy]

 

[Badseed Badseed]

Earthbound's "This game Stinks" ad campaign. ( very similar to Primus "sucks")

SO 90's

 

[Pearly]

My mom bought me those DBZ toys. They were utter shit. Arms came off and those were the only things you could move around. DBZ Legends was my holy grail. And when I finally played it on a modded PSX, it was an incredible experience. No music though. Downside of the mod.

I have no idea why your modded ps1 would not play the music though, I played it on a modded ps1, the chip mod, and using the disc swap in my own ps1 and the music played, this was a playstation "best for family" release of the game, which was a "greatest hits" copy as far as I can tell. I thought the saturn cover art was cooler at the time though I now think the ps1 cover is the better one.

Those figures looked so amazing when there wasn't any other way of getting figures, we got AB released figures over here in Europe, based on the buu saga and wrath of the dragon, they were solid and not bad, but this was during the namek saga, the merch and games spoiled most of the plot.

The music being missing, typically, can be fixed by combining the bin files as it was one for those old multi bin file ps1 games, I had to do it with for my ps Vita recently, the menu and story recap sections were missing audio, even on the psp eboot copy on the repo here, so if that's an issue for anyone reading this that is playing the game and it's NOT on original hardware with an original copy of the game.

I actually had the game back in 2001, got it off a website that did imports in the UK, they didn't have much but they did have the three dragonball ps1 games. I seem to have lost the second copy I got my hands on a few years later though. Legends is a holy grail, captured the spirit of dragonball battles pretty well, which I think wasn't aped well till Kakarot, I loved Kakarot. Sparking zero does the spectacle of the battles better than any other game but is lacking in content :(

 

[Sumea]

Not magazine one but I think it fits the thread well enough, sorry if it causes a take over of some kind.

"WELCOME. I am SEGA. King of games! As you can see, my image is the best, and as you hear, my sound most powerful. By my 16 bits, I am invincible." (Price 995 Finnish Marks circa 88'-92')

 

[Morgana Veil]

Nintendo had some balls in the 90s.
Tiny, but had balls

 

[Bonkers225]

Nintendo had some balls in the 90s.
Tiny, but had balls
View attachment 83048

That took huge balls. Do that today and you're probably canceled

 

[Glimbo]

That took huge balls. Do that today and you're probably canceled

Speaking of balls...

 

[Sumea]

Nintendo had some balls in the 90s.
Tiny, but had balls

This also is one legendary PR move. The art is gorgeous.

 

[Morgana Veil]

This also is one legendary PR move. The art is gorgeous.
View attachment 83068

Didn't the Big N do that solely so they wouldn't get sued into the ground by the IP holder of Tetris?
Also yes its great art

 

[Sumea]

Didn't the Big N do that solely so they wouldn't get sued into the ground by the IP holder of Tetris?
Also yes its great art

The story is quite crazy. There is a good Internet Historian video and there is entertaining though not entirely accurate depiction of the whole ordeal.
My best TL;DR is: Alexey programmed Tetris on his free time in soviet union. A collegue of his also ported it on IBM PC and since it was soviet software. Stuff happens, Alexey is contacted by someone looking to license tetris, misunderstanding makes him start sublicensing tetris around while he actually had no rights. BulletProof Software also licences Tetris in Japan, works with nintendo and in the end they go to Russia, find out the shit is fucked, learn they have huge chance to one up a lot of other video game companies and make tons of money. That PR statement is finally made publically announcing that nintendo has made and actual binding agreement with ELORG, the Soviet department handling these things at the time. This is also reason why Tengen, Sega and such companies had to cancel their versions of Tetris.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

I remember in an AVGN video there was a piece of burnt toast that took up nearly two pages for some shit that I don't remember. That was pretty cool.

 

[Bonkers225]

I remember in an AVGN video there was a piece of burnt toast that took up nearly two pages for some shit that I don't remember. That was pretty cool.

I think it may of been Yoshi's Island. Maybe.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

I think it may of been Yoshi's Island. Maybe.

Found it.

 

[depes]

It's so hard to believe that this was a poster for advertising a port of the game!

 

[GuyZero32k4]

This classic right here.

 

[stealthRUSH stealthRUSH]

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Nintendo had some balls in the 90s.
Tiny, but had balls.

Eh, I think Nintendo tried too hard to be like Sega (or Sony later) to appeal to the teens when what made them Nintendo was because they were doing their own stuff...