Video Game Ads from comic books of the early to mid 80s, Part 2

The second part of our look at some advertisements from the early to mid eighties.

Here Parker Brothers bring foul-mouthed Q*Bert to your Atari. The screenshot alone should be enough to have you rushing down to the shops to buy it.

This is an advertisement for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi tie-in game, Death Star Battle from 1984. A game where you fly the Millennium Falcon through an enemy force-field before taking down the evil Death Star. All in glorious Atari 2600 graphics! Now why doesn't George Lucas go back and tinker with games like these, they were surely not what he envisioned?

Power Lords is a game released in 1983 for the Magnavox Odyssey 2 and announced but never released for the Colecovision. It is based on the toy line and comic book that was around at the time. The toys were generally crap looking and the comic only lasted three issues, so that's why no-one remembers this flop series nowadays. This game is pretty rare I believe, being one of the last games released on the Odyssey.

The sequel to the much loved Pitfall by David Crane arrives for your Atari, Apple, IBM PC and from the Ad above, the mighty C64. Pitfall II Lost Caverns did away with cartoon representation of platforming and instead went with a picture of a man entering a cave. Every young boys dream in the early eighties I'm sure.

Long Ago, In the Distant Future?!? Joust comes to your home Atari systems. The arcade hit is so popular they don't need screenshots to show whats going on, as presumably everybody knows already how to steal giant eggs. For you see as it says... You Don't Play It... You Live It!

The Masters Of The Universe game from Mattel on Intellivision and Atari 2600. The Power of He-Man uses SuperGraphics to bring your battles with Skeletor to life, or as near was possible on the Intellivision anyways. You got a free comic when you bought this too if I remember.

Ghostbusters, the box-office smash hit movie gets converted to home systems by David Crane for Activision. Here we finally get some screen shots of the game in action for the Commodore 64. Brilliant game, brilliant movie, what more could you ask for?

Video Game Ads from comic books of the early to mid 80s, Part 1

I have a large selection of comics going back a number of years, and while thirty years ago kids seemed to be excited by remote control cars, offers of posters of John Travolta, or body building equipment?? Eventually video games start to creep into these pages. So the next number of posts will focus on the ads from the early eighties to the late nineties. It gives me an excuse to use my scanner (yes, it does work) and to look over some classic Swamp Thing and Legion of Super Heroes comics. Aah, the days when Marvel and D.C. didn't need an earth shattering event every six months to screw with continuity and generally mess up their universes.

Atari presents Mario Bros. from 1983. It promises exciting two-player action for your Atari 2600 and 5200 in an arcade port of some sort of plumbing simulator, it'll never catch on.

Wow, Frogger was so popular it had to be released on no less than 8 different systems! The Sega arcade hit from 1983 really could not be avoided (insert traffic reference here). At least they show an actual screenshot from the Atari 5200 version in this ad rather than a sneaky artists impression of what the game kind of looks like that some ads go for. Which of the eight versions is the best? Hell if I know! You wonder why there was a videogame crash!

Here is a spread for Frogger from a year earlier for your Atari Video Computer System. This contains the artists depiction of the game in action. This must have driven Frogger fans into a near frenzy. It's just like the arcade!! Coming Soon! Parker Brothers promised, with little indication that it would spawn (get it?) so many Froggers.

Burger Time was another conversion of an arcade hit, this time by Data East, that would be coming soon to pretty much any system you could possibly have connected to your monitor or TV. It does come with a health warning though, "Graphics vary by system". Why be a knight or a space marine, when you could be a chef flipping burgers?

Look, it's pretty straight forward, you either bump'em or jump'em, there is no third option. Race'em? Don't be stupid, where's the fun in that exactly? Mattel Electronics bring another Data East coin-op to the home with versions for both the Intellivision and the Atari 2600.

Mattel bring Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to your Intellivision. Ignore the archer with the impossibly wide stance trying to down the big green monster and look at that screenshot. Is that a snake? jewel? castle? wolf? Use your imagination... but I don't think the Intellivision control pad has enough buttons to keep up with my imagination!

The sequel to the first AD&D, Treasure of Tarmin would be released by Mattel not long after the first game, which was called Cloudy Mountain apparently. Again for this ad, ignore the archer surrounded by nasties, holding a bow that's taller than he is, and look at that in-game screen. Is that a spider? a Catoblepas? a blue polyhedral dice eating monster? Holy crap it's like Doom with arrows.