"The Itchy and Scratchy Game", 1994

The Simpsons was just a license in the right place at the right time to be subjected to endless horrifyingly tepid video game adaptations -- barring Konami's 1992 arcade brawler, just a re-skinned approach to the success they'd enjoyed there two years earlier with TMNT, a similarly hot-and-cold franchise. (The TMNT arcade game, to further a tangent, marked my debut as a popular writer, penning a walkthrough in the elementary school C64 lab. Truly how far we have come!) Developers Acclaim cast a similar pall over virtually every product associated with them -- thus when the Simpsons' license fell into their hands, prolific mediocrity was to be expected. They went to great lengths to deliver the appropriate flavour -- I always appreciated their 8-bit rendition of Matt Groening's cartoon typography -- but the games ended up uniformly unexceptional except in their mediocrity. And of course the superfecta of "buy it now on SNES, Genesis, Game Boy and Game Gear" was always a bad sign of a certain lowest common denominator. I never played this one. Who knows - it might be the exception to prove the rule. But the review scores suggest otherwise.

Kitty Litter!

WHAT A SHOCK!
SPLIT PERSONALITY?!!
ONE SHISH KABOB, COMIN' UP!
IS THIS LOADED?

They fight, and bite, they fight and bite and fight! Get ready as Itchy & Scratchy slice, dice, crash and bash their way into your home. This cat's gonna need more than nine lives to survive bazookas, grenades, chain saws and flame throwers. There's more than one way to skin a cat... So, are you mouse enough!!!???

The most interesting thing about this ad to me is that upon seeing it, I recognized its central image from a piece of artwork released in the computer art group MiSTiGRiS I ran back in 1995. That's right, kids, in the pre-scanner, pre-digital-camera era, for kicks, people would try to reproduce, freehand, images they saw in other sources. This one advertises a BBS I was co-sysop of, The Screaming Tomato. Ehh... you had to be there. Side by side like this for the first time I get to see where the computer artist took some liberties interpreting the original image.

Fellow travelers - pre-Prometheus

Dark Horse comics usually didn't have much for ads, which raises many interesting questions: was this a matter of artistic vision and editorial choice, or were they merely unable to land the advertisers that plagued Marvel and DC's offerings? And if the former, how were they able to fund their publications through cover price alone when Marvel and DC comics apparently couldn't? Anyhow, this comic came up during the scan spree and even though it had no real video game connection, I knew that Prometheus was coming up and here was something I could tie into it -- another, earlier interpretation of the Engineers. (If only I could manage to make the blog post while the movie was still fresh in people's minds!) Since I collected in a scattered, furtive fashion, I can't really speak to the plot events that led up to this calamitous state of events, but it sure is a hum-dinger! Canny use of the Aliens franchise really made Dark Horse. They cast wide nets, turning numerous film licenses into comics of varying interest, and getting extra mileage out of them by lumping in thesis and antithesis for a new, novel synthesis. This Hegelian dialectic process didn't yield much in their "RoboCop vs. the Terminator" miniseries, but they took the flimsiest easter egg in Predator 2 and ran far with it. Then a decade or so later, after video game makers had explored the Alien vs. Predator phenomenon and exhausted it a few times, filmmakers discovered the mash-up also. Sorry for the crappiness of the scan! And sorry for the general off-topicness of this post. I promise to be back to video game ads soon!

Video game arcades in the landscape of the popular imagination

I get a kick out of seeing video game arcades depicted in comic books. Though comics of course pre-date arcades, they seem kindred spirits in the annals of alternative, somewhat underground culture for youth and delinquents. Seeing one represented in the other really hammers home the association. That said, with the extinguishing of the video game arcade, scenes such as this may soon only appear in "period pieces". (I also get a kick at seeing comic book writers and artists come up with names and designs for fictitious set dressing games. The Simpsons does a great job at this.)

