The golden age of arcade and video game advertising is such a fertile period for unabashedly sexy and blatantly sexist ads that we’re back with a fourth installment of material. This is starting to become the Friday the 13thof the Starfire Lounge, with sequel after sequel. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got four or five more entries out of this series-within-a-series.
This being the fourth installment in a popular series, it’s only natural that some of these ads are a wee bit more salacious than previous entries. After all, you have to continue upping the ante if you’re going to persuade teenagers to part with their discretionary income to buy more consoles and cartridges. Let’s start slow though, with a few tame ones. Buckle up after that. When you’re done here, go read the previous three installments here, here, and here.
We’re gonna need a bigger arcade. Videogaming magazine asked the hard-hitting questions, and gamers answered, “We’ll stand right behind her, thank you very much.”She wants the game, get it? Not sex. She wants the game. Okay, she wants sex, too. She definitely wants your sex, so get the game and that’ll happen. Okay? No one gets between Gina and her Commodore 64. If you squint really hard, you can see there’s a tiny video game ad on the upper right side. The other 90% is taken up by a model in a bikini. They’re not even trying to hide their intent here. Even in an industry practically built on tasteless ads, this 2006 one for Hitman takes it to new depths. This Sega ad showed us how high-powered corporate bosses spent their free time. Sure, seems accurate. It’s a knockout, and so is she!Sometimes even men were objectified (but, like, 1% of the time, because ad execs and video game players back then were largely male and largely horny for women). If I didn’t see the Konami logo here, I’d swear this is a lost Andy Sidaris action film from 1990. I had no idea games like this existed when I was a kid. This ad is bonkers.
2 thoughts on “The Art of the Ad: Sex, Lies, and Video Games, Part IV”
OK, while I’m no prude it does blow my mind that two of those ads managed to get into the public eye with how suggestive they were. Surprised the one from France used porno sensation Rocco Siffredi on the cover, but I imagine they were genuinely trying to do ads that appealed to both demographics.
The Starfire Lounge 
OK, while I’m no prude it does blow my mind that two of those ads managed to get into the public eye with how suggestive they were. Surprised the one from France used porno sensation Rocco Siffredi on the cover, but I imagine they were genuinely trying to do ads that appealed to both demographics.
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