In August, I posted my very first Blast from the past story that featured Pac-Man in a very memorable television commercial for 7-Up. What made the video, and thus the commercial, more memorable was the fact that I had the opportunity to watch it ad nauseum on television when I was a kid.
Recently, I came across another video of a television commercial featuring Pac-Man but for a different product: cereals. I never knew Pac-Man had his own cereal line. Cap’n Crunch, sure. But Pac-Man?

Good thing someone preserved it and enshrined the video on the Internet. It’s quite unfortunate, though, that …read more

Here’s yet another collection of old video game and video-game related commercials, and I’ve got to tell you, some of them are really old. It’s a bit disconcerting to watch since it’s really just a mash up with no theme in mind. It does, however, bring back fond memories, especially if you grew up with the featured games.

I know, I know. Video game crash or no video game crash, Atari was the best in the biz back in the heyday, and the commercials they put out for their consoles and games were just that, great.
Here’s another blast from the past from Atari:

What makes this commercial doubly great is the fact that it stars the late Will Lee, Mister Hooper of Sesame Street fame. If you’re not a child of the 80s, you probably won’t understand the significance. Check out this link if you want to know.

Here I go again looking for video game commercials (or commercials that have something to do with video games and their consoles). Forgive me … it’s just something that I didn’t see often when I was younger. Sure, there were a lot of commercials on toys, particularly toys of the 80s like He-Man and Micro Machines, but not much about video games.
So what commercials have I got up my sleeves? Well, as the title implies, they’re good Atari commercials, good enough for a few laughs. Here, take a gander:

The humor of the first commercial is very apparent, but unrealistic. I …read more

Sigh. This is something we never had in this little tropical archipelago when every member of my generation was still young.
Oh, sure, we had tons of toy commercials, especially during those weekend cartoon marathons common in the 1980s to early 1990s. But, no, we didn’t have video game commercials—at least, I don’t remember watching them on television. Good thing we had that 7-Up Pac-Man commercial … you know, the one with the theme song derived from Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis’ Eyes.
So it’s only natural for me to surf the web for those old video game commercials … everything that I’ve …read more

While we are on the subject, I just want to express my appreciation for Japanese animé and how it has transformed fighting games from the usual two-dimensional side-scrollers to dynamic works of art.
I think the very pinnacle (at least for the moment) of this new age wonder is the Super Robot Wars, a series of tactical role-playing video games produced by the Japanese gaming company Banpresto, a division of Bandai, for various video game consoles and video game handheld consoles.
From the title alone, you should be able to guess what the game features: giant robots or mecha from multiple Japanese …read more

Yeah, I grew up with them, loved them, and suddenly found myself alone without them after the Philippine government of then president Ferdinand Marcos banned local stations from airing them purportedly because it got in the way of children’s studies.
Now what does this have to do with Re:Retro? Well, I’m currently away from home and don’t have my trusty (and rusty) ol’ consoles to give me enough play time to write an effective story. So I’ll settle on putting out a “commercial break”-type post. This blog is, after all, about classic and retro gaming, and these old animés from Japan …read more

I know, I know, this post has nothing to do with retro-gaming. It could, if we consider the gaming applications on the mobile phone. I just thought I’d share this photograph with you for a few laughs and maybe some quirky remarks. I’ll be back in a day or two to share more retro-gaming goodies.

What to do if you don’t have dough to purchase that latest mobile phone with a built-in camera? Why, make one, of course. Thanks for good friend Pochi Limpin for the photograph, and the kicks. I think the ol’ Nokie 5110 goes well with the (really) …read more

Yes, unfortunately instead of writing this blog on Monday night I spent my time re-enacting a particularly salacious episode of Hollyoaks. Luckily the communal hangover seems to have erased any bad feeling but it’s increased my determination to move into my own space ASAP in order to start living in a more sedate TV show, like Star Cops. All I’d have to do would be to gyrate around in my chair as I write this in order to pretend that I’m in an incredibly low-budget eighties version of zero gravity.
And speaking of the eighties…

It’s Monday, and there’s another commercial break from the old school waiting in the wings – this one carrying two very different messages in the worlds of yesterday and today…