Nothing was off-limits for retro game ads - eviltoast
  • kromem@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Hahaha, yeah, that one was great.

    Also the one where they paid parents to name their baby ‘Turok.’

    I sometimes wonder what those little Turoks are up to today (at least a half dozen parents took them up on it IIRC).

    The shock advertising campaigns around games really were something. They worked - got a ton of free media coverage. But this was also at the time that video games were the Boogeyman like rock n’ roll had been to a generation before. The media loved nothing more than a “look how terrible video games are” story and PR firms were playing into that environment.

    So campaigns like this were basically the equivalent of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat.

    As games became more normalized, the campaigns shifted accordingly and - like Ozzy - tamed quite a bit out.