"Battletoads", 1991.

It's easy to forget just how huge the transparently derivative Battletoads phenomenon was in gaming circles (derivative in turn of the transparently derivative Teenaged Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles, themselves a paper-thin pastiche of a young Frank Miller's best work in Daredevil -- but typically I must save the digression for the end of the post or else we'll never get there!) and how odd it seems in retrospect that a) they were genuinely platform-exclusive despite not being owned by their console's mother corp whoops, guess not and b) they haven't yet seen a dark, gritty or ironic revival. But Rare's back catalogue is full of stuff like this -- lovingly crafted intellectual property that they'll happily set aside for two or twenty years, only to pick back up where they left off as if they had just nipped off down the way for a bag of chips. We've seen it with Solar Jetpac, Sabre Wulf, and Banjo-Kazooie (and if anything, they do it even more successfully with the IP of others -- cf. Donkey Kong Country and Goldeneye), so don't be surprised if we eventually see a return of these tragical Poochie '90s amphibians.

COMPARED TO BATTLETOADS, TURTLES SEEM LIKE POND SCUM.

DUDE, IF YOU'RE READY FOR A GAME THAT TOADALLY KICKS BUTT, GET BATTLETOADS. WITH 12 LEAPIN' LEVELS OF FIERCE FIGHTING AND RADICAL RACING, FOR ONE OR TWO PLAYERS.
TRADEWEST

IT'S INTERESTING... wait, sorry, caps lock off -- got stuck in eXtreme ANGRY CAPS MODE -- to see that again, the main elements are a) the box art (why not just blow up the box to full-page and leave out the weak text, which boasts no selling point beyond tepid alliteration? I dig the cartoonish visual emphasis the game also employs -- big fist, big foot, big attitude!) and b) trash-talking their primary influence. (If the Great Giana Sisters advertised by slamming Super Mario Bros., it would be similarly conspicuous.)
Also interesting is the publisher's decision to make good use of the margins to plug a few other wholly unrelated titles -- Off-Road and Double Dragon didn't need any more page space to assert their self-evident virtues, their presence more a reminder If You Don't Have These Carts Yet, You Should Remember To Do So. The other games I can't speak much to, but suffice it to say they were no Battletoads.

"Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers", Nintendo 64, 1999.

I've got to bring this one to the front of the stack as I've just discovered that the key players of ICOM Simulations, authors of the original Shadowgate Mac-Venture, have bought back the rights to their IP and are preparing to re-launch this particular property. (iPad ports of their FMV triumph the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective conversion are already for sale!)

Counter to some recent game ads profiled, the problem here is not an inadequate supply of screen shots. Indeed, they are just about all we have to go on, along with a baffling array of company names and logos, the game's name and a helpful indicator that its release will not be elapsing two thousand years prior to the birth of Christ. Unless your game is Myst, screen shots alone shouldn't sell it. (And if it is Myst, your customers deserve the game that they get.)
I was always surprised to find that Shadowgate had sequels (vs. their explicit Deja Vu 2), but other than a bit of character name continuity they don't seem to have as much in common as, say, Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. do. Just a fading license trading off the name recognition of its onetime success. All the same I like to see the old names re-emerging from the woodwork (hi there!) and wish them better success with it this time around.

"Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis", 1991.

A curious time-bending document of a license's gap-leaping journey across media, from film to game to comic book.

The Adventures of the Indiana Jones we met in the three block buster films "Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," and "Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade" continue in a special Dark Horse collection!

INDIANA JONES
AND THE
FATE OF ATLANTIS

Travel to the four corners of the earth in this globe-spanning adventure written by Dan Barry, from a story by Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein, Lucasfilm Games.

