Early '80's SEGA Ads Are... Interesting.

Thanks to the awesome free to use television archive site fuzzymemories.tv, operated by The Museum of Classic Chicago Television, I came across three very old SEGA ads for games released to arcades, Atari and ColecoVision consoles. That's right, these are pre-Master System ads! Funny how SEGA was a publisher then, and they're a publisher now. When you think about it, SEGA really wasn't in the console business for long when you look at their entire history as a company.

After the break, check out three old ads!

This ad is for the SEGA arcade game Carnival for home consoles. Even back in the early '80's, SEGA was producing odd and kooky ads. The only thing missing is one of the old men yelling "SEGA!".

Up next, a very strange Congo Bongo ad featuring the voice of English-born American comedian Henny Youngman, creator of the line "Take my wife—please". Wow. I especially like the audience reaction, as though his comments are hilarious. Ok, I did sort of chuckle at "Hey lady! This is a one way street!"

FROM THE MASTER DESIGN ENGINEERS OF SEGA. I love how the narrator first says "Zaxxon". I might just answer my phone that way from here on out.

Four Big Hedgehog Photos

 While sorting through my iPhoto library I came across four photos of moments in which I saw big Sonic the Hedgehogs. Rather than let these photos collect digital dust I thought I'd post them here and write some words inbetween each photo to, ya' know, make it look like an article. Nullam sapien eros, facilisis vel, eleifend non, auctor dapibus, pede.

The first of these is a totally unofficial Sonic rip-off painted on the side of a bus in the Ayutthaya Kingdom, Thailand. I spotted it during a very awesome and life changing college trip to Southeast Asia. Being the geek that I was, I was hoping that being in an Asian country would mean I'd see some SEGA stuff. Unfortunately all I saw was this tour bus. Oh well, at least I met my girlfriend on the trip!

The second photo is of the storefront of my once favorite video game store in Minneapolis. This store was great! They had an entire wall devoted to unopened SEGA games and consoles. It was like stepping back in time. And the prices were even reasonable! It was here that I bought a majority of my Saturn games. Sadly the store closed and I snapped a photo of the Sonic they had in their window.

Finally we have a photo of the still-in-business Video Games New York. I wrote about this a few times over at the Junkyards. Cool place, high prices and they have a large official Sonic in their window.

Have you seen large Sonics? Send us your links in the comments below!

French commercials! Why not?

Remember ages back when we showed you a European commercial that made the game Gear look as though it ran Mega Drive games? Well this commercial from France isn't quite in that leauge of false advertising but it's still a blatant lie. The ad is for Sonic Complication and features footage of Sonic 1, 2 and 3. Sonic 3 wasn't on this cart at all, it had Robotniks Mean Bean Machine as it's third game. Yeesh. The commercial uses clips from that 'Sonic the Ride' animation most of us saw for the first time on Sonic Jam, a collection that did have Sonic 3. Man there's been so many Sonic collections now it's hard to keep up.

Let's rewind a little to this commercial from France for Sonic 1. There's a few of these ads with some biker punk straight out of Fist of the North Star getting pummeled by random things (here's one for Moonwalker, and another for Revenge of Shinobi), but this one is most notable for the I presume beta footage of the game with some very odd differences like the first boss having a spinning red ball and a spring shooting out really far. I'm sure Sonic Retro already analyzed the hell out of this footage but for those who haven't seen it before it sure is bizarre.

I suspect both the previous and this slightly later campaign cost Sega Europe a lot of money, what with all the explosions and special effects. This one above kind of reminds me of the pretentious Sega launch ad we had in the UK, only this is for the Terminator and looks like it almost cost as much as the movie itself to make. Here's a similar one for that crappy Indiana Jones game, and another for Super Monaco GP.Throw tons of money into a commercial = make tons of money! That's the 90's Sega way! Didn't that tactic work out well? :S

Finally here's an ad of a doll being crushed by a over priced pointless pain to set up mushroom shaped lump called a Sega 32X. Oh, and the slogan for all these commercials translates out to 'Sega is stronger than you'. Probably because every commercial involves the player getting his arse kicked. I guess it's still not as obnoxious as the pissing contest Sega had against Nintendo in America..

Did i mention I just picked up a 32X recently, a well as a Pico? Oh wait, I've been a lazy bum and have been letting Barry do all the work around here recently, haven't I? :E

A Mystery Package From SEGA Arrives!

After having won a spontaneous contest involving speed drawing the complete cast of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, a month passed and my prizes have arrived! Sent from ArchangelUK of Sega Europe's Sonic blog, the package contained a number of items that I never thought I would own.

Any package with the Sega logo is a good package.

Carefully opening the bag (you always save a bag from Sega) I found a bright orange shirt wrapped around a number of tiny trinkets. Having read the spoilers on the front of the bag (aka the package contents for international customs purposes) I also knew that a game was inside. So what was inside?

