I miss console ads being this weird

That's a lot of ecstasy.
- It's gonna be a fun night followed by a hard, sleepy day
  
  Looks more like a few hours of cramping body and soul followed by 3 days of emotional hangover
  
  She gonna need some water
- Eh, not double stacked so it's ok.
  
  AKSHULLY that wasn’t a thing in the 2000s, just marketing hype. Rolls back then had between 70 and 120mg of MDMA, and 120 is a basal amount you want to take if you fully want to get rolling.
  Now it’s TOTALLY a thing, tons of rolls have 300-400mg in a single pill now. It’s insanity.
- This is how the girl from that Mitsubishi eclipse car commercial started her night

Rockstar used to go pretty hard.
- This game, appropriately, is where I learned there was such a thing as uppers and downers.
- It’s likely they were trying to get the news riled up so they could cause a moral outrage that would attract attention to the game.
- All right I'll ask the dumb question here, what am I looking at? From what I can tell they are tiny empty bags
  
  Those type of bags are usually used to hold illicit substances, and typically only bought by small-time drug dealers.
  
  awww youve never bought street powders thats nice
  
  The Bags that spare buttons come in, or how I used to get all my drugs.
- When the marketing agency jumps the shark

I miss that era. Companies didn’t mind a bit of edginess and weren’t afraid to market to adults. The console culture itself also isn’t what it used to be.
These days, gaming consoles all need to be safe enough for five year olds to play on them. And it’s caused everything to be just too bland and safe, both in marketing and the console itself. Can’t really have things like Xbox 360 Uno with the live camera feed and no moderation. Or the wholly uncensored COD lobbies.
- I like the part between your two paragraphs. The early gaming era was really shitty when it came to diversity and... It's not even representation, it's not having to play sluts or princesses or whatever.
  The now-era is all AAA all-the-same sanitised stuff, nothing to do with lack of edginess. Just corporate safety in mainstream appeal. Currently, indie games are where the experiments and interesting ideas happen.
  
  I'm certainly not going to say you're wrong on that first part. I've been online since 1996. At that time, the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy... well... going online felt like coming home. Those were my people. I still really miss those days.
  But I also know that the experience of someone not like me would've been wildly different. I learned a bajillion slurs on COD lobbies after all. It's a good thing that more people now feel welcome online, as it led to platform growth and functionality that we otherwise wouldn't have had if it was just 'my kind of people'.
  The current safe, sanitised, gentrified gaming sphere also has benefits: COD lobbies these days are very pleasant by comparison. You even have to sign a code of conduct to get on multiplayer. It feels more welcoming, less hostile. Of course, companies certainly have been financially incentivized to attract as wide an audience as possible. For example, the very first GTA game sold about 6 million copies. GTA V has sold 200 million. And with ever-increasing development budgets, you can't afford to cater to a niche, you want to cast as wide a net as possible to recoup those costs.
  
  Yeah, gaming (and tech in general) going mainstream brought with it both the good and the bad. More diversity, but also more corporate consolidation.
  
  It's the eternal pendulum swinging between slut and saint, whore and Madonna. AAA games are afraid of sexuality, and one can see why when looking back on how Lara Croft was portrayed in magazines. We need games that, when appropriate, acknowledge sexuality in a way that reflects its role in people's lives.
- this isn't marketing to adults. it's marketing to teenage boys.
- They were pretty sexist tho.

I feel like it means: we are not like Nintendo, we make video games for adults (and children who want to play like adults).
- Also, our games are as good as drugs.
  
  Sony's version of the classic Sega "Genesis does what Nintendon't"
- Man, everyone was in on it during this era, even Nintendo
  https://youtu.be/yji_sBjt0_U
  https://youtu.be/GmFCSc-iXBo

Everything reminds me of her..

Not much can top the 3DFX VooDoo graphics card boxes.

We had this in the UK for PS 1
- Love it.
  "Hey, you know what would be a good way to advertise our system? Let's just give children nightmares for about 40 seconds and then splash our logo on the screen at the end."
  
