Gaming Ads: Backfilling #20 (500th Post!)

Vault 1541 launched nearly eight years ago on January 2, 2017. It began as a way to share video game ads scanned from my magazine collection. Over the years I wrote a quick, or sometimes lengthy, overview of each company responsible for the ads in each post. That included more than 230 companies, as well as separate posts for ads of hardware, retailers, and other game-related things that can be found in photo albums on Facebook and Google Photos. All of the working links can be found under the Game Ad Links tab and while there are links on each ads post, Facebook changed something that broke those links and I've only updated some of them. As you can see with a glance at the above tabs, the blog also has coverage of toys and a YouTube channel that I'm not too active on any longer. Surprisingly, I've made it to 500 posts! Not surprisingly, this 500th post is about video game ads... from Sega, of course! If you've read the blog even a little, you've likely noticed my love of Sega that began when I received a Sega Master System for Christmas in 1987. 

There aren't a lot of ads below since I posted so many already. Most of these are from the comic books I've been scouring this year in search of ads that I wasn't able to get from my game magazines. One ad isn't actually for a game though. It's a contest advertisement for Marvel Comics' 1996 Generation X television movie that has a Virtua Fighter arcade cabinet as the grand prize, which is why the ad is from Sega. If you want to learn more about that movie, I scanned an article from TV Guide that you can find in this "X-Men on Television" post. Also, Happy Thanksgiving!

Gaming Ads: Backfilling #19

As I posted yesterday, I'm doing three days of video game ads posts and today's are all for original PlayStation games from Sony Computer Entertainment America, Capcom, Namco, Square Soft, and LucasArts. Something I should mention is that many of the new ads I've got are from comic books and sometimes the quality is lacking even after some editing. Most or all of the games featured in these ads should be well-known to PlayStation fans. Wild Arms might be the only one not everyone is familiar with, while the others are for Final Fantasy VII, Bushido Blade, Twisted Metal 2, Rage Racer, Resident Evil, and Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi.

Gaming Ads: Backfilling #18

In the October 27th blog update I noted that I was nearing the 500th post and I am but I was off on the numbers. I must have been looking at the total post count which includes some drafts. Therefore, this is actually post #498 and I'm going to spread out the ads across three posts for a Thanksgiving week celebration. This will be the smallest post with four games from the early '80s. One ad is for Mario Bros. but it's not from Nintendo, it's an Atari game for the 2600 and 5200. The second ad is for Riddle of the Sphinx from Imagic. This is actually the first and only ad I have thus far from Imagic so it will join the "Publisher Singles" albums and won't get its own blog post. I'll briefly mention it was founded by former Atari and Mattel employees in 1981 and closed in 1986. It released more than 20 games, many of which featured impressive graphics for the time. Lastly, from Parker Brothers are ads for Frogger II: ThreeDeep! and Super Cobra.

Mickey Mouse Game Reviews

The animated short Steamboat Willie debuted on November 18, 1928 and so this day is considered Mickey Mouse's birthday. I scanned a variety of game reviews starring Disney's famous anthropomorphic mouse from issues of GamePro, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), Video Games & Computer Entertainment (VG&CE), and Sega Visions. Mickey has been featured in quite a few games so I opted not to include the "Illusion" series this time around as that would have been another 19 pages. Below you'll find coverage of Mickey's Dangerous Chase, Mickey Mousecapade, The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, Mickey's Challenge, Mickey Mania, and Fantasia. Surprisingly, I only found a single review of Fantasia which comes from Sega Visions, and that magazine's reviews at that time were primarily descriptions with a little opinion at the end. Also, the EGM "Review Crew" for Mickey's Dangerous Chase is the same group of writers I attached to Magical Quest while Mickey Mania is the same as the writers for Mickey's Challenge.

Mickey's Dangerous Chase

Mickey Mousecapade

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

                                                     Mickey's Challenge                    Mickey Mania              

Fantasia

Games That Go Bump in the Night! (Video Games & Computer Entertainment - November 1990)

If the title of this Halloween-themed article from the November 1990 issue of Video Games & Computer Entertainment (VG&CE) sounds familiar, it could be because it's very similar to the GamePro article I posted six years ago: Carts That Go Bump in the Night. GamePro's is a collection of console game reviews whereas this one from VG&CE is an overview of "scary" console and computer games.

Although the cover image features the fictional character Elvira, who is played by actress Cassandra Peterson, she isn't interviewed in the magazine, nor does she provide any insight on the games. She appeared in the computer adventure games Personal Nightmare and its sequel, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and VG&CE included a sidebar about her career that appears across four of the article's pages.

Year 8: October Update

My last update post was in July and not much has changed since then as I still haven't done many videos this year. I actually haven't even played any games since July but I really should. Recently, I flipped through my comic book collection, something I've not looked at in quite some time. I was mostly looking for duplicates and recall what I have, and I did scan some ads from them. I'll have to do another video game ads backfilling post soon, probably for post #500 which I'm very close to. Vault 1541 began as a video game ads project so it's only fitting that I dedicate #500 to that. This blog update is post #497 and I'll have a magazine article scan for #498 this week.

A few months ago Hasbro announced a Transformer based on Knight Rider's K.I.T.T. Being a fan of both Transformers and Knight Rider, which ranks as one of my top five shows from the '80s, I think this is an awesome collaboration. However, the robot is named Agent Knight rather than K.I.T.T. It is set to release on January 10, 2025 for $49.99.

In other cool toy news, LEGO unveiled an X-Men mansion play set this month that releases November 4th for $329.99. Yeah, the price is a bit steep, though not unusual for LEGO toys. Despite the size of the 3,000+ piece set, the rooms in the mansion look rather cramped. Aside from the mansion build, it also includes a sentinel, Magneto, and nine X-Men mini-figures.

As far as video game news, Nintendo didn't announce a Switch 2 yet but it did show off an alarm clock which isn't software, it's an actual clock that is priced at $99.99! Unfortunately, one of the last video game magazines in the U.S. abruptly came to an end as Game Informer closed at the start of August. Last week I received an email from a video game website called SpriteCell that you might enjoy. The person that runs it asked if they could use some of my catalog scans, something the site specializes in. Finally, as I end every October update, here is the classic McDonald's Halloween sign:

Happy Halloween!

-Jonathan

Nintendo Family Computer (Electronic Game Player - July/August 1988)

Earlier this month Nintendo opened a museum in Kyoto that, of course, features the history of the company that began life as a Hanafuda card maker. It has many interactive exhibits and displays the numerous video game hardware that Nintendo has released over the past 4+ decades. To sort of tie into that, I scanned an article from the third issue (July/August 1988) of Electronic Game Player that originally appeared in The Games Machine, a U.K. magazine. It's about Nintendo's Family Computer (Famicom) that was brought to North America as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It's  an interesting read, especially if you aren't familiar with the Famicom as it has some unique differences that set it apart from the NES, namely a microphone in controller two and a disk drive with a built-in modem. I acquired this magazine second-hand and edited the cover image quite a bit to clean it up due its condition so it might not look too good.