Joust Feels Inadequate About Graphics, Destroys Young Man's Room in Rage
Generally speaking, Atari was very self conscious of the graphic capabilities of the original 2600. Most games would have extremely fanciful cartridge art, page ads and comic book inserts to gussy up the fact the characters were made up of about five pixels. Occasionally this would lead them to create ads that were so fanciful that you had to wonder what game they were actually trying to advertise. Like this one ad for Joust:
Seriously, what the hell is up with that? Is this ad trying to tell me that is I play Joust, then ostrich knights will break through my floor and fight to the death? Also, that if I swallow an ostrich egg laid by said ostrich knight's mount, then I myself will turn into an ostrich? Frankly, I don't know why I would eat an ostrich egg, but the guy in the ad apparently thought it was a good idea.
In any case, I was under the impression that the entirety of Atari advertising was based around this idea that the graphics weren't good enough to sell themselves. Then I saw this ad, which apparently ran in theaters back in the day:
Can you seriously imagine going to a movie and seeing the fly from Yar's Revenge up on the big screen, in all of its low res glory? Now that I think about it, it would be positively epic to rent out a theater just to to play four-player Warlords on a movie screen. Somebody should get on this, right now.
Joust video found via 1up Retro Gaming Blog
Yar's Revenge ad via Offworld
Click to viewSeriously, what the hell is up with that? Is this ad trying to tell me that is I play Joust, then ostrich knights will break through my floor and fight to the death? Also, that if I swallow an ostrich egg laid by said ostrich knight's mount, then I myself will turn into an ostrich? Frankly, I don't know why I would eat an ostrich egg, but the guy in the ad apparently thought it was a good idea.
In any case, I was under the impression that the entirety of Atari advertising was based around this idea that the graphics weren't good enough to sell themselves. Then I saw this ad, which apparently ran in theaters back in the day:
Can you seriously imagine going to a movie and seeing the fly from Yar's Revenge up on the big screen, in all of its low res glory? Now that I think about it, it would be positively epic to rent out a theater just to to play four-player Warlords on a movie screen. Somebody should get on this, right now.
Joust video found via 1up Retro Gaming Blog
Yar's Revenge ad via Offworld