#printmedia — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Author Carlo Carrasco @[email protected] · 2026-04-30 · 16:01 UTC

Retro Gaming Ads Blast – Part 42

Welcome back readers, fellow geeks and electronic gaming fans!

In this edition of the Retro Gaming Ads Blast (RGAB) series, we will take a look at another batch of retro gaming print ads from the 1980s to the 1990s.

For the newcomers reading this, Retro Gaming Ads Blast (RGAB) looks back at the many print ads of games (console, arcade, computer and handheld) that were published in comic books, magazines, flyers, posters and newspapers long before smartphones, social media, the worldwide web and streaming became popular. To put things in perspective, people back in the 1980s to the 1990s were more trusting of print media for information and images about electronic games and related products.

With those details laid down, here is the newest batch of retro gaming print ads for you to see and enjoy…

1. Space Duel Arcade Flyer

The front. The rear.

When the 1979 arcade classic Asteroids achieved massive success for Atari, the company went on to make ports of it on different platforms as well as follow-ups in the arcades. The first follow-up Asteroids Deluxe had a positive reception but never reached the huge impact of its predecessor. Since Asteroids Deluxe was well regarded for improved visuals and higher level of challenge, Atari went on to make the 1982 follow-up Space Duel. To promote the game, Atari’s artists made fascinating original artworks for both the arcade cabinet and the arcade flyer itself. Apart from looking great, I noticed the spaceships of Space Duel’s art looks similar with those of Xevious (a Namco arcade game distributed by Atari in America) and I can only speculate that the same artist made those.

2. Midway Auxiliary Show Monitor Print Ad

Did you experience watching arcade gameplay footage displayed on an overhead monitor?

As video arcades in America became massively popular with people and became a major economic sector, it was not surprising that crowding became a trend especially whenever a very popular game attracted both players (waiting in line) as well as onlookers. Midway, which was an arcade giant in the 1980s, came up with their own concept of a specialized secondary display called the Midway Auxiliary Show Monitor designed to let onlookers watch a video of ongoing gameplay without physically standing by the player. As the print ad above shows precisely the use of the monitors, those were used at trade shows or in arcades with a setup to make turn the single-player experience into a makeshift show for the people nearby. Back in the 1980s, there was indeed a spectator approach to the arcade experience but players had to deal with the disturbance of many onlookers standing near to see the on-screen action. At the very least, Midway’s concept and hardware was a bold attempt to solve overcrowding.

3. Sega Genesis North American Print Ad

Did this 1989 ad convince you to buy a Sega Genesis console?

While the Sega Genesis has always been identified with 1990s console gaming in America, the console was officially launched there in August 1989. At the time, Sega of America was not too creative nor aggressive when it comes to marketing the Genesis. The above 1989 print ad showed a lot of screenshots to promote the games, showed the console with a TV and a few peripherals and a text description that emphasized the Genesis as the so-called ultimate dimension in game play. Considering how dynamic and aggressive Sega’s marketing of the Genesis and games became a few years later when Tom Kalinske became the CEO, it is not surprising that this old ad has been forgotten.

4. The Punisher NES Print Ad

Fact: The Punisher started as an assassin in the comic books in 1974 before being turned into an anti-criminal killer.

By the year 1990, The Punisher became one of Marvel Comics’ most popular figures and the character had two monthly series published. As such, an actual video game featuring the character was made for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and to promote it, three screenshots were shown, a brick wall with stylized short messages was shown and a hand-drawn art of the Punisher was displayed. As seen in the screenshots, elements from The Punisher comic books were displayed such as shooting and fighting the criminals. Considering how wholesome the NES audience was at the time, this print promotion of The Punisher game looks odd although it is a fact that entertainment products featuring violent entertainment properties or characters were made and marketed towards children less than 12-years-old. Remember the Rambo animated series and video games of the 1980s?

5. Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters Arcade Flyer

Did you enjoy this Lethal Enforcers sequel?

After achieving both critical and big-time commercial arcade success with Lethal Enforcers in 1992, Konami proceeded with the sequel Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters which was released in arcades two years later. While the 1994 game used 2D sprites and digitized photographs like its predecessor, Konami used the 19th century Old West as the setting making it totally different from the 1992 original. To promote the game and emphasize the Old West setting, Konami came up with this arcade flyer that showed actors in cowboy costumes with a background that looks like a cowboy movie set. Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters went on to become successful in the arcades and it later got ported to game consoles.

6. Wipeout XL Print Ad

This is an ad and not an article.

1996 was a tremendous year for console gaming. As Nintendo launched their highly anticipated Nintendo 64 console (N64) that year, game publishers came up with new games that further utilized the features of both Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Wipeout XL was a sequel sci-fi racing game exclusive to the PlayStation and developer/publisher Psygnosis went all-in promoting the game with a lot of creativity and energy. They came up with this 2-page print ad to make gamers excited while creatively informing them what features, rave music and fun gameplay it has. On face value, this print ad looked more like a dazzling article.

7. Nights into Dreams Print Ad

The team behind the popular Sonic platform games on the Sega Genesis made Nights into Dreams.

