Commercial Break Monday Says: I Only Play It For The Articles

What is the most often-used element in any advertisement? Take a look at this vintage ad for Superior Software/Acornsoft’s Barbarian and see if you can guess.

Yes! It’s a comprehensive price guide!

No, it’s sex.

Oddly, this sparked off serious controversy at the time – and not only among my gran, from whom I had to hide the box with the tape in it which had various pictures of Linda Lusardi (I think) in just her pants and a dental floss bikini. I’m not ashamed to say that, while my conscious mind attempted to compose various rational explanations to assure my parents that this wasn’t dirty at all, my lizard hindbrain was REVELLING IN TEH PR0N. I don’t think I ever did spill my seed on any stony ground over the cover to Barbarian, but it would have been a close-run thing. In those pre-internet days, in a household that didn’t get the Sun newspaper or have a hidden stash of Playboy, or late night films on Channel 5, that was probably as close to illicit wank material as I could find. I’m not sure whether or not I was of wanking age at the time, but it certainly made me feel a bit odd in my pants.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, controversy. Just as this was the first time I’d been introduced to Linda Lusardi (I’m fairly sure) in her unmentionables, it was also the first time the world of computer game advertising had been quite so blatant. And they picked a good game to test out the magic selling power of sex – Barbarian was a vaguely rubbish beat-em-up, where two identical Conan-a-likes hacked and chopped at each other with swords for eight levels. It was technically possible to behead the opposing player, but apart from that the game held absolutely no interest for anyone – at had all been done better elsewhere, even on the BBC Micro.

Games were coming out of their wild primordial slime at this point, settling into the recognised categories of this-em-up and that-em-up that we know today. It wasn’t enough simply to exist – a game either had to be the best in its particular field or do something that no other game had done before if it wanted to make a real splash. Barbarian didn’t really have what it took to be top of its field, and aside from a couple of minor details it wasn’t doing anything new… until the game went to the marketing department.

Sales for Barbarian, as I remember, were brisk.

Today, that might seem strange – every second game has a naked woman somewhere in it, never mind the advertising. But this was a time when games were still primarily for kids, advertising was non-sexual and the cover to Barbarian could legitimately become a glimpse into a hidden adult world – a world that, I was mortified to discover, doesn’t really exist.

Well, I’m sure it probably does, but I’d imagine that in order to have the wealth and amorality necessary to sustain it you’d have to be in advertising. So we’re back to irony again.