Game Commercial Marathon
Long, long ago, around the mid-eighties, video games were booming thanks to Atari and a couple of other systems like Colecovision and such. People were swarming stores by the thousands just to get their greedy hands on a shitty copy of Pac Man for Atari. Kids in school would get into savage fights arguing who could score more points in Donkey Kong, and brains were flowing freely out of the damned while thousands feasted on the organs of the heathens. Well, maybe the oozing brains thing didn’t happen, but the point is, video games were hot, and if you didn’t have one (like me) you were the socially ostracized bastard that no one cared about and threw milk cartons/pencils/heavy lawn equipment/etc at.
During this time, video game companies for some reason realized that games were popular with America’s youth (and a few overweight men living in their basements) and decided the best course of action to take was to advertise their games on TV. While this may not seem to be something too out of the ordinary by today’s standards, video games at that time were still very much an enigma. Not only were they questionable entertainment, but also no one had actually advertised a video game before. Plus, add the fact that this was the eighties, the same decade that brought us Facts of Life, and Who’s the Boss and suddenly you realize the massive train wreck waiting to happen. It wasn’t going to be pretty.
So today, let us go back in time and view some of these long lost gems and see what exactly went wrong, and just what the hell the directors of these commercials were thinking when they actually filmed these monstrosities. Don’t forget, we’re supposed to learn from the past, and the mistakes that went along with it, and if we do, then we have a veritable library of knowledge to learn from on this page alone. So grab your nearest time traveling helmet, or your Nascar hat, whichever is closest, and prepare to be amazed at what videogamers thought was “cool” and “hip” in a time called… the eighties.
Megamania
First up is a little game from Activision called Megamania. Now I don’t really remember this game, and after viewing the commercial I honestly don’t want to. I suggest you view the commercial yourself because only then would you be able to realize just how bad things were. Never before have I more wanted to swallow a handful of nails than after I got done watching this.
The commercial is a frenetic bag of shit that is supposed to promote a game that, from the screenshots, looks like nothing more than a penis shooting at dots at the top of the screen. Now I seriously doubt this game could ever be as exciting as the commercial makes it out to be. Hell, I seriously doubt ANYTHING could be as exciting as this commercial makes it out to be. If you were to put a thousand monkeys in a large building, set them on fire, then blow up the building while naked supermodels danced on the back of a car while it jumped over a house it still could never be as exciting as this commercial.
Okay so it’s supposed to be promoting that their game is supposed to be the pinnacle of excitement, which is fine and all, so the main question is, just who or what the fuck is this guy?
MY MOUTH IS OPEN
From here on out, this man will be referred to as Larry. Why? Because he just looks like a Larry. The kind of guy you see on a police file that went to jail for scratching his cat’s eyes out because he thought it told him to. Larry here is one hard rocking guy though, this is proven when he jumps out of the Atari and starts wailing away about just how fucking exciting Megamania is. To Larry, Megamania is God. And there is nothing that will stop him from screaming it directly into your ear, all the while trying to make it into a nonsensical rock song. And even though this is only a video game commercial, it certainly doesn’t stop him from acting like a complete moron and ruining any chance of ever being on another commercial ever. So far, this is not helping the video game world’s attempt to make video games a viable entertainment product.
Something should also be said about Larry’s choice of fashion. Now I know the eighties weren’t the hallmark years of fashion, but Larry just takes it to the extreme. Effortlessly turning himself into the largest unintentionally funny comedic fool ever to grace TV. Nothing says, “I am cool” quite like a neon blue shirt with a bright red collar large enough to injure nearby people if he moved his neck too fast. Larry also appears at one point to be made of plastic, which would not surprise me at all if he really was.
Larry and his “band” continue to shout unintelligible words throughout the rest of the commercial, while occasionally screaming MEGAMANIA really loud at various points to further hammer home the fact that this game is indeed called Megamania, until the commercial finally ends and you are left to ponder just what the fuck you just viewed. In a way, I kind of feel sorry for Larry. It seems Larry just wants to be cool and accepted but somewhere along the lines fails miserably. I can just see Larry here back in school with his neon blue shit and plastic hair, and imagine how hard it could’ve been for him:
School kid: Hey Larry! What’s up?
Larry: (screaming) Oh YEEEAAAH BABY! LETS ROCK ALL NIGHT! AINT NO FRIGHT!
School Kid: What? Are you okay?
Larry (screaming) YEAH BABY I’M OKAY! YOU WANNA ROCK ANOTHA’ DAY?!
School Kid: What the hell are you talking about Larry?
Larry: MEGAMANIA!
School Kid: Okay, whatever Larry, see ya around.
Larry: MEGAMANIA!
It would not have been easy for little Larry to make very many friends. It would have been even harder during sex…
Woman: OH Larry! I’m coming!