If there is anything notable about the history of the Sega Saturn, it is the fact that there were no new dedicated platform games of Sonic The Hedgehog released for it which is very odd as the Sonic platform games on Sega Genesis were big sellers, critically acclaimed and even made their mark on pop culture. During the mid-1990s, Sonic Team (which had Sonic game creators like Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima) were laser-focused on making Nights into Dreams (stylized as NiGHTS into Dreams) which was an all-new intellectual property that allowed them to utilize the 3D capabilities of the Saturn while making room for their creativity. Sega knew Nights into Dreams was special so they came up with this 2-page print ad which had an eye-catching display of screenshots of the game on the left (with the Saturn in the middle) while using the other half for descriptive text and explanations (with the special Saturn controller in the middle) to grab people’s attention. This old ad from 1996 is a mixed bag for me as the left side was captivating to see while the description on the right side requires some effort to read properly due to the small size of the text.

8. Super Mario 64 Print Ad

This one was simple, clean and yet memorable.

What is arguably the most memorable video game released in 1996 was Super Mario 64 which was not only a fully featured launch game of the Nintendo 64 console, but also the first-ever Super Mario platform game made with 3D polygons complete with a large 3D environment that can be explored a lot. There was a huge anticipation for this game by both gamers and the media, and whenever it was previewed before release, it drew lots of crowds and many ended up being very impressed and wanting more. Nintendo knew they had some very special under the production and direction of Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. As such, Nintendo had an ambitious marketing campaign that includes print media, video advertising on MTV, Fox and Nickelodeon and even sending video tapes to thousands of Nintendo Power magazine subscribers. This 2-page print ad was part of the campaign and it had a fine visual design that strongly emphasized the iconic Mario in polygonal form in most spaces, leaving the screenshots in the bottom. This old ad from 1996 never looks outdated and its clean approach is really effective in helping people understand that something great would be launched along with the N64. Both the console and this game sold a lot of copies ultimately and it remains one of Nintendo’s biggest achievements ever.

+++++

Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco

#1980s #1990s #2DShooters #action #adventure #advert #advertisement #advertisements #advertising #adverts #America #Amiga #amusement #arcade #arcadeFlyers #arcadeGames #arcadeGaming #arcadeOperators #Asteroids #AsteroidsDeluxe #Atari #Bally #CarloCarrasco #CD #CDROM #ChatGPT #cinema #comicBooks #comics #comicsBlog #computers #console #consoleGames #consoleGaming #consoles #cowboy #cowboys #CowboysAndIndians #crime #electronics #entertainment #entertainmentBlog #fantasy #film #FrankCastle #fun #gameConsole #gameConsoles #gamers #games #gamesConsole #gamesConsoles #gaming #gamingConsole #gamingConsoles #geek #Google #GoogleSearch #guns #handheldGaming #IBM #Instagram #Investagrams #Japan #Konami #LethalEnforcers #LethalEnforcers2TheWestern #LethalEnforcersIIGunFighters #magazines #marketing #MarvelComics #MegaCD #Midway #MidwayAuxiliaryShowMonitor #mobileGaming #movies #MTV #N64 #Namco #NaotoOhshima #Nickelodeon #NightsIntoDreams #Nintendo #Nintendo64N64 #NintendoEntertainmentSystemNES #NintendoPower #Nippon #nostalgia #OldWest #PCGames #PCGaming #platformGames #PlayStationOne #posters #printAds #printMedia #promos #PS1 #PSOne #Psygnosis #Rambo #RetroGaming #RetroGamingAdsBlastRGAB #Retrospective #sciFi #scienceFiction #Sega #SegaCD #SegaGenesis #SegaOfAmerica #SegaSaturn #ShigeruMiyamoto #shooter #shooters #SNES #socialMedia #Sonic #SonicTeam #SonicTheHedgehog #SpaceDuel #spaceTravel #SuperMario64 #SuperNES #SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystemSNES #superhero #Taito #technology #The1980s #The1990s #ThePunisher #Tumblr #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #UnitedStatesOfAmericaUSA #videoGames #WipeoutXL #WordPress #WordPressCom #Xevious #YujiNaka

#1980s #1990s #2dshooters #action #adventure #advert

Blast From the Ads! @[email protected] · 2026-03-01 · 19:12 UTC

📸 1918 I got the Job!
This vintage ad from International Correspondence Schools promises career advancement and a brighter future through dedicated home study! 🤵‍♂️🏠
#internationalcorrespondenceschools #ics #igotthejob #jobpromotion #careeradvancement #vocationaltraining #vintagead #1918 #1910s #retroadvertising #nostalgia #selfimprovement #successstory #classicadvert #education #printmedia #oldads

#internationalcorrespondenceschools #ics #igotthejob #jobpromotion #careeradvancement #vocationaltraining

Shotgun Seamstress @[email protected] · 2026-02-19 · 19:15 UTC

Dropped some #zines off at Mindset Boardshop in Sarasota. The owner, Ryan, just moved here a year ago, is into #PunkRock and sometimes uses the parking lot behind his shop as a place for bands to play. I’m so excited to share this stuff with folks in town who have no idea about Sarasota’s #PunkPast.
#ParadiseLost #skateboarding #Florida #LocalHistory #OralHistory #PrintMedia #IndependentPublishing

