Retro Gaming Australia

Frogger is on every goddamn system ever, but it’s still pretty damn neat. This particular ad is for the VCS/2600 release.

It’s a little bit of a disservice to call Konami’s Amidar a Pac-Man clone, given its basis in the Japanese drawing game Amikaduji, but that never stopped anyone.

Astro Chase has an interesting story behind it – originally developed as part of the Atari Program Exchange initiative, it was later picked up by Parker Bros. for release on a variety of consoles and computer systems.

G.I. Joe has been one of the most successful toy lines Hasbro has produced, so it was inevitable that it would get the video game treatment in the early 80s when the medium gained considerable popularity. Unfortunately, the game wasn’t entirely good – something that can be said of just about every G.I. Joe game, sadly. PAL release is known as Action Force.

Like many popular games of the day, Konami’s 1981 classic Frogger was released on every damn system imaginable. This particular ad was for the Intellivision version, which was published by board game manufacturer Parker Bros.

I will surely pay you next Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Popeye was developed by Nintendo for the arcades in 1982. They had originally tried to score the rights to Popeye for what became Donkey Kong, but King Features Syndicate wouldn’t have a bar of it – until Donkey Kong was a huge success and they found out what they missed out on. With Nintendo having no home console presence outside of Japan at the time, they licensed the game to Parker Bros. for release on the myriad of systems available at the time.

A little insight into what might have caused the 1983 crash in North America.

Q*Bert was a smash hit in the arcades, so it was only a matter of time before it headed to home consoles and computers. As you can see in the ad, it came to absolutely everything. Ad fails to mention that Q*Bert has a mouth like a sailor.

Search for Q*Bert on eBay