Larry: STOP IT MOM!
Woman: YES!
Larry: MEGAMANIA!
Well, to sum it all up, this commercial seems to have been put together by a few drunk college students and appears to have had a budget of less than 10 dollars. It tries to promote a game that, as far as I can tell, is no more exciting than trimming your fingernails. Also, Larry is the greatest actor of all time and should be given some kind of an award just for this commercial. It is the greatest thing you will ever see. Now, everyone say it with me! MEGAMANIA!
Smurfs
You may remember the Smurfs from the long line of made-for-kids-cartoons from the eighties. It featured a bunch of small blue… things… running around saying lines like, “Let’s Smurf that!” No one knew what the hell they were saying half the time as the writers seemed to replace every single verb in the script with Smurf. For some reason it was massively popular and had a huge following.
Anyway, by general rule, anything that is popular with kids on TV needs to have a videogame, and of course Atari and a couple of other consoles were graced with a Smurf game. Now honestly, this game isn’t that bad. It had decent graphics and was pretty fun. But I’m not here to comment on the game itself today, but about the commercial, and what a commercial we have.
The basic premise seems to be a few kids playing Smurfs while their “uncool” Dad butts in and tries to comprehend just what the hell is going on. This guy is pretty much clueless anyway, as his first line is, and I quote: “Hey! You guys watchin’ Smurfs?” DUH Dad. I’m sure you and your uncool tax paying bastard-self could never differentiate between a game that has fewer than 8 colors in it and an animated TV show. This is pointed out quickly by a small kid who probably wishes he was adopted now because his Dad is such a born loser that he would probably tape his underwear on his feet if his Mom didn’t write “UNDERWEAR” in big letters on the crotch.
So as the commercial goes on, Dad continues to be a general nuisance and all around moron (“Of COURSE you Smurf it Dad! DUH!”) while the children play the game. Only these children aren’t ordinary children. I know kids get excited when playing games, but DAMN these kids must have been chained in a Korean death prison since birth because they are literally having the time of their lives playing this game. Screw graduation, fuck marriage, when they grow up and have grandchildren, they will sit them on their knee and tell them of the time they played Smurfs. Thank God they’re not playing Megamania I guess, because God only knows how excited they would be if they played that game. Plus I’m guessing Larry would magically appear and rape the father.
Expert recreation
Anyway, the kids continue to scream out what the kid who is playing is supposed to do by telling him to “Smurf” things. The Dad, like the dumbass he is, asks his kids just what the hell they are saying, while a kid that couldn’t be no more than 7 looks at him like a fucking retard and tells him it’s Smurf talk. Dad then gets this look of “Oh yeah! That’s right!” all the while probably trying to remember if he took a shit in the bathroom or the kitchen sink.
Then the commercial starts showing various scenes from the game until we come back to the little kid and his retard Dad. The kid is obviously getting a bit tired that someone has let ol’ Dad out of his protective cage in the backyard and gleefully informs him that, “Dad, maybe Smurfs is a LITTLE too exciting for you.” Then I’m sure he takes his Dad back to his padded room where he can do something slightly less exciting like urinate on himself. It’s people like ol’ Dad here that without a shadow of a doubt, shows that anyone in a kids commercial older than 20 is a raging moron and should be set on fire at the nearest convenient time.
Then the commercial ends and we are informed that we should of course, buy this game. A truly wonderful commercial that continues to show that most videogame companies weren’t really interested in putting money into a video game commercial. Because this commercial could not have cost any more than a combo meal at McDonalds. It’s just a few kids sitting around a TV playing a fucking game for Christ’s sake. I’m guessing however that most of the money in the commercial went to pay for the Dad’s medication that made him into the biggest fucking clueless moron ever. Like the kid said:
“You SMURF it Dad!”
DUH!
Atlantis
I really don’t remember this game, as is the same with most of these games. But it appears to be some shooting game as were 99.9% of all Atari games. You could not make an Atari game unless you were shooting at something else on the screen. I’m sure that if you pitched a game to Atari it would go something like this:
Developer: I would like to make a game
Atari: Okay. What kind of game?Developer: A Football game
Atari: Do you shoot anyone in this “football” game?Developer: ummmm…no.
Atari: GET OUT OF MY SIGHT, HEATHEN! MAY THE FIRES OF HELL BURN YOUR EYES OUT OF THEIR SOCKETS! GUARDS! SEIZE HIM!
Anyway the commercial seems to be about some guy who has found a secret lair where the king of Atlantis shouts various unintelligible lines of gibberish while he plays the game itself before he is blown up in the end. While that makes no fucking sense whatsoever we are not here to award Atlantis the award for most piss-poor commercial plot ever. We are here to examine the inner-workings of Atlantis, or as I call it, This Fantastic Piece of Shit.
