517
"touching is good"
This is gotta be satire, but I can no longer tell..
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
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.
The micro was such a step up though.
Literally read this with my GBA SP in hand
90s and 00s era were pretty wild with advertising.
And 80s. The first 8 bit computers and consoles had lots of suggestive ads. They knew their market.
The 32x had some interesting ads:
French ad for the 32x:
SEGA did what Nintendidn't.
The French magazine ads for tech in the 1990s were absolutely wild
There's no way that's a real Nintendo ad.
I remember seeing it in Nintendo powers because that was the day I learned I was stupid
I think your response is deadpan, but just to be clear, there's no way that's real. I can be convinced by someone creating a properly faked Photoshop of it in a real magazine, however.
I wonder how much of that came from being a time when the 'parental advisory' type content was starting to become more common, but people's content was also still pretty compartmentalized.
Shows for kids where on at certain times on certain days, and these weird paper things called magazines where something you had to buy or subscribe to to view.
Now, barring some kind of active efforts, people see what they want when they want all on the same Internet so advertisers kind of have to pull back to avoid getting attacked for putting the wrong messages out.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Ss.. Step-gamer?
Ss... Step-Stool?
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!
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
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!
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!
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.
Pray tell, what are 4 dimensional graphics?
Maybe the game freezes now and then?
load more comments
(2 replies)
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.
Nintendo, the family friendly company
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.
That 80s Bill Gates laying with the computers still gets me.
/s
At least they're not different races with the black one being the bad one this time.
Reminds me of the copy "Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn?" from Mad Men S2E6.
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
517 points (100.0% liked)
RetroGaming
28470 readers
331 users here now
Vintage gaming community.
Rules:
- Be kind.
- No spam, AI slop, or soliciting for money.
- No racism or other bigotry allowed.
- Obviously nothing illegal.
If you see these please report them.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS