Retro Gaming Australia

Another Namco/Midway/Atari partnership.

Galaxian is the first game in Namco’s Galaga series, evidently named after the far more popular second entry. Galaxian was developed with the intention of producing a superior, full color clone of Taito’s Space Invaders. Namco teamed up with Midway to bring it to arcades outside of Japan, and Midway teamed up with Atari to bring the game to homes, which is where this ad comes in.

Goddamn mushrooms.

Centipede involves the player character, a garden gnome (!) fighting against a rather large centipede. Evidently the gnome’s magic wand (or whatever macguffin he has) can transform centipede parts into mushrooms. Milton Bradley actually released a board game based on the arcade game – one of many MB did over the years.

Who’d have thought and ostrich would be an useful form of transit?

Joust pits you, the ostrich riding knight against an army of buzzard riding knights. Apparently the preference of animal used for transit is a cause for war.

I’ve always considered Dig Dug/Taizo Hori to be one sadistic individual.

Dig Dug is another of Namco’s early hits brought to home consoles by Atari. The company continues to reference the game in many other series like Ridge Racer and Mr Driller, and always includes it in the Namco Museum collections. This ad is for the Atari 2600 and 5200 versions.

Immediately stop what you were thinking about Q*bert’s nose, you disgusting pervert.

Q*bert is one of the all time classics of the early arcade era. Developed in 1982 by Gottlieb’s Warren Davis and Jeff Lee, Q*bert quickly became popular and was ported to every system under the sun, and even joined the lineup of the cartoon Saturday Supercade. Q*bert’s world record score was set by Doris Self, who was 58 when she set the benchmark. Although her record was broken, she spent many of her remaining years attempting to recapture it.

Pretty much the greatest name for a video game.

Pooyan puts you in control of a mother pig defending her litter from hungry wolves. Often seen as one of Konami’s “forgotten” hits, Pooyan got a fairly hefty referencing in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. There is a mission where players must shoot down soldiers being lifted off by Fulton Recovery Balloons – it even has the original Pooyan sound effects.

With a CRT that big, the kid is probably being vapourised by radiation.

Pole Position was originally developed by Namco, but was brought home by Atari for the 2600 and 5200. There’s actually a cartoon spin-off with the same name that has very little to do with the game.

With smashing ideas like this, one can only wonder how video games nearly died out.

As the caveman Thor, you must ride your stone unicycle through several levels to rescue your wench that’s been kidnapped by a dinosaur. Why a dinosaur would kidnap a woman rather than just eating her is a question that continues to baffle ludologists and other video game academics.

Saving the best for last.

Star Wars: TIE Fighter was based on the rather excellent X-Wing, but it took the path less travelled and put you on the “bad” side – the Empire. The game also boasts a pretty intriguing story and several technical enhancements. LucasArts later put out a bunch of mission packs – this ad is for the Collector’s CD-ROM edition, which packaged the main game with these add-ons.

Factor 5, masters of GameCube secret voodoo magic.

Star Wars: Rogue Leader was one of the first Star Wars games that could really match the scale of the battles which happened in the movies thanks to the increased power of the sixth generation of console hardware. In fact, despite being released in 2001, it still puts many Wii games, which run on similar but more powerful hardware, to shame.