While watching these commercials, one thing keeps re-appearing over and over again at a frightening rate, and that is just how low budget these commercials are. And Atlantis here is no exception. The entire set seems to have been constructed by a few cardboard boxes and whatever the hell else the director could find laying around his basement. At any moment you expect to see the director’s Mom come in and offer everyone cookies and milk. Hell, some of the forts and stuff I made when I was playing with my friends as a kid looked more realistic than this.
It also appears that the director spent 90 percent of the budget on the monster guy’s makeup, or mask, or whatever the hell he’s wearing. Either way it’s still not very impressive and makes anything on the Power Rangers look like multi-million dollar makeup effects. I have seen higher quality Halloween masks at Big Lots, and I guarantee they were all scarier than whatever the hell he is trying to be. But at least he got to hide his true face to the public, which unfortunately cannot be said for the other actor.
How would you like to put down on your acting resume that you starred in a commercial where the highest points you could say about it was:
- You had a total of three lines
- You were shown on camera for approximately two and a half seconds.
- You were blown up
Yes it seems our other friend in the commercial got the royal shaft as being the guy who got the shittiest role in commercial history. Not only does he get to share the same space as the guy wearing a bad Halloween mask and shouting ATLANTIS! a lot, but he also gets blown up in the end. Yes blown up. It seems he makes the fatal mistake of asking the spooky guy that he thought he destroyed all the people of Atlantis. Well this royally pisses him off and he just starts blowing everything up. Not only does he blow the guy up, he blows up:
The rest of the set
The game
The other game
The whole fucking commercial
No it made no sense and I cannot see how the director was in a normal state of mind when he was filming this. I guess some questions will never be answered. I can live with that. As long as I never have to see this guy again.
MFFLLMMAARRGH
Vanguard
It seems Vanguard was a (wait for it) shooting game that was popular in the arcades in the early eighties. Back then though, being qualified as a popular arcade game meant having a couple of people stare at the machine as they walked by on their way to the stripper stage. So it was only a matter of time before Atari, long known to be money-hungry bastards, converted it to the Atari in their own personal attempt to release approximately 65,898,098 shooting games on the Atari system before anyone realized they were all the exact same game.
So with a game as “huge” as Vanguard it had to have the proper marketing muscle behind it. Even if it meant giving four inebriated teenagers 50 bucks, a camera, and a contract to make a commercial about Vanguard. Unfortunately it seems the teenagers spent 45 of the 50 dollars on beer and used the rest to rent a porn movie. Because there is no way in the world this commercial could have cost any money to make. If there was money involved with the making of the commercial I would personally like to see the director, and jam my foot directly in his crotch for being the dumbest man alive. Why? Well let’s just go over what this “commercial consists of:
- A room in a house
- Four REALLY excited teenagers
- Various crappy shots of the game edited in while the teenagers shout out stuff like “NOW I’LL SHOW YOU THE STRIPE ZONE!”
- Possibly someone holding the camera
Something must also be said about the guys that are playing this game. They are not just happy that they are playing this game. No, they are in the presence of God while they are playing this game. They are so excited when they play this game it almost makes me want to play the game myself. I have never seen anyone this damn excited over a videogame. To get me this excited while playing any game I would need a twelve pack of beer, a large bong, and a girl giving me a handjob while I was playing the game. Even then I doubt I could ever be as excited as these three kids are.
And there you have it. That is ALL this commercial is. No wait, I’m wrong. There is something this commercial has that will forever catapult it into the realm of legend. One scene that is so unintentionally funny that I laugh every single time I hear it. All thanks to this man:
Sup bros
Now bow down and worship him because he is the only person I have ever seen that has made a total and complete fool out of himself without saying a word. No he does something much better.
He laughs.
HUH HUH HUH now bend over
Not just any laugh. Hell, all he had to do was just come up with a decent laugh but the son of a bitch couldn’t even do that. Instead he comes up with the absolute most dumb-ass laugh in the history of laughs, forever ruining any chances that anyone who sees the commercial will not point and laugh at him hysterically. Just watch it again and again. Not only will it provide hours of entertainment but you can also sleep better knowing that this guy probably got paid a decent amount of money for his gimp-ass to laugh like a violated hillbilly.
So far we have pretty much learned what we already know in the first place. Video game publishers had no idea what the hell they were doing as far as advertising goes. But as bad as these commercials are, it’s fun to look back at videogaming’s humble and mindless start. If it weren’t for these games then we would probably never have gotten the Nintendo or Sega Master System, the two systems that finally did get videogames into the mainstream public. How did they do it when Atari and others failed for years? Simple:
They knew how to market their respective systems and games.
Nintendo based its entire advertising campaign around kids and not mindless dribble like the above. They knew what people wanted and they succeeded larger than anyone could have ever imagined. All because they made a good system, and knew how to market it. Even if most of their games were shit.