Promo-mania!

Promo items I would usually have to take a flight to California or England for! Games represented were Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll, Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games and Sonic Classic Collection. Let's have a closer look at that odd shirt.

Thumbs up for child sized shirts in large! Or thumbs down for adult sized shirts in large being small for my American frame. Still, the shirt fits and makes me look like a monkey with a backpack on. I can tell you that I have already ran about the house in it and stole bananas from the kitchen.

FALL OUT!

The largest load came from M&SATWOG, and these are my favorite items. A pin set, a key chain set and a lanyard. My favorite icon out of all of them has to be the Eggman Empire logo pin. Gotta support the badniks!

If I wore all of these at once, would that make me a loser?

Finally, the most unexpected item of the package: the newly released Sonic Classic Collection! I was double bummed when I realized it was the PAL release and that I didn't own a DS, but then after a quick Wikipedia search I learned that the DS is region free, so I still have the ability to play it... someday. Still, it's my first DS game and looks nice behind the vinyl figures.


Overall a really cool surprise, lots of unique goodies and a package marked Sega. A good end to a Wednesday in my opinion.

The oldest Sega Commercials Youtube can offer

You probably already knew this, but the infamous 'SEGA!' voice wasn't first used at the start of Sonic 1, but in fact many years earlier in commercials on Japanese TV as far back as 1983! Hunting around Youtube you can find plenty of just-about watchable recording of some of these relics of Sega advertising, starting with this collection of ads selling Sega's first ever console the SG-1000. Oh, and you may want to watch this with your fingers in your ears at the start, as they may hurt otherwise.

Apparently the girl goes by the name of Saito Yuko and was quite the popular TV type person at the time. I guess you could call her the first member of G.L.O.S: The Gorgeous Ladies of Sega (As Classic Game Room revealed in their Daytona USA review) as Sega have since had a whole string of girls as their advertising mascots over the years. There is also apparently an extremely nerdy pun in that last ad that will go over most people's heads even if they know Japanese. I'm only going by what people in the comments are saying, mind you.

Now this one is for the SG-3000, which was a sort of home computer version of the SG-1000 I guess, much like the Tera Drive which was a PC combined with a Mega Drive (that we got in the UK as the Amstrad Mega PC). What's with the giant teeth/brushes? Why do they light up like Christmas decorations? I have no idea what in the hell is going on but it's hilarious!Just look at that guys face about 10 seconds in!

Remember, Sega have made toys too! This rather elaborate commercial is for the Zillion laser tag game from 1987. A similar toy was released here in 1992 called the Sega Lock-On, though they changed the gun design which in Japan is the same as that of the Mark III/Master System light gun. There is another ad for it here. Zillion was quite a big deal for Sega in the eighties, with two games and even an anime by Tatsunoko.

Finally, I really couldn't resist posting this one just because of the voice. WEELEE! JAAAMP! TUNAAP! You should really check out Nazca88's channel, he has a pile of old Sega commercials and interesting Sonic videos from Japan.

Another lazy commercial videos post!

The 'Genesis' is 20 years old from it's American release this week so why not?



This is a promo video presumably from 1989/90, before Sonic had even shown up. It's pretty long as it's a collection of commercials stringed together, but at least skip to 3:27 for the hilariously bad Stallone impression the narrator makes when talking about Rambo III.

This one is from Australia sometime around 1994/5 I'd imagine, when dodgy looking 3D animation like this was all the range. Vaguely interesting notes: the Ren & Stimpy footage shown is from an early beta build of the game, which you can find floating around the 'net' (which according to this Sega created). The beta is extremely basic with almost non existent level design and backgrounds. Also, when it talks about turning into Super Sonic in Sonic 3, doesn't that sound an awful lot like who currently voices Sonic in the modern games? Just a coincidence of course.



And yes, if you didn't already know in Australia they really do pronounce Sega as 'See-ga'. I wonder if the Aussie version of the Sonic games changed the logo voice to that. Probably not. This ad above for the master System is mainly notable for the rather ace rendition of the After Burner music. I also like how you could rent a Master System console in a sweet Sega branded suitcase of sorts.



Oh hey, here's some more Pirate TV ads I haven't linked to before! Above is a musical number about the Cyber Razor cut, and below is a rather bizarre shower scene Game Gear ad. Still my favorite Sega ad campaign of the lot.

Some odd Commercials to kill some brain cells

Can't say I've seen these before, but the first video above popped up on Destructoid and it's advertising the Mega Drive to the public of India, starring a rather bizarrely voiced Sonic invading a kid's TV to BLOW HIM AWAY with Sega. Sega Who? WRONG ANSWER.



Next up is a commercial for Sonic Spaghetti (of all things) and what could of possibly of been one of Sega's many rejected mega Drive add on ideas: a food can holder thing that transports food from the screen into your gob. Yeah..



