Honestly, might be nostalgic for guys, but as a girl who was playing games in this era, it made me feel like I wasn’t a part of the culture, rarely if ever were there ads marketed towards me, but man were there a lot of half naked ladies. Glad we don’t do this as much, but god this caused a lot of younger girls to feel ashamed of playing games “for boys”.
This kind of marketing ruined gaming culture.
There is a throughline between gendered marketing; the idea that young hetero men owned gaming; and chud gaming culture like gamergate.
The idea of the young horny gamer dude is sexist toward men too. Never mind the accompanying stereotypes of gamers as loosers and nerds.
Oh, man, you have NO idea:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/15/games.advertising
The early 00s was pretty mysoginistic.
I originally came from a conservative country, and yet there were plenty of ads for softcore porns in TVs and billboards in those days. Even as a child, I questioned why do they show such images in front of full view to everyone.
The thing is, such mysoginy was the norm without us even realising it. I remember reading an article of a woman reminiscing her college days in early 00s. There were pictures of college girls on pin up boards and they get graded on how beautiful they are. The author said no one thought bad about it but looking back, it was very degrading and also invading privacy. There was also the matter of the infamous wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson. She got all the public spotlight afterwards because she is a woman, but Justin Timberlake pretty much got away with it for free. JT also shamed Britney Spears about losing her virginity to him, instead of keeping his mouth shut, while Britney was branded as slut.
Am I the only one cringing at the perspective in the mirror more than literally anything else in the ad?
and above all - sexy new outfits
The most important part of a game.
Man, 90s video game ads were wild lmao
It took me a couple seconds to understand that it wasn't a before/ after set of pictures. It was a little confusing.
I recommend this Mastodon account for more retro ads: https://botsin.space/@gamemagprintads
Since she's a a Tomb Raider, a dungeon crawler, a spelunker, does that mean he wants her to peg him? Color me interested.
Pretty amusing to see what they were up to with ads.
I guess it really was a different time back then where people were able to laugh about things instead of being uptight and serious.
I remember TR3 was a huge disappointment after 1 and 2. The new mechanics weren't very good and the level design was more confusing. I remember they added the Desert Eagle pistol and it was a giant brick (seriously the model consisted of probably 3-4 polygons total).
It really felt like they were just milking the franchise at that point.
It was a super gross and embarassing era.
