Q*Bert by Parker Brothers. US. House of Mystery. 1983.
What the actual flying @!#?@!!! Parker Brothers made some eye-catching adverts for its range of video games available on the Atari and Sears platforms in the early 1980s. Adverts were often adapted from the game box artworks and given a house style that made them instantly recognisable to buyers.
TVTA is pleased to present a selection of print adverts as seen in comic books back in the day. Enjoy.
-
- Frogger by Parker Brothers. Weird War Tales. 1982. US.
-
- Frogger by Parker Brothers. Alpha Flight. 1984. US.
Star Wars Jedi Arena by Parker Brothers. The Defenders 119. 1983. US.
Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back by Parker Brothers. Power Man and Iron Fist 86. 1982. US.
Star Wars Death Star Battle by Parker Brothers. Alpha Flight. 1983. US.
Super Cobra by Parker Brothers. The Defenders. 1983. US.
Tutankham by Parker Brothers. Marvel. 1983. US.
James Bond 007 Octopussy by Parker Brothers. Starlog 74. 1983. US.
Parker Brothers video games. Pif Gadget. 1984. France.
Amidar by Parker Brothers. Starlog N° 65. 1982. US.
Parker Brothers video games. Hamleys Christmas Book. 1983. UK.
Popeye by Parker Brothers. Alpha Flight 4. 1983. UK.
As always, thanks for looking!
The Vintage Toy Advertiser 
I played Frogger in the Arcade. So much fun. I was talking to someone about Missile Command today. Loved that game!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Frogger I remember playing, but I never played Missile Command though can remember it being around!
LikeLiked by 1 person
This make my eyes pop! When that stuff came out, we still had black and white TV 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lol, I think we did too 😁 But I can remember soon after getting a colour set from Radio Rentals I think it was, and then a VHS player which was about the size of a coffee table.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ooh, love those. Many memories of staring at adverts and posters for games, reading the magazine previews over and over and poring over screenshots. These adverts really sell those very simple games. And the Parker logo itself brings back memories of games past.
My brother bought the ill-fated Sega 32x second-hand in about 1998, long after it was discontinued. He only wanted it for Doom, but the bloke at the counter just chucked in a Star Wars cartridge – “you’ll want this too”. He probably had a box of them to be rid of! I think it was a port of an arcade game from years earlier. We never really knew what were doing with it, but I remember being impressed by the graphics at the time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad you like, Jacob. Agree, the Parker logo is something special, not just for their video games but for their board games and toys.
Lol, that’s a funny story about the bloke at the counter who chucked in the free Star Wars game. Yep, circa ’98 just prior to the Prequel Trilogy running, Star Wars was a bit of a non-entity after its late 70s and 80s triumphs.
LikeLike
Wow the image of the game screen in the ad for Tutankham looks really boring and basic (although I’m sure the graphics were “advanced” for their time) Still, I might would be disappointed seeing as we’ve been waiting 3000 years for the game to release!
LikeLiked by 1 person
“3000 years, and we get this!!?” lol 😂
Yes, they are what they are for their time of release given the technology. Nothing like what we have today!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi TVTA, wow Parker Brothers electronics, yep I remember these too! I never owned any but I did get to play the Empire Strikes Back game when a kid in my class brought it in for “Last day of term games and toy day” at school. I played it but was disappointed I couldn’t spin my Snowspeeder – “cos spinning is a good trick!”
Another great collection of pics.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi FT. I never played any of those Star Wars games but love the box art for them. Had to wait until the mid 2000s for my first SW video game experience, via the PS2 Lego games – excellent fun!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The LEGO Star Wars games are good ones to start with…they were fantastic. As I’ve mentioned before I cleared the first LEGO SW and got into the secret second levels. The moisture vaporators ejected studs like a fountain and I collected somewhere around 33 million I think. I gotta dig my PS2 back out of storage!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, those PS2 Lego Star Wars games are an absolute blast, both the OT and the PT versions! Still have them along with my PS2.
It’s a shame that the most recent incarnations of the SW Lego franchise are over-complicated and messy. I think they tried to get too serious with them. The originals were a decent enough challenge but simpler in terms of layout, gameplay and overall fun!
LikeLike
I never played those games as a kid but I remember seeing the adverts for them, especially the Star Wars games. I used to try and imagine what they’d be about!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The only ones I played as a kid, courtesy of a friend who had an Atari, was Frogger and QBert. I was recently playing QBert online, still a good game for its age.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Home video games were something that didn’t really reach us here much in UK back then. I used to love playing the video games in the arcade on the seafront though. Had lots of happy times with friends playing those video game machines and the pinball machines. Good times in a worlds that seemed a lot simpler. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
You make a good point point, Paul. For those of us with no access to early home gaming it was the arcade all the way, or even machines in the local fish and chip shop as I recall. Pinball was so cool! An exception perhaps was the Nintendo handheld games like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Snoopy which we had for Christmas one year, and a lot cheaper than buying a system like Atari or even the early ZX Spectrum computer.
Our first home family computer for gaming was the Commodore 64, circa late 80s. Took about 20 minutes sometimes to load those old cassettes lol, but worth it once the game was up and running! 😁
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yeah, video games for us in the home were few and far between back then. They were also quite expensive as well. I remember having two electronic games as a kid, one was Electronic Detective which was quite cool, and hard cards with all the suspect on, you could select / type in the question off the cards and their answer would appear on the screen. As you questioned them you leaned more about the murder ect. It was bit like Cludo. The other game I had was called Scramble, which was like a little video game which was fun. Our first home computer was the Commodore 64 as well, LOL those losing times seemed to go on forever didn’t they!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brilliant! I have some excellent French ads for Electronic Detective which seemed popular over here. Also the game ‘Simon’ was an early electronic game which I didn’t have but a couple of friends did.
Yes, those loading times for the C64 were a pain, especially when it crashed and you had to start all over!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Would be fun to see those ads for Electronic Detective! A friend of mine had a Simon game as well, that was a fun game too. I wonder what kids would think now if they had to wait ages for a video game to load like we used to LOL!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lol, I can get annoyed today with the loading times for the Nintendo Switch, never mind what the kids today would think of the 80s loading times 😂🤣
Here you go – some French ads for Electronic Detective, including the handheld version: https://thevintagetoyadvertiser.org/category/electronic-detective/
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s brilliant, thank you! Lovely to see that old Electronic Detective game again! The little cards with the suspects were great and the game made sound effects and everything. Really cool game 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad you were pleased to see those images of Electronic Detective. It does look a really cool game, and seems like it had a lot of inventive fun and features! 😎
LikeLiked by 1 person