80's comic ads

Do as the expert gamesman Dave Jackson say and buy the board games based upon Pole Position, Q-Bert and Popeye to improve your strategies! Now you finally will defeat your friends in the arcades!

Parker Brothers released in 1983 this James Bond video game for Atari 2600. Each of the four stages of the game is based upon a Bond movie: Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only and The Spy Who Loved Me.

This is the TV commercial of the game:

Pitfall! was one of the most successful Atari video games of all time (only Pac-Mac sold more copies). This is the ad of its sequel, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, released in 1984. Both games were developed by David Crane and starred by the jungle explorer Pitfall Harry. This game became very popular too.

The original game TV commercial featured a very young Jack Black:

Amidar was a video game developed for arcade by Konami in 1981. This is the 1982 home version ad, released by Parker Brothers. The gameplay is very similar to Pac-Man, alternating stages where the player is a gorilla chased by wild warriors and stages where the player is a paint roller chased by pigs. The name of the game and the structure of the stages are inspired in an oriental kind of lottery called Amidakuji.

If this is not strange enough, have a look at the TV commercial:

In 1982 Parker Brothers released for the Atari 2600 one of the first Spider-Man video games. In the game, Spider-Man is climbing a building defusing the Green Goblin’s bombs and avoiding to get killed by the Goblin’s gangs in the windows. When Spider-Man reaches the top of the building fights against the Green Goblin himself.

Don’t miss the TV commercial with the same script in action:

Despite their short life, the Power Lords toys starred their own video game for ColecoVision in 1983.

The Activision Decathlon is a game released in 1983 for Atari, Commodore 64, MSX and ColecoVision.

This is the TV commercial starred by Bruce Jenner, winner of the Decathlon Gold Medal in Montreal 1976:

After their TV debut in 1987 the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became so popular that in 1989 Konami developed a home video game for Nintendo, an arcade game (also adapted to NES as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II in 1990) and the handheld LCD video game of this ad. The bottom of the page is shared by other games: Double Dribble, Top Gun, Gradius, Skate or Die and Contra.

At the end of the eighties Tiger Electronics expanded their catalog of LCD video games with titles such as Double Dragon, Gauntlet, Simon’s Quest or Jordan vs. Bird.

Double Dragon was a success since its first release in 1987. The game had home versions in several platforms; one of the most strange ones was this four stage handheld released in 1989 by Tiger.