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Classic Console TV Ads
superpenguin writes "Here is a site with some TV ads for classic computers/games systems like the Atari and Intellivision, as well as games for those systems. Find out whether Atari basketball or Intellivision basketball plays more like real basketball. Some real gems here. These ads are in Real Media format."
For Commodore Computers - where they compare the Vic 20 to the 2600 and the C64 to the Apple 2, IBM and Radio Shack computers,
Commodore Billboard
A lot of these ads and technologies came about before I was old enough to do anything about them, but I still remember a fair bit.
:P
I lived in England when the first Nintendo hit the market, and I begged and begged my parents to buy me one. They finally did, on my first birthday in the United States, in 1989.
What's interesting about this, though, is that I didn't quite understand the concept of a console game system. I even asked my mother where the coin slot on the Nintendo was, as embarassing as that seems, now. I guess I was quite a confused child.
The site has some other good stuff as well, like: Bootup screens, Magazine adverts, and emulators on which you can run the ROMs of the classic games. Thanks to Whoeverrunsthatsite.
That Intellivision Poker and BlackJack dealer was one pompous prick-hole. Primitive virtual emotions --- he'd get pissed when he'd lose and his eyebrows would turn like \/. I believe that was one of the first interactive "people" in games that I had ever experienced.
Unix Realplayer
What's incredible about these ads is that they have that "retro futuristic" theme. Watching them now, you still feel like you are witnessing something from the future. Plus, bonus Phil Hartman.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Wow, you're young. Classic for me is definitely the Atari 2600, Intellivision. I can even remember playing the Fairchild system (which I think was hardcoded with only a few pong-type games).
I also remember making lineprinter banners of Snoopy, Neil Armstrong's Moon photo, playing "Civil", a civil war stimulator on an HP3000 timesharing system, and hand-typing program listings from "Creative Computing" into my Apple ][.
An I'm only 35!
Dave Ahl! Creator of Hunt the Wumpus, publisher of Creative Computing and printer of that damn Nuclear Reactor simulator for the PET in every single BASIC computer listings book. (And I can connect with those memories - I spent time with a Nybble magazine and my Apple ][ as well).
Whatever happened to him? A google search doesn't turn him up. Also who was the guy (Landstrom, Langford?) who did the insane postscript coding - raw programs in postscript to generate fractals and the like. He advocated selfpublishing, and I have one of his books in storage somewhere.
Heh. I'll stop now - this story is already flooded with "Remember..." posts. Good to see there are some other people out there on Slashdot from the dawn of the PC (back before that meant "IBM PC"), and who remember timesharing systems.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
It is funny to me. So many people comment that they were too young to remember these ads. I was born in 1969 (an old fart I guess) so I remember most of them. The day has come when I am retro (old school).
I learned BASIC on a Trash80. I had an Atari 2600 and later the Atari 800 computer and played Star Raiders thinking it was the bomb and remembering how it stayed in the top ten for Computer games sales forever. I played games that came on tape drives start the load and go to dinner and a movie (sorta like I do when I start a mozilla compile now).
My first PC was a 386SX (for SUX) and I remember when I first got online at my local BBS at 2400 baud thinking it was lightening fast.
I remember working of the Mac SEs in the education labs. So much good GUI sense in such a little package. A fully functional GUI OS on diskspace half of what some PDAs have now.
Jeez, I remember loading linux for the first time and I thought it was enough to have a quick machine with a Unix-like OS. I did not even care about the fancy desktops and GUI eyecandy.
ACK
What's to miss? We're still waiting for the next Duke Nukem ; )
-A
yep .... it's my fault. I am the webmaster of the website. It's great to get this amount of feedback after so much work. All help it promoting this private owned site is greatly appreciated.
People are free to email me more retro gaming/computing adverts in whatever format they have.
On the point of realplayer format; it was the only format that the adverts were available in.
Hope you all enjoy them.
Regards
HT
Here's the soundtracks to a few old 80s commercials I found on videotape. There are some video game commercials in there, but the most "unique" one by far is the one for Mister T Cereal.