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.

Tokyo Game Show 1998 (Next Generation - January 1999)

Here is a look at the Tokyo Game Show 25 years ago while Tokyo Game Show 2023 is currently in progress. The four-page article below is from the January 1999 issue of Next Generation magazine. While it was published in 1999, the show -- which took place twice a year back then -- actually happened in October 1998, a little more than a month before the Dreamcast's launch in Japan. It's no surprise then that Sega had the largest presence at the fall 1998 show and the Dreamcast coverage accounts for half of this article. A few things regarding what's mentioned in the story: Blue Stinger ended up being a dud, Geist Force was canceled, Sega Rally 2 was a hit, and PocketStation never left Japan. I've also included scans of this issue's "Big in Japan" column featuring the first Mario Party, a Goemon game, and an interview about the development of the original Silent Hill game.

The Little Mermaid: Capcom & Sega Games

There is a live-action version of Disney's The Little Mermaid in theaters today so I scanned a few magazine articles from 1991-93 relating to some of the games based on the animated film. I couldn't find as much coverage as I would have liked though there are gaps in my magazine libraries. Perhaps magazines also didn't want to dedicate too much space to four different games based on the same movie. For Capcom's games, I've got reviews from Video Games & Computer Entertainment (April 1991) and GamePro (August 1991) of the Nintendo Entertainment System title, plus a Game Boy game preview from Video Games & Computer Entertainment (January 1993). The only coverage of Sega's Genesis and Game Gear games comes from the February/March and April/May 1991 issues of Sega Visions which is Sega's own magazine. Sega was, of course, promoting its games and the "reviews" don't voice too much opinion other than to say that you should play them. I've not played any of these myself but based on the reviews I get the impression that most are decent, if not too easy for experienced players. The first review fell onto a second page that I edited onto the end of the first page and the page with the Game Boy preview features a preview of Viewpoint for the Neo Geo as well. 

Gaming Holiday Cards

This post is about greeting cards game companies sent to the press, most are from many years ago. Unfortunately, I only have a few so I wasn't sure if I should share them. In fact, I skipped writing a post about them the last two Decembers before finally deciding to post them this year because even if they aren't too interesting where else would anyone really get to see them, you know, on the off chance someone wants to. Back in the early 2000s my employer received many cards but most were eventually thrown in the trash by my co-workers. I was able to hold onto a few and while we're still in business, nobody sends us physical cards these days. Once in a while a company does send a link to a digital card like this year's from Capcom: Happy Holidays featuring Monster Hunter. Not sure how long that link will be active so I grabbed a screenshot which fails to display that the snowflakes are dropping down the screen. Digital cards are easy to share so I expect this one and others are posted to social media for the public as well.

First up is Sammy Studios which has the most boring card because it is just a regular greeting card. It does look nice and at least some folks signed it but an original card with game-related art would have been more fun. 

The second card is from former publisher Southpeak and defunct developer Renegade Kid. While the other cards are probably all from around 2000-03 (none are actually dated), this one is likely from 2010 based on the game being promoted.

Next up is one from Sony Computer Entertainment America with the PlayStation controller button icons representing snowflakes. It's a very shiny card that looks quite nice in person but not too good when scanned. That very blue image is the scan where the gray parts should actually be white and the blue is silver when it's not reflecting other colors. I'm adding a couple photos to try and give a more accurate look at it. I do like the appearance of this card quite a bit but nobody signed it! What's up with that, Sony? 

Last is a long foldout card with four panels on each side.This one isn't gaming specific as it represents the many divisions of George Lucas' companies back whenever this card was made: Lucasfilm Ltd., Lucasfilm Animation Ltd., Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, LucasArts, Lucas Online, and Lucas Licensing. It is signed by six people who I will assume were all public relations representatives at LucasArts. 

