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 the sound isn’t that good, making it hard for viewers to learn the lyrics of the commercial’s theme song for kicks.

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Blast from the past: Pac-Man cereal commercial

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Old school video game commercials

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.

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Good Atari commercials of the 80s #2

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 have a friend whose father plays a lot of Wii and Playstation games. Give him an Atari and he’d probably puke. The second commercial, on the other hand, is totally spaced out.

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Good Atari commercials of the 80s #1

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 missed. Here’s the first one I feasted my eyes on:

Wonderful! Street Fighter and Mega Man commercials. Can’t get enough of those.

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Video game commercials of the 80s and 90s

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 animé and manga titles. Super Robot Wars is made even more exciting by the fact that the battle simulation between the robots is supported by the melding of storylines from the different animé series, including characters and backgrounds.

What’s even more amazing is the mix and match of the robots found in almost all titles under the series or franchise. In what other game can you play old school robots like Mazinger Z, Getter, and Daimos, and make them go head-to-head against today’s generation of robots, such as Evangelion and Gundam?

Well, enough of my prattle. Sit back and enjoy this video on Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, which features some of animédom’s most famous and beloved robots:

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Super Robot Wars: The old versus the new

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 are true classics that have spawned dozens of video game titles across several platforms in the last three decades.

In this, my first commercial break post, I give tribute to the opening themes of several 1970s-1980s Japanese animés, including my personal favorites Voltes V, Mazinger Z, and Daimos. Listen to the music very well and check out how they jibe with the animation. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the opening themes of these classic animé over the opening themes of today’s generation of cartoons any day.

Voltes V

Mazinger Z

Great Mazinger Z

Daimos

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Old animé shows’ opening themes inspire

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) old Kiev camera.

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Blast from the past: Your first camera-phone

And speaking of the eighties…

Yes, it’s a great game. What else do we know about it? Well, it seems to be about a green demon running away from a metallic claw under the earth. You play the demon. Or possibly the claw, it’s difficult to tell. There’s a very tiny screenshot at the bottom which seems to show some kind of building with long snaking genitals attempting to probe the earth as part of some sickening sexual deviancy – which reminds me, did you know I passed up the chance to go to a fetish party so I could come home and write this? There would have been people in rubber there doing all sorts! Although they would all have been about forty and not very attractive, and I’m too polite to stare anyway so I’d just have been sipping a vodka and coke and affecting an air of nonchalance that would serve only to hide my raging desire to ask someone where they got that piercing and how much it cost.

I’ve drifted off topic somewhat.

This is a particularly bizarre advert as it tells me nothing whatsoever about Oil’s Well (ha ha! Do you see?) apart from that it’s allegedly a ‘great game’. That’s not even an attributed quote. What is the source? Was it somebody overheard in the street? Is it even Oil’s Well they’re talking about? “Yeah, Pacman… it’s a great game.” “That’s the quote I need!”

You’d think the advert would at least tell you what the game had to do with oil. It seems to be a fairly incidental background feature from what I can see.

Must try harder, Sierra Online. Must try harder.

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Commercial Break Monday Says: It’s Tuesday? Jesus Christ, My Head Feels Like Someone Defecated Into It

Back in the day, this advert said: Notice this bold, tough marine, with his dogtags and combat shirt and like that. He’s a man who’s seen the elephant. He’s known the fury of combat. And he knows that the only game tough enough to win a place in his battle-hardened heart, metaphorically, is Chopper Command. It’s almost as though he’s saying that, if you were to tear the shirt off a real life military conflict, you’d find something very similar to Chopper Command underneath. It’s an old school are-you-man-enough advert that says its piece simply, concisely and, thanks to some well placed inverted commas – grammatically.

In the present day, this advert says: Oh – my – GOD ohmygod ohmygod WHERE did you get that T-SHIRT? It’s so FABULOUS! I’ve got to have one like that. Did you get it on eBay? I wonder if you can get it in black. If it’s in white I need to slim. Oh my god.

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Commercial Break Monday Says: Times Change, And We Change Our T-Shirts With The Times