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.
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.
Funny, I miss that exactly. The feeling of spring\summer air and the fragrance of jasmine\lilac\linden\freshly mowed grass and the clouds, and ICQ animations with cats scratching your screen and “hasta la vista baby” and all that, and the Web when it was actually hypertext on hundreds of pages hand-crafted all with real people.
And yeah, going to friends to play Tekken, and them coming to play SW: RotS. Watching “A Nightmare on Elm Street” in a summer camp. Older girls watching “Charmed”.
Is that the edgy vibes that you miss, or just generic childhood nostalgia?
Everyone has it, me included. I miss playing Tekken with my brother, and comparing our progress in Sacred, and generally speaking, nerding together. We are both adults and employed, and he’s got two kids as well, now. We barely have time for a brief phone call to check on each other over the weekend :(
I think both.
Danger in that world was on the sidewalks and unintended. Danger in this world is on the main pathways the most, and intended by its administrators.
Edgy vibes of that time seemed more like when you reinforce your right to call a president of your country a little bitch. Or like how it wasn’t traditionally welcomed to physically punish kids in many cultures in the Caucasus - because teaching fear of punishment also piggybacks teaching fear of enemy. BTW, this was also a principle in Dragomirov’s writings on how teaching should be done in the military ; his approaches to actual warfare were kinda archaic even in his own time (basically “straight at them” bayonet shock attacks), but the parts on didactics are good.
The pop music I hated then and hate now.
So yes.