TVTA is pleased to present a selection of retrogaming ads from 1982 to 1985 … featuring The Pink Panther, Mickey Mouse and The Smurfs hand held games from Orlitronic … Atari … Coleco Vision … Parker Brothers … CBS Electronics … and the not-much-known-about French electronics company ITMC.
Let’s get dizzy…
This 1983 ad for Solar Fox does its worst to perpetuate the sexist trope of the dumb blonde. CBS Electronics… what space cadets!
In. The. Mystery. Corner.
We end with these colourful and fun adverts for hand held pocket games from hard-to-track-down French company ITMC. When researching ITMC I found very little information other than these 1983 hand helds were made in Japan and sold in France along with other ITCM-branded gaming consoles. There is also a connection to the French toy chain JouéClub, either in promoting or co-producing certain models.
That’s all for now. Thanks for looking 😎
I remember when I got my first ‘Atari’ console back in the late 80’s and had ‘Nintendo’. Eventually, both consoles gave out on my and mid 90’s got ‘Nintendo 64.’
I feel like the 80’s had the best stuff all around.
Especially this:
Mac Tonight Commercial
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Hi Charlie Zero. Yes the 80s had a lot of good stuff to offer I agree. Our first experience of games was on the Commodore 64. Later came the Sega MegaDrive and then Playstation 1. Fun times! The only Nintendo I had was the game and watch handhelds which were brilliant.
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Sega was the best and the first PlayStation 1 had a lot of great games. Especially, the game ‘Twisted Metal’. 🙂
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Awesome post! I managed an import/retro video-game store for 12 years (we unfortunately closed down about 8 years back) so this post brings me great memories of my favourite ever job! I still have some of my old Grandstand LCD games somewhere too!! 🙂
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Grandstand games! There’s a blast from the past! Oh wow that job you had managing a video game store sounds pretty ideal. You must have seen so many good game titles and consoles come through over those years. What a cool and retro way to spend time 😎😎😎
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Ah! These are cool… I remember those Orlitronic games… or at least I have vague recollections of similar looking games. A pal had Pole Position for the Atari and I remember playing it at his. Good times.
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Hi J. Absolutely yes good times. I love those Orlitronic ones and shame I never saw one to try out. Just the three ads I showed offered regular screen, extra large screen, and double screen! Not bad going in the range there from them.
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Hm, that’s interesting. I think I remember playing with a similar hand-held video game in the 90’s.
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Hi RetroDee. There were many to choose from back then. Going through my gaming ads just now I realise I could have made an entire post about hand held games!
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Had loads they used to eat battery’s. Would end up buying transformers which never lasted more than a few months. Happy Days, sore elbows from lying on the floor for hours playing frogger and space invaders
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Frogger! I remember playing that on my mate’s Speccy at his house during lunch break at school. Space Invaders was a popular choice too, and Pac-man!
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Electronic handheld games! There’s a blast from the past in the tablet age. I remember having Sonic the Hedgehog and The Crystal Maze ones, think they were both by Tiger (and they were both awful!). I don’t know much about the Colecovision, but that racing game looks quite cool for 1983. Fun stuff, as usual 🙂
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Cheers Jacob. I have a couple of ads for Tiger hand helds… Batman Returns is one of them. Me, I had the Nintendo Game and Watch Snoopy tennis and Donkey Kong – both good games, and a Tetris clone. I remember there were a ton of clone games at the time including table top consoles and game watches.
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Hello TVTA, I remember handheld gaming, I owned a Grand Prix racing handheld. I think it was a Tiger model but was re-branded as Systema, a much cheaper version than the Tiger models (they were sold in bargain £1 stores like Poundstretchers). I bought it for £2 back in the late 80’s early 90’s. I was then lucky enough to buy a SEGA Game Gear colour handheld games console (which could also work as a TV with a special antenna adapter). I still own the Game Gear to this day.
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You’re right, there were a lot of cheap hand helds back in the late 80s and 90s. The Tetris clone I had was about £2 from a shop like Poundstretchers. Tell you what though, it lasted years and on the same battery too – remarkable considering how much I played it.
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I totally agree, mine lasted about a decade and had a watch/hearing aid R-type battery. Another couple of handheld games I have are the WCW Thumb Wrestling Electronic game and a WCW Championship Challenge which is integrated into a figurine of the wrestler named Sting. That thing still keeps beeping now and then and I got that in the 90’s!
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The WCW game with the Sting figure sounds really good. What is it with 90s batteries and what did they put in them?!? I have a 90s Buzz Lightyear 14″ toy figure that still works on its original batteries!
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I think batteries nowadays suffer because they are made so they don’t harm the environment, the older batteries had stuff like zinc and lead in them that probably isn’t good for nature!
The Sting game had the screen and control buttons built in the figure’s chest, but his arms were modeled as if holding a belt above it’s head in victory – which makes it hard to pack away.
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That’s a fun post! I never had a hand held game. I did have an Atari (my first) that had a Spiderman and all he did was climb, or fall off a wall. It was a couple steps up on Pong, which I never could win.
How anyone could always lose when that pong thing is so slow? 😀 x
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Yes, I remember Pong. My first hand held games were the Nintendo Game and Watch Snoopy Tennis and a Donkey Kong game. Much later I had a Tetris clone which I wore out it was so addictive!
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LOL! I played Donkey Kong at the arcade! That was addictive!
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Yeah, happy days at the arcade and in pubs too whenever they had machines. Oh, pinball too! Loved that. I played one recently after not having a go for a couple of years. If I had the space and some money to throw away I’d def have a pinball machine at home… hopefully a horror-themed one or rock band or Star Wars 😁
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The chicken does not apparently think much Mickey’s new farm game.
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He he. The chicken made me laugh. It might be making a statement because Mickey threatened to chlorinate it!!
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