Speaking of Sonic junk food, here is what I presume is just a short snippit of a commercial for Sonic 3 life savers, that or it's the shortest most confusing commercial ever. Blink and you'll miss it, which is hardly a bad thing as when you do see it you might not be able to sleep tonight.



Darn it, as I'm writing this article I keep finding more oddities I haven't seen before. Here's one for one of those terrible Sonic Tiger handhelds. I had a few of these, unfortunately. They were barely playable and made horrid noises. Sega put there name on a whole slew of these, from After Burner to Virtua Fighter and even a Virtua Cop one that had a little gun you point at it's screen. Some were slightly better than others, but that's not saying much. Still, they're quite collectable now so i might write an article about them one day.

More Sega Pirate TV ads!

The British Sega TV ad campain from the early 90's is under rated on this here internet of ours. Fussy old clips of the American Sega commercials from the same time are everywhere for all to see, but the UK ones are harder to track down. Thanks to the odd Youtuber such as SegaMarkUK and Chrisofthetube though, they are slowly all being dug up again so they can give a new generation of viewers a good headache or a healthy old seizure. To say many of these make little sense and are batshit insane is probably a bit of an under statement.



First off, some huge budget epic, probably shown at half time of footie matches, that has Pirate TV regular Steve O'Donnell AKA Spudgun from Bottom fighting mutant pigs using a mega Drive II and games like Street Fighter II and Shinobi III amongst others, with the mega CD 2 thrown in for good (or bad, which ever way you look at it) measure. "This is the end!...and this is the other end!" Yes, I have no idea what they were thinking with this commercial either.



As if that commercial wasn't baffling enough, here's one for Sonic Spinball that blows your brains out with subliminal nonsense before finally showing off the game itself, all flashing by with rock music in 20 seconds flat.



The Mega Drive Aladdin game next, and much like the last one it whizzes by so quickly you barely get a chance to take anything in. It kind of looks like an episode of the Games master on fast forward. In this case the American ad was actually better because you know, it made sense.



This rather earlier one, when the campaign was a little less noisy, has that bloke on the rotating chair telly thing again talking us through the first Sonic game, which then goes into some odd ninja action scene and some guy that sounds a bit like Benny Hill talking over the top with Monty Python style animation.



Finally, an extended and very high quality transfer of that Mega CD commercial I linked to before, with a whole lot more brilliant animation of the skull character and more shit interactive games being shown off. £270? No wonder no one bought the bloody thing. One again, I have no idea what's going on by the time it goes into some war movie parody, but then again, either do the guys singing in it by the sounds of it. I think this could be the explanation as to way Sega eventually went close to bankruptcy, this commercial must of cost a bomb.

Random odd fact: While Sega had Steve O'Donnell as a regular for their 90's ads. Nintendo in the UK went with another star of Bottom: Rik Mayall. Oo-er.

A Goldmine of Sega Marketing waffle!

UK: Resistance, the original Sega nutters website and one of the main inspirations behind this blog, have stumbled across a video that pretty much sums up everything that made Sega so huge in the UK back in the 16-bit era, particularly in 1994. This two video spilt into two parts for Youtube and submitted there by Shenmueaddit, gives us a glimpse into all the marketing pies Sega had their fingers in at the time, from TV commercials (Remember the Pirate TV campaign I told you about? You'll see more of it here), radio competitions (Sonic CD music on the radio, folks!), merchandise, that awful Right Said Fred song, the Sega tour buses, the food promotions (Sonic tomato ketchup!), even the sponsorship with Damon Hill!

This, my friends, is why Sega ruled the world (or at least the UK), during my childhood. These videos pretty much sum up what this blog is all about, and the exact kind of content I've been looking for. If anyone can recall and bring up details on any of the stuff seen here (like photos, videos, magazine scans etc), please send it my way and I'll be more than happy to share it here. =)

S.T.C Scans: Videos, Yoyo's and Milky Way Bars

I've made a start at scanning anything that people may find interesting (or not) from my collection of Sonic the Comics, starting with the many Sega and Sonic tie ins advertised. These first 4 are all the adverts I could find for the VHS releases of the cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Much better box art than the lazy work on the recent DVDs.

More after the jump.

Next up is a scan of a Frosties promotion for Sonic Yoyos. The Yoyo's wen't packed in the cereal box: you had to send off for them with coupons. There's also a competition on here that includes a Multi-Mega. Oooh. I wouldn't really want to see Tony Tiger in a video game, though.

Here's one for another Sonic promotion/competition, this time involving Milky Way chocolate bars, and promoting Sonic & Knuckles. I do remember buying a good few Milky Ways to attempt to win the game.

