90s and 00s era were pretty wild with advertising.
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The second best thing to do in the dark.
Seriously though, the SP was a life changing device for me.
I still have mine in it's protective case that I play at least once a year. I'm nearly 40.
I will just leave this here. NSFW!
Lady, maybe it's best that Patrick Bateman over there is busy with his NeoGeo. You have no idea!
Pray tell, what are 4 dimensional graphics?
I remember this ad in one the computer magazines I had as a teenager. Don't ask me why I remember it so vividly.
Sex sells, especially to teenage boys. The main demographic for video game ads is teenage boys. Hence the prevalence of ads like these.
Which was a completely arbitrary unforced error from a marketing perspective, setting back acceptance of video gaming as a ubiquitous thing everyone does by decades, pigeonholing them into a thing that only maladjusted angry young men do. You have the asinine marketing choices of the 90s to partially thank for the toxic exclusionary culture that still exists in many games today. They could have had every kid, girl or boy, cool or nerd, playing video games in 1995 but patriarchy said no.
Ironically, it was counter-counter-counter culture, reacting to the vestiges of Reaganite pearl-clutching that still wafted through life and politics of the time. Same influence that inspired "badly behaved" cartoons like The Simpsons and South Park. Video game advertising just leaned into that last counter too hard and landed in misogyny.
You're totally right. The reason it happened was because video game systems were considered "toys" back in the day, and the marketing for toys was generally extremely polarized back then, all part of the social conditioning for patriarchy. Girls got to play with baby dolls, tea sets and toys inspired by domestic labor such as cooking and cleaning, and boys got to play with toys themed around heavy machinery, sports, combat/war and so on, all to prepare, socialize and condition them for the gender roles they were/are expected to perform in society.
Early video games were often sports or combat/war themed, so they became toys for boys, and ended up in a positive feedback loop. I would guess that the reason that sports and war themed video games were developed was because the people in charge of developing the games were also mainly men.
Women were significantly sidelined from computers and technology in most of the world around the time video games were being developed despite being extremely significant in the early history of computers. Whole workforces of women extremely competent with programming were fired and replaced with men who had no idea what they were doing in places, setting technological advancement back significantly.
That hasn’t been true in a while. In fact I would go as far as say as the main demographic for video game ads today is middle-aged moms who played Candy Crush.
Pretty much since the Wii casual gamers have been the bigger market.
Which is probably why gaming ads don't look like gaming ads used to anymore.
Nah, this ad clearly says that girls can play Nintendo DS too! See look at the picture, it says good girls AND bad girls and both of them are holding a Nintendo DS!
Lol, there were seriously no rules.
It was a very different time back in the 90's.
ETA, the other print ad: 
Nintendo ran an ad for the Gameboy Pocket that showed the outline of a Gameboy printing through the back pocket of a pair of jeans with the slogan "KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS."
Sex sells. Video game ads have featured pretty girls since video game ads. You can go back to the late 70's early 80's and find an entire genre of ads that boil down to "pretty girl stands next to arcade cabinet."
But then the entire 90's happened, and there was a huge set of ads that seemed to say "play video games instead of having sex." Which is...weird, right? Almost all products sold to young men are sold on the promise of attracting women. Show man with product, show woman having interest in the man with product, "Product: It Makes You Fuckable.^TM^" Video games postured themselves as something to do instead of your girlfriend or even more interesting than chicks. An ad for a 16-bit console featured a full-page centerfold with a few screenshots of video games scattered around with the slogan "If you look closely, there's a beautiful naked woman on this page."
At least they're not different races with the black one being the bad one this time.
This is gotta be satire, but I can no longer tell..
I can't explain it, but that seductive early '00s look, which Elizabeth Hurley was also known for, got me jimmies when I was young.
Reminds me of the copy "Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn?" from Mad Men S2E6.






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