the latest haul...

I have a disclosure to make. As you've noticed, that last post didn't come from a comic book scan, but from a copy of Nintendo Power magazine. I haven't run out of comic ad scans (though I am out of actual comics!), though increasingly I am finding more-compelling game ad material from other sources -- first in basement back stacks of TSR's house organ Dragon Magazine, which primarily covered pen-and-paper role-playing and tabletop wargaming, then in a handful of old copies of Wired and Compute!, from other blogs, and finally... well, here's the mother lode: Last weekend, Jeremy was kind enough to bequeath to me his much-cherished collection (incomplete and in mixed condition, but of endless interest to one such as myself) of copies of (the recently-defunct!) Nintendo Power magazine and some related publications. Now, everything in such a magazine can be considered to be a video game ad of some sort or another, but (Howard & Nester aside) they're not much for comics. Now, this blog has a pretty straightforward mandate: "shilling epilepsy" means "video game advertising" (not just in reference to the hypnotic flashes in vector arcades and Jeff Minter productions, but also the notorious 1997 Japanese Pokemon epilepsy epidemic), and "to mouth-breathers" means specifically targeting the audience of juvenile delinquents and (as I've learned) Vietnam vets who were widely understood to be the primary markets for comic books circa the early '80s. Video game comic book ads: it's the site's URL. Seems cut and dry, don't it? But I can't resist occasionally throwing in other nerdy, game-unrelated finds advertised in comics, or depictions of video games in comics -- all still neighbours under the same umbrella. And now, I can't resist also throwing in game ads from non-comics sources.
Naturally this throws the whole thing out of whack. Already I've considered making the next post a book review, with no comics or even magazine connection whatsoever. The centre cannot hold! Even in the more general case described above, the sophisticated way a game is marketed to a hip, high-earning Wired reader is very different from how a Star Wars radio adaptation is marketed to kids in a comic book. In a perfect world, my blog would be a diverse enough place where these could happily sit side by side without any idiosyncracy. This is why I selected "NicheInterests" as my Etsy and eBay username -- nothing else really covered my weird spread of Intellivision cartridges, accordion records and Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks.) But here I should really defer to the readers. I've taken the liberty of squatting videogameads.wordpress.com (it was taken on Blogger, sadly -- unused since '06!) and am prepared to move the show over there, to discuss video game ads from all sources and across all media (ah, reviews of TV ads!), if it makes me less of a dirty liar.
Or if you don't care, and apathy rules the day (anything beyond antipathy will really do), I will just carry on here as I like, indulging my inspired genius and confusing the heck out of new readers. This is why, when you start a blog, you should pick a name as widely-inclusive as "Boingboing". I could have just named it "Nerdy Stuffs & Sundry" but then where's the hook? All that annouces is that here is a trough, ladies and gentle persons, and I shall be wallowing in it.
Me, I've painted myself into a corner. But I hope you'll find it an interesting place.