"Nemesis", Game Boy, 1990.

Konami, who do you think you are fooling? We know this is you, not "Ultra", and that the game's Gradius, not "Nemesis". Try harder!

The power to stop the reign.

You're about to strafe the stratosphere, obsessed with ending the long bloody reign of King Nemesis. Suddenly, that heap of rancid royalty's horde of henchmen swoops down out of a nebula, spraying you with lethal molecular bursts. You grit your teeth, clench the controls of your pressure-cooking starfighter, the Proteus 911, and power up its arsenal of land-blasting lasers and dual devices of destruction.

But wait! A barrage of enertron bullets streaks toward you. With lightning reflexes you fire your mauling missiles as you're hurled into yet another level of terror. Your last hope is to double your firepower and create a duplicate starfighter with the ship-cloning option. What will be your fate?

Bonus levels... or oblivion?

The headline is a little off -- this is ad copy that tries too hard, following strict guidelines on how many words they can go in a row without conceding to alliteration or heinous non-words for SF flavour. "[T]hat heap of rancid royalty's horde of henchmen": not the most elegant phrase. They suddenly swoop... out of a nebula? Just how fast are we traveling here? Their lethal bursts are ... molecular. My starfighter... is pressure-cooking. Then two sick alliterations in a row and a new paragraph discussing "enertron". None of this breathless flavour is contained in the game itself, much to its benefit.

The ad artwork is awesome, perhaps because in a Game Boy context the art has to be awesome, because the visuals the game itself delivers aren't going to be. Say what you will, up against such an array of badnasties (flying space skulls? siiiick!), I'd want my (apparently atomic?) defense to be something a bit beefier than the Zilog-80-powered original pea-soup Game Boy. Maybe a Wonderswan or Lynx?

The box art in the ad perplexes me somewhat also; I gather that the action is taking place occluded behind the dark side of the nearest of three gas giants. (But how is it the same side of the other two planets is lit? Is the star light source between them?)

And that's all my half-baked analysis for today! Not much deep insight, but at least you get some fanciful eye candy!

"ZPC", 1996.

To some people it ruins their suspension of disbelief when their video game protagonists respawn, but you can neatly sidestep that thorny issue by making your first-person shooter's hero Jesus Christ.

VENGEANCE IS HIS
  NO FLESH SHALL BE SPARED

-MARK 13:20

... all as rendered by the illustrator from KMFDM. Why? Because it's the '90s, that's why. Don't worry, the Bible verse checks out -- though admittedly you don't need to look for too long in that particular set of scriptures to find something appropriately apocalyptic and foreboding.

(I was going to say something about given its perplexing mash-up of theme and genre, "at least it wasn't Halo" -- a game with an explicitly religious name! Then I noticed the Bungie logo on the bottom of this ad... what's the connection? This game licensed the engine from Bungie's Marathon 2.

Ah yes, and the name: an acronym for "Zero Population Count", retooled from "Zero Population Growth" after butting heads with an existing organization with that exact name. (I suppose if the Messiah neither reproduces nor stays down for the count, that's what you get.) This concludes today's archaeological dig. Amen.

"Heart of Darkness" sampler, 1996.

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

No, I won't transcribe the text. I guess this is what happens when your game's entire budget is blown on development and you have absolutely nothing left to cover promotional expenses.

It's such an ignominious way to go down. Eric Chahi, game design superstar, riding the high from his virtuous graphics and animations in Delphi's adventure game Future Wars, goes on to singlehandedly build the unprecedentedly cinematic Out Of This World. His genius is aped by his former employer Delphine with Flashback and Fade to Black and by Delphine's North American publisher with Heart of the Alien, but his next project following his mangum opus is this schizoid platform epic of a boy and his dog, unclear if it wants to play up the innocent boy genius angle (whose ship is a dead-on copy of Commander Keen's Bean-With-Bacon Megarocket) or the gritty '90s moodiness that pervaded that angsty decade.

One thing that's guaranteed to terminate a gloomy atmosphere with extreme prejudice, however, is having to redeem two Gummi Savers wrappers. Yes, Pixar won a Gold Clio award in 1993 for its advertisement for the wobbly chewy candy rings, but they're neon, not nihilist. There is no "dark" gummy saver. (The "Darth Vader" M&M doesn't even come close.)