#zines #punkrock #punkpast #skateboarding #florida #localhistory

Art of FACELESS @[email protected] · 2026-02-12 · 17:05 UTC

Tomorrow we hit the streets. First Cardiff drop. First batch printed. Folded. http://dlvr.it/TQw7N1 https://altcardiff2026.com/post/808345830751911936?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #Cardiff #StreetArt #PrintMedia #ArtDrop #LocalArtists

#cardiff #streetart #printmedia #artdrop #localartists

DrWeb @[email protected] · 2025-10-19 · 16:31 UTC

Opinion – How media lost power in the age of Trump and the internet – The Washington Post

Opinion

By George F. Will

What killed print media — and what died with it

The waning of newsprint is about cultural changes more momentous than digital publishing’s arrival.

October 17, 2025, 4 min

A stack of local newspapers at a mail sorting station in Colbert, Georgia, in 2022.
(Dustin Chambers/For The Washington Post)

A sound of morning silence is coming to Atlanta. The sound of newspapers landing on sidewalks in residential neighborhoods will vanish when, at year’s end, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, joining a national trend, stops publishing print editions.

Turning trees into paper, marking it with ink, trucking it to people who deliver it to readers — soon this laboriousness might be as forgotten as men with tongs lugging large slabs of ice for home iceboxes. The waning of the 400-year era of newspapers is, however, about cultural changes more momentous than the efficiency and convenience of written words presented digitally.

The Economist reports that the share of American adults who read for pleasure has fallen 40 percent in 20 years, and students’ ability to read in quantity, with comprehension, is in parallel decline. An Oxford professor of English says students “struggle to get through one novel in three weeks.” Students lack, another professor says, “habits of application and concentration.”

The sentences that are being read are shorter and simpler. The Economist says an analysis of hundreds of New York Times bestsellers “found that sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s.” Readers, if they can be called such, who are mentally wired for driblets of 280 characters cannot cope with Charles Dickens’s “Bleak House” (1.9 million characters). Can people unable to decipher sophisticated prose manage sophisticated political ideas?

But sophistication is not in the repertoire of journalism devoted to what Andrey Mir, a Canadian, calls the retribalizing of society. In his epigrammatic 2020 book “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers,” Mir, a self-described “media ecologist,” says the media lost agenda-setting power when the internet enabled crowdsourced agenda-setting.

As advertising dollars migrated to the internet, newspapers, which hitherto were funded from above by selling readers to advertisers, became funded from below by selling themselves to readers. Newspapers encouraged readers to think of subscriptions as donations to political causes. Subscribers enjoy their “slactivism,” outsourcing their activism through “donscriptions” — subscriptions thought of as donations.

Mir says “the last newspaper generation” was born in the early 1980s. It came of age as the internet did. Soon journalism stopped being about informing people to make them citizens, and began to be about making them agitated.

The new business model depends on polarization, amplifying readers’ irritations and frustrations. “A newspaper,” wrote Vladimir Lenin, “is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organiser.”

“Americans,” Mir says, “consume media 12 hours per day. Counting weekends, this is twice as much as a full-time job.” Because there is insufficient news to fill the time, emphasis has shifted to “expertise, commentaries, and opinions.”

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | How media lost power in the age of Trump and the internet – The Washington Post

#2025 #AgeOfInternet #America #CNN #DonaldTrump #Education #Film #GeorgeWill #Google #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Media #Opinion #Politics #PrintMedia #Resistance #Science #Technology #Television #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #YouTube

#ageofinternet #america #cnn #donaldtrump #education #film

CEngg Shreekant Patil @[email protected] · 2025-07-20 · 14:35 UTC

𝗦𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗡𝗶𝗿𝘆𝗮𝘁 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗵𝘂 𝗦𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗡𝗜𝗠𝗔 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀-𝗕𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄
NIMA Committee Chairman- Shreekant Patil Features in News Paper Media.
#EEPCIndia #ShreekantPatil #NIMA #DGFT #Volofin #Seminar #NiryatBandhu #SubcontractIndiaShow #Nashik #Leadership #Felicitation #Event #Exporters #Incentives #News #pressrelease #printmedia #lokmat #Pudhari #Deshdoot #Gavkari #Punyanagari

#eepcindia #shreekantpatil #nima #dgft #volofin #seminar

The Oasis BBS @[email protected] · 2025-06-24 · 13:21 UTC

Celebrating Retro Print Culture on More Fun Talking Retro Ep: 15
#PixelAddict #RetroGaming #AmigaAddict #PrintMedia #RetroMagazines #MoreFunTalkingRetro
https://theoasisbbs.com/celebrating-retro-print-culture-on-more-fun-talking-retro-ep-15/?feed_id=3971&_unique_id=685aa6456b179

#pixeladdict #retrogaming #amigaaddict #printmedia #retromagazines #morefuntalkingretro

Engineers Heaven @[email protected] · 2025-06-14 · 09:57 UTC