I recently reread my copy of the December 1994 EGM. Which is one of my favorite magazine issues, from my favorite time in gaming. It’s an absolutely monstrous issue, topping over 400 pages. It’s a delight to read – the game industry felt like it was bursting at the seams with around a dozen active game systems in the US, the Saturn and Playstation launching and Japan and Nintendo’s Virtual Boy and the mysterious “Project Reality” looming on the horizon. I don’t have any sort of blog or anything so I just thought I’d post my thoughts here. I could probably talk about the entire issue at length but that would be a monstrous post so let’s keep it to just some of the ads I saw. And there were a ton of these things. I found a scan of the magazine at
this site and I’m leaving everything as links instead of images as they are pretty big.
Starting off we have an ad for the Game Boy version of…Space Invaders. This was during Nintendo’s Play It Loud Era. This was their attempt to adopt Sega’s aggressive marketing. Looking at it now, they look like they are trying a little too hard. I’ll admit I have a lot of fondness for it as a lot of games that were marketed during this campaign and in all honesty I was just the right age to think it was cool and not poserish
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/008.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/009.jpgA 3D0 ad. I like the implication here that you get laid once when you’re 17 and lose interest in everything else until you die. The 3D0 was considered an also-ran in the console wars of the era but there’s a few good games featured here.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/032.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/033.jpgUS publishers had zero idea how to market cute Japanese games at this time. Pocky and Rocky 2 will KILL YOU
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/041.jpgAnother Nintendo ad. I don’t recall Nintendo buying a lot of magazine ad space before this era but they have tons of ads in this magazine alone. I don’t think you’d see in steroids comparisons in a modern ad. A 26 inch TV screen would seem tiny nowadays. Wasn’t the Super Game Boy awesome? I loved mine.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/054.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/055.jpgA disgusting ad for Gex. Attempting to gross you out was also pretty common during this era.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/062.jpgNot an ad, but a short article on Sega’s TV commercials. These commercials did a great job making you feel like an ABSOLUTE LOSER if you liked Nintendo. As a Nintendo fan, they drove me up the wall. The one where the dopey guy smacks himself on the forehead with a dead squirrel to see “color” on his Game Boy was absolutely brutal.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066.jpgA massive 8 page, Konami pull out ad featuring mostly licensed titles. It’s not even the only pull out ad in this magazine! This is definitely the peak of print ad budgets for video games. Also, all these games are pretty good!
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066a.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066b.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066c.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066d.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066e.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066f.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066g.jpgvgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/066h.jpgA couple things here: I’ve never seen a standalone SamSho II cabinet and it’s pretty slick looking. Secondly I like how they advertise the Neo-Geo as “affordable” really hilarious stuff from the guys at SNK.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/075.jpgI think this predates the “BYE MOM” meme by at least 2 decades. Also, Beyond Shadowgate is worth a mint nowadays.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/085.jpgMarketing teams loved trash talk and mudslinging at this time. Even ol’ Pac-Man can’t help but jump into the fray. This is an extremely weird game by the way and a lot of fun to play actually.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/205.jpgNothing to say about this one except that Beavis would never use the extremely lame insult “nimrod” !
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/228.jpgSpectrum Holobyte tried having Alexey Pajitnov endorse a bunch of puzzle games back in the mid 90’s. My aunt had a Puyo Puyo ripoff on her computer called “Qwirks” that had his face slapped on the box.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/273.jpgYes, there was a port of Lufia for the Genesis planned! I’m not sure even any screenshots exist. Addendum: They missed the date obviously and next month reprinted it with the December 1994 crossed out and “SPRING 1995- IT’S WORTH THE WAIT” scrawled in.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/287.jpgYep – we were in the hazy, late summer afternoon of the 16-bit era and they were still trying to sell us Action 52.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/357.jpgI read somewhere once that these contests (which had ran for years at this point) were massive ripoffs. If you read the fine print, you have to keep paying cash to get more puzzles.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/373.jpgA “buy 2 get 1” offer for Sony Imagesoft Sega CD games and honestly I struggle thinking of even one game on this list that I’d like to play. Maybe Wheel of Fortune?
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/379.jpgNearing the end here. Magazines back then would have SEVERAL pages of mail-order video game retailers, many of them offering import titles as well. How many pre-final covers can you count?
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/392.jpgPart of a Funco ad. I got into NES collecting in 1998 – at a time where NOBODY wanted anything to do with the NES and I was able to build a massive collection with my part-time lawn mowing job. It’s just kind of interesting to see what is considered more valuable back then than today. Stadium Events is “only” 30 dollars for example. Super Mario 1/Duck Hunt would eventually be marked down to a dime and TMNT was a quarter.
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/396.jpgA Donkey Kong Country themed ad for the Super Advantage. I've never used one of these but Nintendo clearly missed an opportunity to give it a similar layout to a Street Fighter 2 cabinet. Also I'm not sure how any of the advertised features here would help you in DKC
vgpavilion.com/mags/1994/12/egm/pages/404.jpg