Chahi is still in the game, even if this particular development studio didn't survive the protracted development hell, and you can check out his 2011 god game From Dust... and see which candy manufacturer sponsored it!

"Young Merlin", SNES, 1993.

Kids these days think they invented graffiti? Here's someone kickin' it oldschool style -- roughly hewn from the living stone!

We don't need twee rhymes and alliteration to pander to your minuscule attention span! No catchy slogans! Instead, we will just sway you with the sheer epic, uh, epic-ness of it all. Look upon my brand, ye mighty, and weep! Westwood Studios was known for lush production values and those took them far to differentiate them from competitors. FTL's Dungeon Master solidified its genre but you could have bowled me over with a feather the first time I saw and heard the intro to Eye of the Beholder -- a feeling only extended in their own Lands of Lore. Maybe there were one or two RTS games before Westwood's Dune 2, but looking and sounding as good as it did, it made the argument far more compellingly. If it hadn't looked or sounded as good as it did, the Legend of Kyrandia would have been a sub-Roberta Williams graphical adventure game, full of an unlikeable combination of randomness, arbitrariness and walking dead-ness. Instead it's a fond memory of a likeable but flawed attempt -- likeable enough to parlay out into a trilogy!

Most of their success was on home computers. They did branch out, occasionally, to home consoles as they do here (and on their heartbreaking final title, where you can practically count EA's tread marks on their face), but the results weren't always, to paraphrase another company's name, PF Magic. Still, better an interesting failure than a boring success, and if you end up with a zero-for-two boring failure it can at least be a handsome one. Sometimes it can almost fool you. (And rest assured be failure here I just mean "fails to distinguish itself and rise above the competition" -- it's not a fatally flawed work, the SNES just had a large library.)

"The Neverhood", 1996.

This one is obviously a must-play, albeit a must-get-around-to-playing-someday, as its release date hit somewhat of a gutter in my gaming life; sometimes you have the free time but you don't have the hardware needed to play the new games, other times you have the hardware but no time. Then of course there are the moments where you have free time and beefy hardware but no money in your games budget. Wait too long for that account to fill and the software becomes commercially unavailable, and then technology advances and the software actually becomes inaccessible completely. I hear that support for this lovely clay-filled game is gradually staggering forward in SCUMMVM... so someday I may again be in a position to experience this unique (well, it spun off a series, but all quite different) and idiosyncratic title! At that time I will have to make time for it, as it doesn't seem like much innovation has since been done in its field of gumbymated game aesthetics. (In a sense, it seems a precursor to Amanita Design's organic textured exploration games, but that may not be a fair comparison.)

You're fighting to protect good and
restore the Rightful king to power.

The bad news is you're the guy on the right.

"Clever, an utterly different vision and experience from all the lookalike games..." - NEWSDAY

The good news is you're a lot smarter than the guy on the left. Good thing, considering you'll have to solve more than 60 puzzles in order to succeed in the twisted, clay-animated world of Neverhood. You'll help Klaymen avoid pitfalls, collect clues, and kick a little clay butt. All to defeat the evil Klogg and bring the Neverhood back to normal. At least, as normal as it ever gets. [www.DreamWorksGames.com]

"Embark on a clay adventure that breaks the mold."

I hear that Doug TenNapel played a key role in this game's unique visual design. I first heard his name as a sound effect in an issue of Scud: The Disposable Assassin (game ads pending, stay tuned!) and of course he made quite a splash inventing Earthworm Jim also (ditto). Of course, he's just one man on a team here (what would one man do with 3.5 tons of clay?) so his singular influence perhaps shouldn't be overstated, but I'm unfamiliar with any of the other big names on its roster.

I'm just thinking out loud here since the ad doesn't actually give me that much to dissect and analyse here: 60 puzzles, eh? That would add up to ... a very brief Sierra adventure game. Though the intent of the phrase is understood, Kicking a little clay butt will never mean anything to me other than kicking a small posterior formed of clay. Klaymen is a better invented name than Klogg. "Neverhood" itself is a brilliant '90s empty signifier, a contemporary (down to the same year!) of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, a suitable legacy for a decade that kicked off in '91 with Nirvana's Nevermind.