Before ending this post I decided to see if any old holiday card links are still active and I found Atlus' 2016 and 2017 digital cards. Both feature a few rotating photos of the Atlus (and Sega in 2017) sales and marketing team. Here are a couple screen grabs of just a single photo from each and, like the Capcom card above, the snow does move if you visit the links.

Ghouls 'n Ghosts 'n Goblins

That title surely indicates this is a Halloween post, doesn't it?! Well, neither of Capcom's Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Ghosts 'n Goblins are associated with Halloween but I chose to post them this week since the titles certainly fit the holiday themes. Ghosts 'n Goblins (1985) is the first in the series with Ghouls 'n Ghosts (1988) being the second. However, I had to swap the order in the post title to make it flow nicely, and I must say it's a great title. The games are side-scrolling platformers where players control a knight named Arthur who is on a quest to save a princess from the Demon Realm.

I've only played Ghouls 'n Ghosts myself which I once owned for the the Sega Genesis. It was a launch title and a good one, though also very challenging. One of the more amusing aspects is that Arthur can temporarily be turned into an old man and even a chicken! Unfortunately, it was one of the games I traded in to buy Lunar: The Silver Star (Sega CD) but if I still owned it I would have done a Let's Play video. Instead I've got a variety of magazine scans regarding both games, as well as Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

Ghosts 'n Goblins
Being an older title the coverage for this one was lacking as most of my magazines begin in the late '80s. Fortunately, GamePro and Game Informer both highlighted the Nintendo Entertainment System version in throwback columns.

GamePro - October 1990

Game Informer - Sept/Oct 1993

Ghouls 'n Ghosts
The scans for Ghouls 'n Ghosts include a Sega Master system review from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) and a Sega Genesis review from Video Games & Computer Entertainment (VG&CE). There are also strategies for the Sega Genesis version from EGM and Game Player's. EGM's was split between two issues and while the first one says continued in the next issue I am missing that one so I don't know if I'm missing a part. It may have been delayed since my second part does pick up correctly I think. Also, Blogger is being a pain when aligning images with captions so I'm going to skip using them on the EGM strategies (first two are from issue #4 and the other two are from issue #6).

EGM #18

VG&CE - January 1990

Game Player's - February 1990

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts

Last up are reviews of the Ghouls 'n Ghosts sequel for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System from GamePro and VG&CE. GamePro calls it Ghouls 'n Ghosts but it is in fact Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts. 

GamePro - October 1991

VG&CE - January 1992 

Gaming Ads: Dreamcast

This is a special edition of the typical Saturday magazine ad scans post. If you've not visited the blog before, normally I post ads from 1999 and earlier that are sorted by publisher (albums were originally on Flickr but are now on Facebook). Since the Dreamcast released near the end of 1999 I set any I had come across during my years of scanning aside. Being a Sega fan I knew I'd be doing something for the Dreamcast eventually and the 20th anniversary of the U.S. release is the perfect time for that. I only had a few ads ready up until the end of July when I began going through the Official Dreamcast Magazine and any other video game magazines I have from 2000-2002. This turned into a much larger undertaking than I had expected and took almost all of my free time from the past six weeks to complete.

Part of the problem was the Dreamcast magazine is too large for my scanner so I used a photo copier at work. Scanning only took maybe 10 minutes per issue but I realized later I should have been pushing down on the spine much harder though I really couldn't go back and re-scan them. Many of the ads are two pages and the copier caused some bright vertical lines on each side of the spine which led to a lot of time spent editing.

As always, below is only a sampling of the ads with the rest reachable through the link at the bottom. By the way, this is big one as there are more than 240 ads! Surprisingly, there are no hardware ads showing the console. The only non-game ads from Sega are the "9-9-99" ads before the Dreamcast launched. I guess it didn't advertise the actual console or accessories in print, just the games. Also, the ads on Facebook are arranged by publisher first and then game title, and the few third-party hardware and miscellaneous ads are at the end of the album.

Dreamcast albums: Facebook - Google Photos