I'll skip lightly over the larger questions (how do you hammer out one master narrative out of an interactive work with non-sequential and mutually-exclusive possible outcomes? Well, a choose-your-own-adventure comic would be one potential option, but that's grist for my other blog 8) and ask are the writers such a selling point? Who are the artists? Here, I'll write a new ad blurb that gets to the heart of what the consumers will care about:

"Hey, Dark Horse peeps -- We were granted use to the cool Indiana Jones license. As you can see from our art, which we decided to blow up to full-page size and not just quarter-page, Indy looks like Indy, so you know our anonymous artist is competent. Also, did we mention that this is a commercial tie-in to a game by the same name which you can buy in stores? Isn't that cool?"

This game* has many great elements (perhaps its greatest in my estimation its interactive introduction), though for my playing enjoyment it also failed on several levels. But even in its failure it was undoubtedly a compelling failure with high production values, successfully evoking a lost and alien civilization. That said, there are probably better games which never got comic book adaptations.

* I need note that in fact there were two games by this name, both released curiously the year after the comic book -- which does provide an answer to some of my earlier hypothetical questions but also opens the door to more of them. Sometimes if you anticipate the product too much with your cross-promotional tie-in, you get left holding the bag if it gets cancelled altogether. Not the case here, but see the earlier discussion of the Alien vs. Predator coin-op. I guess even at the best of times if can be difficult to get even one company to synch to its scheduled plans, let alone two of them. ...

Atari, 1981.

In this ad, I like the way the kids appear more genuinely frightened than anything, as they play Asteroids on the small screen while it plays out writ large on the side. (Was the Atari logo on the ship really necessary? Perhaps it was part of the Atari Force...) I'm also quite jazzed at the level of detail used in the depiction of the console itself. In the opening panel, is the alien zapping the cannon or vice versa? The white shots appear to be raining down, but the cannon definitely appears to be being fried -- or perhaps that's just what it looks like while discharging its payload? I suppose the former interpretation would make more sense given the ominous tone of the opening panel.

NOTHING CAN SAVE YOU FROM... ATARI. THE MOST EXCITING GAMES IN THE GALAXY.

ASTEROIDS
MISSILE COMMAND
VIDEO PINBALL
PLUS...
WARLORDS
OTHELLO
BREAKOUT
PELE'S SOCCER
ADVENTURE
SUPERMAN
MAZE CRAZE
AIR-SEA BATTLE
AND MORE!!!

Tone it down, guys, and whatever you do, don't get carried away and lose your cool with the use of an exclamation point in describing your awesome and, well, EXCITING product... well, they manage to maintain their composure until the very end of the game list. Atari had many great games but it's conspicuous that the lead-in game (and the only big-panel game not explicitly named) appears to be a creative interpretation of Taito's mega-hit Space Invaders -- a game available for Atari machines (among others) but not one of their in-house productions. (Wikipedia notes: "The 1980 Atari 2600 version quadrupled the system's sales and became the first 'killer app' for video game consoles.")

Speaking of which... note in the small print:

OTHELLO is a registered trademark of CBS, Inc. for its strategy disc game and equipment.

Vs. the generic no-name brand Reversi? Guess that Shakespeare's lawyers were asleep on the job. Hard to imagine that Reversi was the Carcassonne of its day. (The incredible ripples caused by the splash of Reversi continued to bounce around until at least 1993 and its minigame in the smash hit the 7th Guest as well as the weird Infection / Ataxx / Cool Spot implementations around then. But... I'm digressing!)

"Kya: Dark Lineage", PlayStation 2, 2003.

The game might be fun (I played it and found some pleasant surprises, a rarity in the played-out 3D action-adventure genre), but the marketers are acting as though they didn't have much to work with.  Admittedly the visual design suggests a philosophy devoid of nuances and grey areas.

A whole LOTTA HURT
in a BELLY SHIRT

Fight evil creatures
Master magical powers
Soar to new heights

So, to reiterate:

* As you can see, like Tomb Raider, our game also features an attractive (well, bizarrely elongated) female protagonist whose underaged midriff you can enjoy watching for the entirety of the game.
* Unlike other games, where innocents are indiscriminately brutalized for amoral pleasure, we testify that there is a rigorous ethical framework rationalising the use of violence in our game.
* Our protagonist will be demonstrating some extraordinary talents in an escapist fashion.
* One of these talents includes use of the z-axis in our simulated 3-dimensional space.

