Remember the old “Are you keeping up with the Commodore” television commercial? Or who could forget the ‘Atari Summer‘ promotion for their 5200?
The advertising wars weren’t just confined to print media. There were shots fired via television commercials by all major players. Commodore focused on the family unit and pushed their C64 as a home computer for the entire family to enjoy. Atari on the other hand chose to sex it up when it was time to peddle their ill-fated 5200 Super System.
Sega played it safe when it came to introducing the west to their 8-bit Master System by depicting a family (minus mum!) having fun with their arcade conversions. Meanwhile, Nintendo hit hard in the USA with their 1985 commercial, introducing us to R.O.B, the Zapper gun and their 8-bit console beauty, the NES. The rest, as they say, is history.
Take a trip down nostalgia lane and relive the television commercials that introduced us to our most beloved systems.
Are You Keeping Up – Commodore 64
source: gamemusicparadise
Nobody’s Hotter Than Atari This Summer
source: DigThatBoxRETRO
The Challenge Will Always Be There – Sega
source: robatsea2009
The Birth Of The Nintendo Entertainment System
source: DigThatBoxRETRO
Format:
Commodore 64: a visual commpendium is a book that celebrates the beauty of the greatest home computer ever made.
It will be packed full of artwork by Oliver Frey, game art, reviews, loading screens, game maps and photography. The foreword will be written by legendary Sensible Software Graphic Artist Stoo Cambridge.
About Sam
About Bitmap Books
I thought the first rule of Fight Club was that you did not talk about Fight Club! I am breaking that rule here – what if Fight Club was retold in 8-bit pixelated glory? Wonder no more people. Well, actually, it’s more like 16-bit, but that is beside the point.
On the back of the success of the C64 home computer, good old Commodore decided to release the console version in 1990 – the Commodore 64 Game System (C64GS). With other more powerful consoles on the market, the C64GS disappeared without making a mark. The C64GS was a blight on the C64 pedigree. 
Amstrad wasn’t going to be outdone by Commodore, so to compete against the C64GS, they released their GX4000 console – a repackaged CPC computer. Despite being more powerful, it suffered the same fate as the C64GS. Both machines booked their tickets to obscurity, as they were no match to the offerings from NEC, Sega and Nintendo.
Atari’s first attempt at transforming their home computer, the Atari 400, into a console, was the disastrous 5200 Super System! With a hideous controller added into the mix, the 5200’s fate was sealed. It was never released outside of North America.
The joker in the Home Computers In Disguise pack is the ColecoVision. What a lot of gamers don’t realise is that the ColecoVision was based on the MSX standard – an early Japanese PC standard developed by (none other than) Microsoft. The Coleco got a better sound chip, but other than that, it was a console-ised MSX.
You would have thought that after the disaster of the C64GS, Commodore would have learned their lesson. Well, they didn’t. Commodore tried their hand at repackaging their Amiga 1200 computer into a console, the 
