timidfutures - Tumblr blog

[timidfutures]

[timidfutures]

Super Mario All Stars VHS Promo Video - 1993

Imagine going to pick up your pre-order of Super Mario All Stars for the Super Nintendo in 1993 and receiving a bonus VHS containing twenty minutes of Mario celebration along with reviews of  other contemporary SNES games, all hosted by Lister from Red Dwarf. Are you imagining it? This video is simultaneously an awesome pack-in for a video game, a huge bonus value, and a cringeworthy commercial…

[timidfutures]

Commodore Vic 20 Print Ads

Selling a computer in 1982 had to be pretty tough. For one thing, they were super expensive. For another thing, you had (at least) two different types of customers. On one side, there’s a really informed audience that wanted to know what specs your company brought to the table that made you better than the other guys. On the other side, you had an increasingly interested consumer base that knew…

[timidfutures]

Shoot Some Diseases Into The Castle - Game Players Game Tape, Vol 1, Tape 6

The sixth in what must have been an exhaustive series of overpriced VHS tapes designed to milk ’80s gamers out of their hard-earned dollars in exchange for broad suggestions on how to play select games competently, this Game Players Magazine tape actually has some visual merits to it. The frustrating part about the content is that these are games that actually need tips; the video covers Ultra’s…

[timidfutures]

Phil Hartman Sells The CD-i: Friday Followup

Who could be a better pitchman for the CD-i than perhaps the best SNL cast member of all time, Phil Hartman? Whoever wrote these ads really put Phil through the ringer, but he does more in thirty seconds than Sid and Ed did in thirty minutes. It’s also worth noting…

[timidfutures]

1995 Philips CD-i Infomercial: A Pothole On The Information Superhighway

The Philips CD-i was a system slightly ahead of its time. It tried to do it all – play top-of-the-line games, play movies in the best quality available, use all of the CD-ROM resources a PC had at its disposal, and also provide casual internet access in the living room. In the early-to-mid ’90s, a device that could do all of this at a reasonable price was a pipe dream. That’s why this thing…

[timidfutures]

Friday Followup: Gambit (UK)

While the US was Vegas-ing up its Gambit reboot in 1980, our friends across the pond went with a more traditional approach.  The British version of Gambit is as quaint as you’d expect, with a kicky stop-motion intro. The set design trades in the Vegas glitz and glamour for… something resembling a Grateful Dead album cover. -ds  

[timidfutures]

Cash and Prizes: Las Vegas Gambit (1980)

Cash and Prizes: Las Vegas Gambit

Gambit, the blackjack-themed game show, has a sort of complicated history. Originally premiering in 1972, Gambit was an instant success, beating out competing shows Sale of the Century and a pre-Trebek Jeopardy! In 1975, though, a hot new show called Wheel of Fortune came on the scene and pretty much obliterated Gambit in the ratings, leading to its cancellation in 1976. Cut to 1980. Failed…

[timidfutures]

Friday Followup - 1982 Parker Brothers Game Catalog

Here’s Parker Brothers’ 1982 announcement of their entry into the videogame market.  You can tell they’re proud of their Star Wars license, and they should be! Their Empire Strikes Back game was really solid. But outside of four minutes spent on Star Wars and one minute spent on…Frogger… there’s not much else here to announce. It’s…

[timidfutures]

The Gentle Persuaders - Vintage Hair Care Ads

As much as layout and design trends change, beauty care ads are usually consistently crisp across eras.  Case in point: these amazing magazine ads for hair care products, from the 1960s to the 1980s. This gentle 1969 ad for what is no doubt a painfully savage hair dye goes a little out there with the font choice, but stays minimal and lets the eruption of blonde hair do most of the talking.   The…

[timidfutures]

The Hang Glider Corps - Star Wars: Ewok Adventure (Atari 2600)

Focusing on the worst Star Wars characters that side of Jar Jar, Star Wars: Ewok Adventure places the player in the shoes of the warlike teddy-bears who aid the Rebels in their fight against the Empire in the closing third of Return of the Jedi. (image courtesy Atarimania) Or rather, it would have been had it not been cancelled. The controls were allegedly too complex, though it’s hard to see…

[timidfutures]

Friday Followup: A World of Fun and Frolic

We had a lot of fun training up to be 1981 Showbiz employees, but here’s a look at the overseas Showbiz of the 1990s. This Dubai commercial ditches the ragtime feel for a kickin’ techno beat, lots of quick cuts, and a flat-out lie that the Rockafire Explosion are ‘your favorite Disney characters’.  For shame! And how does the…

[timidfutures]

A Most Excellent Cereal

Bill & Ted was the franchise that kept on giving; it spawned not only a theatrical sequel but a pretty good computer game, a mediocre NES game, a short-lived live action series, and a cartoon which then spun off its own cereal. It’s Lucky Charms, but with musical notes as the marshmallows.  And cinnamon.  That sounds pretty great,…

[timidfutures]

You're In Showbiz! - Showbiz Pizza Training Videos

Showbiz Pizza Place was the Pepsi to Chuck E. Cheese’s Coke. The video game pizza parlor  boasted a superior band with the Rockafire Explosion and an inferior everything else. Chuck eventually absorbed Showbiz to create a grand unified theory of mediocre food and semi-operational robotics, but before that happened they were engaged in a brutal war to get you, your family, and your softball…

[timidfutures]

Five Things - 5.29.17 - A Swinging New Way To Spend The Summer

Meet Us In September “Meet Us In September” was the slogan for the ABC Network’s Fall 1969 lineup. These sizzle reels capture all of the programming news of the 1969 season. There’s so much to love about this campaign! The font choice and graphic work is fantastic, both in the overall face of the campaign and the show-specific stuff: Not sure what to make of this Johnny Cash segment.   Here’s a…

[timidfutures]

Five Things - 5.22.17 - Stories For Boys

  It’s About Time (1966) What if you had a silly TV show set in a remote jungle location and you had an idea for a second, unrelated-yet-just-as-silly TV show set in a remote jungle location and you just re-used props and sets from the first silly TV show for the second silly TV show and crossed your fingers that nobody would notice? That’s pretty much Sherwood Schwartz’s approach to It’s About…

[timidfutures]

Five Things - 05.15.17 - Fall Has Come To Millbrook

Nintendo Fun Club features Zelda II, How To Send an Email in 1984, Enchirito: Five Things - 05.15.17 - Fall Has Come To Millbrook

Nintendo Fun Club – April 1988 – Zelda II: The Adventure of Link I played the new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, for about an hour this morning. I didn’t have a ton of time to play, so I didn’t want to get into anything too big. Instead I just collected some food and cooked it, went to a few camps to farm arrows from some scrub mobs, scouted and unlocked a lookout tower while dodging laser beams…