"Zone of the Enders", PlayStation 2, 2001.

And now, an ad for a game whose most critical sales point was the fact that it came bundled with a demo for the latest member of a far more popular and hotly-anticipated series.

with ultimate power
comes ultimate consequences

TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ACTION
METAL GEAR SOLID 2
SONS OF LIBERTY
TRIAL EDITION
PLAYABLE DEMO INCLUDED

"Certainly one of the most exciting games we've ever seen, and it plays like an absolute dream."
Official PlayStation magazine
Control system is intuitive and easy to use in a 3D environment
Your decisions during combat affect the outcome of the story
Versus Mode for heated, 2-player battles

The controls of a fully-armed, giant, mechanized, prototype robot are in your hands. So is the fate of your entire space colony. Life and death decisions aren't easy -- but when the time comes, you'll know what to do.

Immersive story follows characters as they examine the meaning of life and death.
Computer AI reacts to and learns from your actions, helping you minimise civilian casualties.
Combat system allows both close-quarter weapon attacks and long-range laser attacks.
Fast-paced battle sequences with multiple enemies in full 3D environments.
Missions change when re-played.

The game's headline seems derivative of Spider-Man's core axiom ("with great power comes great responsibility", which is appropriate for an ad running in a comic book. If you want to connect with them, you need to understand how they talk!
Personally, I've heard enough about the 3D environments -- presumably this was to distinguish the game from other launch games which, while technically in 3D, may not have done much with the perspective?
I was never able to pass the first boss, but maybe that last point ("missions change when re-played") should have inspired me to try again. That means I don't have much from personal experience to report regarding this title, but I can tell you now that I will buy any game that successfully delivers on this game's promise of Immersive story follows characters as they examine the meaning of life and death.

"Buck Rogers XXVc: Countdown to Doomsday", 1990.

My understanding is that this is a relic from a dark time in the RPG business, when a tiny seed of uncertain rot planted at the very founding of TSR, before anyone thought D&D had any commercial promise, germinated into a full-blown attempt by a hostile outside interest (in this case, the estate of the creator of Buck Rogers or "The Dille Family Trust") to refigure the thriving business into a house organ for an unrelated and somewhat basically incompatible outside intellectual property... or at least to divert and misallocate funds from the business to the estate until the business was spent, exhausted and deflated. Quick, while Gygax is distracted in Hollywood making Saturday morning cartoons!

Spectacular Inter-Galactic Battles

Blast into the future for hours of adventure.

Join Buck Rogers and the New Earth Organization in the exciting 25th Century, and play the BUCK ROGERS XXVc Role-Playing Game and Countdown To Doomsday, the new computer role-playing game.
The XXVc role-playing game is packed with adventure, fantastic civilizations, genetically-engineered races, and future-science technology. This game contains action-packed adventures sure to thrill science-fiction fans and game players alike.
The computer game thrusts you into a race to save humanity from the enemies of the inner planets. Players must follow clues across the solar system, through the space ways, and to the surfaces of Mars, Venus, and the orbiting satellites of Mercury to discover the awesome DOOMSDAY Device.
Earth's future is in your hands! Look for these games at book, computer, hobby and comic stores everywhere.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I suspect that any product sold at book, computer, hobby AND comic stores is unlikely to satisfy any of their regular patrons.
You can't see it here (an absence of screenshots always a conspicuous omission), but playing the Buck Rogers CRPG on SSI's venerable Gold Box engine was a really jarring experience: some might disagree (eg. Bioware, Raven) but you can't just re-skin a fantasy game engine as sci-fi (or vice versa) without knocking some people for a loop. The engine was getting long in the tooth by this point (it had been quite some time since it launched with Pool of Radiance) but by all accounts this fundamentally misguided product was nonetheless a solid, workmanlike effort.