  It worked because I still remember it now ;)
  
  I think most ads for consoles in the early 2000s were like that, at least for ps1, ps2 and the original xbox. Not necessarily nightmare fuel, just "weird" stuff unrelated to the console or games.
- Watching this gave me Aphex Twin vibes. Then I discovered it was directed by Chris Cunningham. So yeah, that’s why
  
  Oh wow, that explains a lot!

PS2 is retro now? Damn, getting old really does sneak up on you.
- Ps3 is starting to be referenced as retro now....
  
  That one does hurt
  
  When ‘next gen’ (eg. PS5) becomes the new ‘current gen’, then the old ‘last gen’ becomes retro.
- I found my Green game boy Pocket and saw the 1989-1996 copyright.
  It looks so pristine. 😭😭😭
- It has been for a long time.
- I mean, it's over 24 years old. it's been allowed to drink beer for 8 years.
  
  Cognitively and logically, I understand.
  But emotionally, it's just another one of those little reminders of the passage of time that hits unexpectedly hard.
  I think it's because my only memories of it are from when I was young. Quake 3 Arena was released almost a year before the PS2, but I've never really stopped playing it, and still sometimes get in-person LAN parties together to play it. It feels just as old as I am, and I associate it with good memories from every age.
  But I haven't touched or even thought about a PS2 in decades. So when it suddenly jumps to the front of my mind, only old memories come with it. Then you start to think about the friends you played it with, and everything that's happened to you all between them and now. Kids, marriages, divorces, houses, bankruptcies, jobs earned and lost, deaths, etc... Some are doing great, some not so great, but most you just don't know because you've lost contact.
  So yeah, it seems silly on its face, but sometimes random thing just pull you into the past unexpectedly, putting the present and the path between them both in stark contrast. This just happened to be one for me this time.

This isn't a real PS2 ad. It's a fake created a few years ago by an influencer named Shy Smith.
- Aww damn, I definitely thought it was real and in some video game magazine

Can someone make a version of this photo, but its acetaminophen and the girl is just up-aged to how old she'd be now?
- thyroid medication

90s SEGA was the OG of this, we need 90s SEGA back
- Coffee?
  Tea?
  SEGA!!!

I find this funny, since I used to hide drugs like mushrooms inside consoles. I figured it was the one place literally no one would think to look. Just unscrewed them, put a baggie inside in one of those empty spaces (there's always a spot), and put the case back together.

"Only Happy When it Rains" automatically begins playing in head
- Wait, is that actually Garbage? That was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the picture. That Bond music video she did was awesome. World is Not Enough.

There were some bizarre ads from around the late 90s to early 00s.
The Dreamcast Barber comes to mind.
- https://youtu.be/YWmbUMStlGI
  https://youtu.be/9i1iNI7FIHA
  https://youtu.be/gqkNPcUMffU

SEGA!!!
- I heard this.
- On the switch you can get the same rush of the times of yore

"Live in your world. Play in ours."
- I still have my megatokyo sticker, "Live in your world. Die in ours." Probably couldn't be that edgy anymore, but I still like it.

Welcome to the Third Place (David Lynch)
- I like the PS2 ad that pretended to be a PS9 ad
  https://youtu.be/QP2wuDts3S4
- What dpes that voice say in the end?
  Playstation two, the .......
  
  "...third place."
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

My cousin told me that she ODed so hard that they had to put her in an institution where she spends all day thinking she's at a rave.
- Is that institution on a Spanish island?
  
  Ibitha

Honestly, it puts me off completely. I'm a woman and this is what gaming used to be: women are sluts. The ad isn't even trying to be clever or anything. Like wtf is this this trying to say?
- The ad is saying PlayStation is as good as drugs? I'm assuming that the little tabs are supposed to be exctacy or something.
  
  Ecstasy.
  
  And why is it a "trashy hot" woman despite the target audience being 99% young men at the time? This is what I mean. The ad speaks to a target audience that is not on the poster.
- Ayyyooo you don’t hafta be a slut to love MDMA
  
  Doesn't hurt though.
- "Playstation is a drug"
  It's edgy marketing. You're not wrong it's also clearly sexualizing her, but they're pushing a console like a party drug.
  On the one hand, it's a very dated ad, on the other I really wish marketing companies would do weird shit like this more. Just maybe with a bit less sex appeal?
  
