I love old advertisements and marketing material. They in many ways embody a time and place better than anything else around; mainly because they’re specifically designed to capture and appeal to society’s psyche en masse. In the 1990’s video games were at the cutting edge of consumer trends and so are cracking little depictions of what was ‘cool’ at the time. Nintendo’s own marketing efforts around the Game Boy are some of my favourites and are nothing short of brilliant if not cringeworthy. And of course everyone remembers the all-encompassing “Mortal Monday” marketing push behind the arrival of Mortal Kombat on home consoles.

But having looked through a metric shit-tonne of old retail advertisements for video games in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I can unequivocally say that they absolutely take the cake in a shithouse kind of way. So shithouse that it’s hard not to love them.

So what rhymes with Nintendo?

I can imagine a marketing executive at the Grace Bros. Department store went home proud as punch on the day he thought up this little ditty. Well done, son.

On a side note: the weird-but-surprisingly-bonza Dragon’s Lair branded version of ZX Spectrum game Rollercoaster for a cool $19.95 is a right bargain!

Source: [1994 ‘Advertising.’, The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), 7 September, p. 15, viewed 18 July, 2016]