Finally here's one from a much earlier issue of S.T.C (one of the first, I think) of a Sega Game Gear carry case/ Lunch box type thing that also comes with a neat set of pins. I think the promotion was long over when I finally got my hands on this issue, as I started collecting them around issue 20.

Pirate TV: Best Sega Europe Ad-campaign ever.

A La Kat Food? Ecco Washing Powder? The Cyber Razor Cut? What the bloody hell am I talking about?

(Click for a news snippet out of...where else? Sonic the Comic. Issue 2, to be precise.)

More after the jump..



While Sega in America decided to go with the "Let's take the piss out of Nintendo and harp on about American Football simulators", in 1993 Sega Europe gave us 'Pirate TV', an ape-shit mad ad campaign starring Steve O'Donnell, AKA Spudgun from Bottom. It's slogan was far better than the yanks "Welcome to the next level", and you will have already seen it on the back of that SuperSonic record I posted yesterday...

TO BE THIS GOOD TAKES AGES, TO BE THIS GOOD TAKES SEGA.

(Bad Ass.)

The first ad for the Mega Drive is the one I remember most, mainly because I had it on a promotion video that was given away with a magazine of some sort. All you need to know is that according to this ad, the only way you could keep up with the POWER and the KICK ARSERY of the Mega Drive was to go and have an operation called "the Cyber Razor Cut (tm)", which appears to be something that involves becoming half human, half terminator. Here, I'll just let you watch it (Thanks to some Youtuber named prestolovesvarla for saving me having to hunt this down again!)

Sadly, what can't be found on the net anywhere from my hunting, is the short fake ad's they started slipping into ad breaks to confuse the feck out of you, like Ecco Washing Powder. Think that sound stupid? You haven't seen anything yet. Someone else by the name of FatAgnes has just brought back a flood of nostalgia (both good and bad) with this recording of the Mega CD ad they did. The commercial crams as much as it possibly can into one minute. Sewer Shark? Check.Night Trap? Check. Road Avenger? Check. Sonic CD? Erm...

And here's some stuff I don't remember so well: the mega CD came bundled with seven games? I presume they mean all those games on that Sega Classics collection everyone had for it. Also: HOLY SHIT, it cost £269.99? On it's own, without the Mega Drive? No wonder it bloody flopped. Still, I think this was the first time we saw that brilliant CGI skull head mascot, although I could be wrong.

In fact...wow, while I'm writing this article I keep finding more and more of these commercials, which I haven't seen since they aired. RabidracoonUK has this one for Golden Axe, which see's the return of the Cyber Razor Cut guy and his ninja kid sidekick? Yeah, I have no idea, but at least this one doesn't give me a head ache. You can also see how much a Mega Drive and a Master System II cost at the time: £130 and £60. Wow, that makes the Mega CD look like even more of a rip off considering how many good games were made for it, which I could probably count on one hand.

Now here's a commercial from the Pirate TV line for the Game Gear, in a completely different setting from the rest. The RRP for the bulky lump of plastic love that lasted ten minutes if you were lucky was £99.

Embarrassed and ashamed enough? Tough, there's one more video left, and it only gets worse from here. Somehow this whole Pirate TV thing managed to sneak it's way into a music video to the extremely camp pop duo 'Right Said Fred'. You might of seem them recently in an ad for Daz that is so bad I never want to see it again, but will another 700 times because the TV hates me. Anyway, the video seems to be a plug for Sonic 3, judging how clips of it pop up here and there, with O'Donnell and that skull head making cameos, and they're all running around the Hydrocity zone, apparently. Still, it's worth it just to hear that blond tart squawk "He's just a flippin' 'edgehog, Okaaaaay?". Ok, maybe not. I'd actually be inclined to say that even SuperSonic below isn't as bad as this song!

Thought it was over? NO! This Pirate TV thing even extended to Sonic the Comic, where they did a seven part story that, to be honest, is ruddy psycho. Written and illustrated by Stephen Bliss, It stars the skull head and the now christened Fezhead, who suck a bunch of lazy sods into their TV and make throw them into video game spoof like Street Fighter and er...that's all I can remember right now, but it did have fluffy animals that transformed into bubble bath containers, and Poodle Noodle! I want me some Poodle Noodle, with it's essence of haddock. Actually, no, but who wouldn't want snot in a can with a SEGA logo on it? I'm sold. Maybe I'll scan the whole thing in at some point.

After all this? Sega commercials died up and the one's that were left were boring. I remember seeing one or two Saturn ones, and the odd crappy Dreamcast ad that didn't show a second of game footage, but otherwise that's about as far as Sega on the TV went from there on in the UK, so as sad as it may be to admit but Pirate TV was the best British ad campaign Sega Europe ever did, and was actually pretty successful. Plus, they're still better than the egotistical American ads. I mean, why rename the Mega Drive the "Genesis" anyway? Twats.

Educational Outrun and False Advertising