"Dr. Chaos", NES, 1988

The terrific artwork for this game jumped out at me as I was scanning the ads, though it's a bad sign that its name didn't ring any bells in the mind of this onetime emulation fiend. Likely then it was unexceptional, neither a great game nor a terrible one, but perhaps a median, run-of-the-mill NES game from the median developer FCI.

Do you dare open the doors to doom? The warp zone experiments of the brilliant Dr. Chaos have gone horribly wrong. They've unleashed armies of bloodthirsty creatures, trapping him in his remote research facility. Now only his brother Michael can rescue him. To succeed, Michael must brave a haunted house filled with vicious monsters. Can he fight his way through dangerous passageways? Track down the concealed weapons? Find the secret vials of strength? And assemble the ultimate weapon, Canbarian?

• Thriller graphics
• Three different screen patterns
• Graphic score pad tracks life force, weapons found, weapons in use
• Memory capacity saves your score and restarts the game at any point.

I might just be prejudiced, but if my last name was Chaos, after I earned my PhD I'd probably stay out of the bloodthirsty creature business -- it would just be too much of a cliche. Still, it's refreshingly rare to have the cause of the problem and the victim in need of rescuing be the same person! Some of those selling points make me a bit dubious, though. Your graphic score pad and three different screen patterns don't impress me! And the bit about the memory capacity restarting the game at any point makes it sound a bit like it randomly reboots. Canbarian warrants a snark, and the WCW t-shirt tie-in warrants two, but I can't be bothered at the moment. You might notice that things have been slow here lately; we've just had a baby (anticipation of which precipitated the scanning and dispersal of the comic book collection) and the pace will probably remain sedate into the future. But when I get a spare moment, I look forward to continuing this Quixotic look back!

"X-Men", Genesis, 1993

I've just finished up with splicing together some two-page ad spreads, so why not get back into the swing of things with one of them now? I never gave this ad its dues at the time, merely chalking it up to sensationalist "ugly art". In retrospect, it's a gutsy move (or in this case, one might say "a bold Gambit", ho ho) to advertise a comic-book game, in a comic book, with anything other than comic book-style artwork. It excellently conveys the gritty mood the '90s were trying on in preparation for millennial angst.

Hear the sound razor-sharp adamantium claws make as they extract their revenge.

[screenshot]
Juggernaut is one tough mutant, even against Wolverine's fierce claws. Fire Gambit's energized cards and introduce Juggernaut to Storm's tornado force winds.
[screenshot]
Sabretooth growls his defiance. Cyclops needs Archangel's razor sharp blades to help Nightcrawler send him back to his maker.
[screenshot]
Cyclops watches for Sentinel attacks as Gambit uses Iceman's bridge to annihilate the hovering Sentinel.
[screenshot]
The final battle takes place on Asteroid M. Defeat Magneto's Acolytes and the Master of Magnetism appears.
Welcome to the next level (tm)

Apparently completion of this game required abuse of the reset button (a "soft reset"), making it impossible to complete through emulation.

"Destiny of an Emperor", NES, 1989

Could this truly take the cake for the wordiest video game ad ever? Even ads for Infocom games (not that I've found any in comic books) dwelled less on the prose, and those games were entirely composed of it!