I could go on, but... why not just enjoy the brilliant ad art, celebrating its flawed artifice and physicality of fingerprints like Brechtian theatre apparatus? Making this game using 3D software to simulate clay would just be somehow a species of surrender. Certainly you can make it better, but you can't improve on it.

Chequemate C-3D Imaging System, 1997.

Was is das, a piece of video game equipment I don't know about? Or, hm, an elaborate scam to defraud investors?

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD JUST WET HER PANTS.

Don't laugh. You just might wet yours when you see the in-your-face 3D effects the Chequemate C-3D Imaging System adds to your video games. Connect C-3D to your TV and game system, and BAM! -- images explode out of the screen while awesome visual depth sucks you right into the game's environment. Best of all, C-3D works on any video signal from any source -- so if you can see it on TV, you can see it in 3D. Think you're ready for something this wild? Call 1-800-889-9791 for the C-3D dealer nearest you. And tell 'em the big bad wolf sent you.

I always do a quick keyword search before transcribing these things to save myself the effort if someone's already done so. I can safely report that nothing remotely related to this product comes up when you search "red riding hood just wet her pants".

It's a curious story: buy a company with an intriguing product, hire someone to improve on the product, build stock value, fail to manufacture improved product, announce fictitious business deals, sell your stocks, be exposed as fraudulent, close the company... then self-publish a book celebrating your shrewd business acumen. But it makes you wonder at what point the plan shifted -- whether there was ever any intention of implementing the improved design, or if calling up the number would have revealed any dealers of the product nearby. It's a strangely elaborate set-up for a scam, or perhaps the scam was just a Plan B?Is this an ad whose purpose is not actually to sell product, but just to give the impression of being a viable company?

Utah always has an interesting tech culture -- remember WordPerfect? (I'm tickled to hear that one of WP's main beneficiaries is spending his fortune opposing gay marriage in California, while his business partner is spending his supporting it.) I have a hard time however reconciling my conception of techie Mormons with the panty-soiling ad copy.

I'm puzzled by the company's use of the very British spelling "cheque", especially when logos depict a chess piece. Spelling of the position that way does happen on Google, but it is in a steep minority. Also a kick, the premature Emeril-ization of the ad -- BAM! 3D visuals kick gameplay up a notch. And I suppose if you can't think of a better adjective to describe visual depth, "awesome" will do -- like the Grand Canyon! ("Profound" would be bit unusually philosophical for ad copy.)

"Burger Time", 1982.

Here's some iconic game ad artwork, illustrating a high-concept game of the old school.

Burger Time
HOME VIDEO GAME
COMING SOON

A feast of an arcade game to go! For your Intellivision, Atari 2600, Apple II, or the IBM Personal Computer.

On casual scrutiny, the ad bears some similarity to Bump 'n' Jump's -- both games by Data East licensed to the Mattel Intellivision. The odd logos on top underline the connection. So much condiment-squirting!

"Graphics vary by system." What gets me is that I can't imagine that on any system the graphics looked as bad as the drawn screenshot presented!

I know of this game well, but never clocked much time against it, as I felt it lacked a certain purity, epitomized by the limited pepper use. Either this is a game about strategically sandwiching your enemies beneath burger-trimming platforms, or it is an action game wherein you zap evil sausages and eggs. In a sense it wanted to be both, but the split in focus irritated my immature brain, not wanting to have to play both games simultaneously. The restricted quantities of pepper telegraph Data East's lack of faith in the action game here, like they wanted to try multiplexing genres but couldn't commit to the second.

Of course, I always resented games with respawning bad guys anyhow. Lode Runner and Pac-Man were suspect, while Asteroids and Space Invaders could be counted on. This was part of why the persistent enemy bodies in Golden Axe were so reassuring: these opponents were down and you could keep your eye on their defeated bodies to make sure that they stayed down!

This may well tell you more about my psychology than about the game.