No way! Is that real?
They also had an animal neglect version, but only the bondage ad was pulled in the UK. Late 90s advertising for games and consoles tried to be as edgy as possible when published in magazines targeted at male demographics.
Wow. I’m a male gamer but I don’t think I’d want to be part of the demographic that ad is meant to appeal to. I wonder how different the history of gaming would be if they’d advertised to women too.
As an Italian, it’s even funnier cause “sega” means handjob
Lol, there were seriously no rules.
It was a very different time back in the 90’s.
ETA, the other print ad:
I’m an asexual prude, but I feel we were really close to a more sex positive queer world in the overculture of the 90s, but the consciousness wasn’t actually there yet to be cool with it
Ss… Step-gamer?
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.
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.
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.
Honestly looking at kids adverts now vs my childhood in the 80s-90s I think toys are more gendered now. More of them and poorer quality. Lego being the prime example, used to be entirely ungendered.
Edit: uk if that makes a difference
Honestly, I think you’re misremembering, which is totally fair tbh, it’s been a while and you were a kid!
Since I’m a loser with nothing better to do on a Saturday, I did a little research by watching LEGO commercials from the 80s and 90s, and there are dozens of depictions of boys playing with LEGO, and the relatively rare depictions of girls playing with them are for sets clearly designed for girls, such as Belville and Paradisa.
If you check out this video from around 2:36 onwards, you can really clearly see the differences in how LEGO was marketed to girls, and to boys.
There’s a whole jingle that went across the decades with the phrase “he’s a lego maniac”, and most LEGO sets fall into traditional “boys toys” categories (trains, police, knights, etc.). Even ads for the generic core sets with just the simple colored blocks depicted boys playing with them.
Interestingly, though, almost all of the Duplo commercials depict both boys and girls playing with the toys together, but even those sets are quite gendered - doll houses for girls, for example.
I don’t think I’ve seen a toy advert for a good 15 years or so, except for the infamous a man has fallen into the river in LEGO city commercial, I honestly have no real idea what they’re like now, but they were very gendered back in the day for sure!
Oh! Well props for looking.
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!
Lmao wtf
I will just leave this here. NSFW!
I remember this ad in one the computer magazines I had as a teenager. Don’t ask me why I remember it so vividly.
Same here, I remember thinking that this is what adult life looks like.
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?
Maybe the game freezes now and then?
Neo Geo owners had the biggest games!
Regarding the fact that these ads promote playing games instead of having sex … umm, that’s basically what happened. Sounds crazy but, ya, young people are having less sex today, and the birth rate has dropped precipitously. You can list a dozen other factors that would impact this as well (economy, education, etc) but access to video games does seem to correlate. Sometimes correlation IS causation.
I don’t think this is true. You can disprove this by comparing the fertility rates to the popularity of gaming in different countries, for example in Sweden birth rates rose considerably between 2000 and 2010 despite gaming being an extremely popular pastime in Sweden.
There are lots of factors involved of course but the largest ones are things like widespread access to birth control, being able to afford to raise a child and feeling like you live in a stable, safe environment to raise a child.
Its immigrants getting lots of kids. Its common with 4-5 kids. I think whats happening is that native swedes are having less children but because of immigration, birth rates go up a lot.
Perhaps its possible to show this using statistics but probably not since they dont separate immigrants in those stats.
Okay? Even if that is true, so what? Do immigrants not play video games? lmao
Just explaining the stats for sweden. Without those, birth rates would be going down a lot.
I decided to investigate your claim because it smelled fishy - and yeah, you’re wrong.
Foreign born women do have slightly higher birth rates than native-born women, but it’s nowhere close to 4-5 kids: between 2000 and 2010, native-born women had, on average, around 1.7 children each, compared to foreign-born women having on average, around 2.1 children each. However, because foreign-born women make up comparatively few of the Swedish population, this effect only increases the average birth rate by around 0.1 child:
Furthermore, to hammer my own point home, income quartile has a much larger effect on birth rates, with the difference between income quartile 1 (0.9 births avg) and income quartile 4 (2.4 births average) having a much stronger effect:
So, yeah, it’s not video games, and it’s not really a migration issue. As I said in my original reply, it’s a lot more to do with financial security and stability.
Good info but sadly I dont trust the official numbers here. As i am sure you know, misleading with statistics is very easy. “Foreign-born” is what they use here, and they dont include people who came earlier, and are now considered Swedish citizens.
But still, good to get the official view! I had no doubt it would not show anything negative.
Misleading with statistics can certainly be done in some contexts, but it’s harder to do that than it is to be wrong with just ‘I have a gut feel bro’. The breakdown by income quartile here is, like, directly the narrative that the stats are intended to support and clearly a larger impact that immigration because… Well… Quartiles are quite big…
they dont include people who came earlier, and are now considered Swedish citizens.
That isn’t true. It’s just mothers who were born in countries other than Sweden. Even if they are now Swedish citizens, they are still considered foreign-born.
Good info but sadly I dont trust the official numbers here.
Yes, I was expecting you to say that. What’s your source, then?
Nintendo, the family friendly company
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.”
90s and 00s era were pretty wild with advertising.
The 32x had some interesting ads:
French ad for the 32x:
The French magazine ads for tech in the 1990s were absolutely wild
SEGA did what Nintendidn’t.
Or, I guess, Sega did what Nintendalsodid.
What Nintendidn’t [yet], because that DS ad is a lot more recent and I don’t remember Nintendo itself having anything quite that risque in the '90s.
This reply is offensive. We both went to all that work and you didn’t even have the decency to say “What Nintendidn’tyetbecausethatDSadisalotmorerecentandidon’trememberNintendoutselfhavinganythingquitethatrisqueinthe’90s.”
There’s no way that’s a real Nintendo ad.
