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.
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Love the PS2 ones. They almost have a Goth vibe in their aesthetics.
The GBA SP really was a great portable. I carried my black\silver “executive” model everywhere and felt cool as shit at the time.
Those PS2 ads though, holy shit, what was Sony smoking back then?
I wish there was an easy way to quote/reference specific images. Golden Sun literal fire was nice, but those PS2 ads were… What the fuck
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.
Never heard of this ad since i was a kid at the time and not Dutch. Here it is.
Wow.
https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/5/15190396/sony-psp-ad-white-is-coming-pepsi-kendall-jenner
See they should have done a Charlie’s Angels type thing, have them standing kind of back to back like they’re on the same team. But I guess that won’t have been as controversial.
I have to admit, the GBA SP was pretty hot. I still have mine.
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!)
Hmmm… for reasons I cannot justify my brain is telling me the equivalent for “my man, you really blah blah blah” should be “madame, you really blah blah blah”
Though I agree you can’t correct someone by being like “ahem, it’s madame actually” 😛
My apologies, I missed that one!
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PS3 did some wierd shit, too.
And PSVita… The PSVita had this:
I hate to say it actually depicts the concept pretty good
I never saw this ad and i tell you it took me until my fourth game before i found out about it…i was mind blown
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.
this isn’t low effort. These are freaking great!
The nineties was the best decade.
Not low effort posting IMO, this is a part of our culture & has historical value.
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 over-the-top edgy/“how do you do, fellow kids?” vibes of the early y2k years is definitely something that I don’t miss from that era.
I can somehow hear Linking Park in the distance while scrolling this post.
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 -___-
Whatever we gained by losing these, it was not worth it.