  There’s nothing wrong with sex appeal. Removing sex appeal, drugs, whatever else is how you get boring corpo bullshit ads instead of edgy corpo bullshit ads.
  
  Just maybe with a bit less sex appeal?
  Counter point: sex appeal is fine.
  It's the people who are pushy irl who are the problem. IMO you can still be very "sexy" and as long as you don't push it, that's not a problem.
- Seriously, that is not the message this ad is putting out. It's about PlayStation being a drug, like ecstasy pills
  Your right it's not clever but it's pretty clear it's nothing to do with woman being sluts.
  
  You seriously can't see how this is sexualizing women?
- I’m a woman and this is what gaming used to be: women are sluts.
  Why is this saying the woman is a prostitute?
  What is wrong if she was one?
  semi trolling.
- No, the imagery was supposed to invoke the rave culture at the time. Lots of men, women, boys, and girls doing X, and the pills usually were white like that.
  
  Did you just mansplain how to take this ad?
- Oh yeah, the culture was toxic af. Lots of folks never grew out of the toxicity. Granted it was preexisting toxicity coopted and reinforced in the gaming culture, not created by it. We're in a much better place in that regard these days.
- It was a serious problem for a long time. Late 90's/early 2000's E3 and game shows were greasy.
  I remember gaming magazines running whole sections just on the "best booth babes" of the season.
  
  Late 90’s/early 2000’s E3 and game shows were greasy
  I posted this elsewhere, but people pretend like that just ended abruptly in 2005, but I want people to always remember this shit. That's 2009, not 1999, gross.
- People arguing with you without acknowledging that this was just an ad in a sea of sexist as fuck ads. Maybe is not as sexist as the average one, but still.
- Our games are as good as drugs.
- It’s not even a real ad, btw.
- Your homophobia/sex negativity is noted.
  Given this is a print ad, I think the primary payload is just "SEX DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL" shouted as loud as it can to get the reader to stop flipping through the magazine and actually look at it, and then once it's got the reader by the foveas it then says "Sony Playstation 2. Circle Cross Triangle Square."
  PS2 launched in late 2000 so this ad would be targeting tween, teen and young adult millennial boys and men, so the secondary payload here is to associate the PS2 brand with thoughts and imagery that demographic is interested in or curious about, such as clubs/raves/parties, girls, sex, party drugs, and sex with girls on party drugs at a club or rave and thus transfer some of that interest/curiosity to itself.
  The tertiary payload would be to use association with more grown up imagery (also during this time were ads featuring four condoms in see-through packets bent into the Circle-Cross-Triangle-Square shapes among others) to set themselves apart from Nintendo, who generally maintains an all-ages friendly image, and especially during the GameCube era when they revealed The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to much fan backlash at the "childish, cartoony" graphics. The PS2 looked more like a piece of AV equipment than Nintendo's Barney The Dinosaur purple box, and could play audio CDs and DVD movies, VERY important socializing tools for teens in the 2000s.
  Bottom line is it FUCKING worked. The PS2 sold like toilet paper. Sony sold 155 million PS2s worldwide, Outselling the GameCube (21.7 million and the Wii (101.7 million) combined And they did it with ads that said "Hey, if you're grown up and with it enough to recognize what this chick is doing, ours is the game console for you."
  
  Bottom line is it FUCKING worked. The PS2 sold like toilet paper.
  You really didn't need the ads. PS2 absolutely dominated because they were the ones with the all of the huge publishers. Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft couldn't hold a candle to the sheer amount of great exclusives. It was only when Xbox 360 and later the Wii came out did the console wars start to shift.
  
  You could present your valid argument without calling in homophobia.
- The answers to your comments are depressing. Good luck with everything!
- If you see this girl as a slut, that's a you issue lol. Might want to do some therapy about that.