Conquering this game will take you centuries.
Over 18,000 years ago many of the men in China dedicated their life to the study of philosophy. And then applied it to a war to end all wars.
The country was plagued by a bandit hoarde known as the Yellow Scarves. Who amassed a power no one had yet to conquer. Fact is, no one could assemble a force strong enough to destroy them.
In Destiny of an Emperor, your challenge is to change the course of history forever. For the good of China. And the world.
This full scale, role playing adventure game for the Nintendo System will put you deep in the throes of that war.
The action is as real as it gets thanks to the discovery of authentic documents detailing the era. Characteristics of 180 warlords have been simulated based on the renowned text of Sanquozhi Yanyi.
Even 20th century strategists are destined to spend hours, even days on each game. And when you take a break to philosophize on your next action (if you can pull yourself away) you can actually save up to three histories exactly where you've left off.
You can put yourself in the place of Liu Bei, dedicated to raising an army for the restoration of the dynasty. Or Guan Yu, an exceptionally skilled warrior, match for a thousand soldiers and worshipped as a god.
But no matter who you are, it will be hard to win the war against Zhang Jao, the deadly leader of the Yellow Scarve revels and founder of the Tai Ping sect. Not to mention the most feared Chinese warlord of all time, Lu Bu, destined to be a traitor because of his great strength and courage.
You'll use every strategic cell in your brain to fulfill your constant requirements for weapons, food and manpower. You'll give important commands that could mean your life, and the life of your armies. And in true Chinese tradition, you'll engage in battle again and again to defend your honor. An honor certified by an oath signed in blood.
When all is said and done, there will be room for only one Emperor. Whether or not that will be you is your destiny alone.

Aside from the order of magnitude error in the first paragraph (should be 1800 years, not 18 thousand), that's pretty historical stuff. The puissance of the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history for video gamers is heartening -- throw together enough (pseudo-)historical personages and you can approximate a soap opera... and add enough bloodletting to the soap opera and you have a free, public domain source from which to derive endless games, manga, TV shows and films. The only question is why this extremely slow-paced game was being advertised in a comic book. If memory serves correct, I have a friend (one of those "Art of War"-readers for a business context) who, as an adult, spent a week playing a single campaign of this game. Not exactly one for juvenile delinquents with low attention spans.

"Spider-Man", Atari 2600, 1982

This ad doesn't do much to distinguish itself except yet again, a comic artist uses drawn lines to simulate pixels drawn on a screen, simulating the lines drawn by a comic artist -- a mise en abyme, but toward what worthwhile end? Sadly, none. Spider-Man game trivia: apparently an unreleased Odyssey2 version of this game surfaced a few years ago in a collector's trove. Also: this game was the curious subject of a piece in Marvel Comics' "Blip" magazine about video games, where Marvel got Spider-Man to review Spider-Man in a weird photo spread wherein a man in a bad costume played this game with some kids. (All the while, driving sales for the Atari 2600, profiting Warner Bros., owner of Marvel's rival DC Comics. The things we do to strive for the appearance of relevance!)

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Green Goblin: I'll blow this town to smithereens -- TIME BOMBS! Try to get up THERE IN TIME, Spider-Man -- ha, ha, ha!
Spider-Man: Watch me climb MY WEB, Goblin! (THWIPP!)
GG: Watch yourself fall, SILK-SLINGER! (BLAM!)
SM: Got to stop the BOMBS IN TIME! (THWIPP!)
GG: If I don't get you, WEB-HEAD-- -- my GANG OF NASTIES will! (THWIPP!)
GG: And you're running out of WEB FLUID, BUG-BRAIN! Ha, ha, ha, ha! (BLAM BLAM BAROOM)
SM: Is this MORE ACTION than even SPIDER-MAN can HANDLE?!?!?
The Goblin's time bombs are ticking away. And his Super Bombs sit fiendishly up on High Voltage towers. The city is on its knees.
Only Spider-Man's spidey powers can get us out of this! Thwipp! He shoots his web and swings up the buildings to reach the bombs.
Thwipp! He shoots again, escaping the Goblin on his web-cutting jet glider.
But watch out! Goblin and his warped gang of criminals have more sneaky ways to cut your web and plunge you to the streets below.
Can you get Spider-Man to the bombs in time? Your web fluid is getting lower.
And time is ticking away...

I don't know if Spidey has ever looked more awkward than holding the 2600's iconic joystick in his striped mitts. Also, what kind of fey insult is "silk-slinger"? I would like to learn how to sit fiendishly. The whole bottom blurb reads a bit how one imagines a 6-year-old (who else would describe Spider-Man as possessing "spidey powers"?) might extemporize while playing the game, complete with sound effects.