Nostalgic Ads

Nothing from Play-Asia turned up on Friday, leaving me to believe it some kind of worldwide conspiracy to stop me from playing the sequel to Katamari Damashi. Or it may just be that customs is now totally paranoid about packages and such, thus keeping my packaged for undetermined amount of time. Either way, nothing has ever taken over 2 week to get to me from Hong Kong, so it's very strange indeed.

I've had a bout of nostalgia for the past few days, and decided to quench it tonight by watching some old video game commercials. If you have never seen the sites that play host to these kind of things, I suggest that you check out, Video Game Ads for a sources of game ads from many countries and for many consoles. If you more of a Sega fan however, you would be best checking out this site for their excellent selection of all ads Sega.

It's great to go back and see some of those ads, one of my favs being this one for NiGHTS on the Saturn, where they proceed to drop an Playstation of the top of a building. It's such great brand assassination, which today I would really doubt you would get away with, but back in the day when Sega was still on top it was great.

After checking out some of the ads for the SegaCD it's no wonder that it didn't sell well, they are just so uninspiring. I actually on ever remember one SegaCD ad that I saw in a cinema once, I don't think it showed any game play, from memory it was one of those teaser ads which left you wanting more. Was really cool at the time, seeing a console advertised in the cinema. Though I will say that the Sonic CD is very cool, I always get a buzz out of seeing it. Though Sega really did focus way too much on the whole FMV thing with the SegaCD, which is a shame because it was probably the most bland area of the console.

It's kind of strange these days though with ads on TV, I rarely see any. Sony used to put out quite a lot back in the PSX days, especially with things like Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo. Recently though I've only seen a few Nintendo ones, and they were from Gameboy games if I recall correctly. Though Sony did show some Gran Turismo 4 ads, though I only saw those during either the WRC or Formula 1 coverage, which is right for demographic, if a little limited to coverage.

Though when I come to think of it, I did see an ad for Tekken 5 recently, and also some for Ratchet and Clank 3 a while ago. So there are a few everyone and then, just not so many as there have been in the past.