The Best Atari 2600 Commercials

[YexxenBlaster]

Old-school video game commercials are as of a deal as the games they advertise to me; so I was wondering, what was your favourite Atari one??

 

For one there's Star Wars. The kid's reaction is hilarious, especially if you're a Gen Z like me who has access to advanced hardware like the Xbox One. He really feels like he's in the game. And there's his classic ending line: "SOME GAME!!" When I first played Star Wars Battle Pod at Dave & Buster's, I said that. (Funny thing is, the kid says "It's great in the arcade..." what do you think his first reaction to the arcade version was??) Helps I'm good at the Atari game (but not Battle Pod.)

 

Speaking of, there was The Fly, shown before Return of the Jedi. My dad showed this one to me when I was a kid along with a few other Atari commercials. How the guy gets inspired to make Yars Revenge just by seeing a fly in his room... and similar inspirations for more classic games. IIRC, the people behind Tron did this ad. Makes me wanna be a kid in the '80s (which is why I can be born in 1982 or even 1972 on the Web at times.)

 

Another memetic ad nowadays is Pole Position. The line "He's a corporate executive; he stops exciting things from happening!" alone is hilarious. (So HE was behind the cancelled Atari games!) And the awesome '80s music courtesy of MTV. Reminds me of Speed Racer combined with Death Race (both remade in 2008 too!) That ending is brutal; how can they still be alive with the car wreckage punctured thru them?? This ad sums up what the '80s were like.

 

Ice Hockey is funny, starring Phil Hartman before he was TOM 2000 or Jijii. How he builds up to the point where he yells "ICE HOCKEY BY ACTIVISION!!" Feels like an old-school SNL sketch. 

 

Centipede was another MTV ad, and it's a doozy. It reminds me of kaiju flicks from the good ol' days and the ending with the guy becoming a centipede gives me ideas for a Robot Force story.

 

Any ads you'd like to mention??

[John Stamos Mullet]

The MegaMania commercial with The Tubes doing the music is peak 80's awesome.

[YexxenBlaster]

33 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

The MegaMania commercial with The Tubes doing the music is peak 80's awesome.

I forgot to mention that! Atari and new wave clicked together (though I miss when disco and video games clicked together. P O N G)

[Maztr_0n]

Pole Position...

 

 

The fact that there isnt a high quality full length upload of the commercial and a remastered 7" vinyl of the song in it was criminal.

 

Sega and later Sony and Microsoft probably took notes from how confrontational it was, from the second it starts with the

Spoiler

Suprisingly humorous satire of the well-off yuppie family stereotypes from the Early 80's and the screaming narrator commenting on the father's appearance as resembling a "REAL JERK" and then before "Biff" and the "gang" can head off to whatever firm he works at to exploit those under him in the retrospectively reviledly consumerist 1980's North America, as if beyond the neon and big hair. Atari knew that it wasnt perfect, and that you did too so they give us something to blow off our steam, by sending our human equivilents of cardboard to play "POLE POSITION", erupting in the chaos of what the game was advertised to be like, one of the finest New Wave songs plays but its no actual track by an artist like DEVO, it is a fully original track. But you could barely hear it over the screams of the family, the intense roaring of the engines, the cutting edge video effects of the 80's which now might not wow anyone who has ever used something like Windows Movie Maker but to many, it must've felt like Pole Position was so intense that the most boring people in the world could not properly handle the extreme nature of the game, and by the end this hypothesis is backed up and thus is failed to be rejected by the end where the mental after effects leaves the family with extreme phyisical and especially mental damage which will likely be mostly permanent. Truly Savage.

 

To some, this as might've seemed extreme. "Why would Atari think that people would want to play a game that has a giant disembodied hand kidnap a family and make the men, women and children of said family risk their lives in the deadly races of Pole Position?". But it is very clear that this ad poses more of a metaphorical, if perhaps violent form of venting against those who held power and dominion over the average person. For many who had, perhaps a bad day at work, the Pole Position commercial gave them a safe way to blow off their steam and advertise their video games, which for some act as stress relievers. Or in the opposite case it is a suggestion for those who would want to have a fun time once they've cooled off. Pole Position's TV ad not only remains as one of the best Atari/2600 ads ever or even one of the best gaming ads of all time, but perhaps one of the finest pieces of marketing ever made in the history of humanity. Whilst some scholars debate on how the effects of the advert and Pole Position itself on those who had seen it. All agree on its greatness.

 

Also this is part of a script for my 9 hour Video Essay on the Pole Position commercial, it should come out in a couple years give or take.

[/j please dont take this part 100% seriously]

 

Of course, if you havent seen it, go see it, its the best advert ever.

[CreeB]

I loved the POLE POSITION ad..  when i first saw it I went to the game store that day and bought it..  played it for 2 hours that day..  it's how i learned to drive..