1984, the year after the great video game crash of '83. For me, console video games fell off the frickin' Earth. I forgot about my Atari 2600, my neighbor's Intellivision, and my friend's ColecoVision. I moved on to PC games with my first dungeon crawl, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. I went to the occasional arcade to play Xevious, but in my mind, arcades were dead too. Amazingly though, console games were still coming out before the NES hit and here are ads for two of them I got from Doctor Strange No. 68, released December of 1984.
Maybe I didn't notice it, or maybe I wasn't going to many arcades in '83, but I missed playing Mario Bros.. This is the ad for the port to Atari systems 2600 and 5200. I find it odd that the ad focuses on Luigi when he is player two in the arcade game. This is also another example of a video game ad trying to be a short comic. A comic within a comic. 'The comic's the thing. Wherein I'll catch the attention of the king.' Or me. It worked.
Frogger II: Threedeep! for Atari, ColecoVision and C64. Another one I never played, being out of console gaming and not owning a C64 at the time. Although, I might have played it when I was collecting for 2600 back in the early aughts. I'm sure my friend still has it. I just don't remember if it was any good or not. You would think there would have been an arcade version of this, but apparently there was never a sequel to the original Frogger in the arcades, strange as that may seem. I love the graphic of the frog launching out of the Earth with the words "Beyond the Pond". I need that on a T-shirt pronto!
So that was a little blast from the past, wasn't it? Uncle John, aka Lone Ranger, signing out (see the movie to hear Lone Ranger being called Uncle John, which is my name to my neices and nephews). Hi-Yo Silver, away!
I liked the Lone Ranger. 
It had some weird moments like the fanged rabbits, but then I remembered the story was being told by old Tonto. Still, when those rabbits attacked, I wondered just what was this movie doing.
yeah that's my only complaint too.
I love that Mario Bros. ad. It's weird seeing Atari labels all over a Nintendo game like that.
Yea, totally and before NES appeared in America!
In 1984 I was 8 and was probaby mostly playing games on our Apple ][+.
My parents had the Apple IIc. I played Wizardry I-III on it.
I was busy crawling through the dungeons looking for Werdna.
I remember level nine and ten of Wizardry I. Those Vampires gave me nightmares. I was seriously nervous everytime I took a run at level 10 and Werdna. Wiz II and III didn't capture my attention at all however.
I was 6 in '84. I remeber playing a lot of games. My friends and I went to any arcade around and we all had plenty of 2600 games. I also owned a Radio Shack Tandy, though that may had been a year or 2 later. I played a few games on it too. To this day, it's the only system I played that the some of the games were on cassette tapes.
I was probably still going to arcades a lot at least until High School ended for me in '86. But probably even more so from '80-'83 where I would hit any place with even a single machine in it.
In 1984, I wasn't even a concept.. lol
I don't even think my parents were dating at that time!
Ha ha! I figured I'd get some "not born yet" or "too young to game" responses. It's cool. Lots of people collect stuff from before they were gaming although I'm not sure I care for collecting Odyssey II games. That's going a little too old school even for me.
I was playing my Atari. I was 10.
I was 10 when Star Wars and the Atari 2600 came out. The perfect age to get hooked on games and scifi. I'd say I'm more into it now than I was back then. Strange, isn't it?
In 1984 I was 30. It was the year I met my wife. My gaming at the time was done on a Commodore 64. Temple of Apshai, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (text based) , Archon, BC's Quest for Tires and another text based game that was a whodunit but I can't remember the name. We bought our first NES in 85 or 86. I remember my wife's dad had one too. He had the robot version and we had the light gun model.
That's neat. I was off to college when the NES came out. For some reason, no one at school had one and I didn't even know it existed until '95 or so when I started getting back into gaming.
In 1984 I was waiting patiently to be born. That was my older brother's year lol.
I love how the text in that Mario Bros. ad rhymes. It's like...why? Also, I guess that's the first precursor to Mario Is Missing 
Ha! Neat. I didn't notice the rhyming 'til you mentioned it. Luigi is such a wuss.
Not sure if I was playing mario brothers yet (I think we got that later), but I was playing alot of atari and commodore 64 games at the time. I remember loving mario brothers when we did get it. It was a really fun game to play with my brother.
We also had frogger 2 for C64 and I really enjoyed it at the time, but since I haven't played it in many years I don't know if it was actually a good game or not.
The C64 was apparently a very cool PC to have. I guess if I had been interested in computers in school back then, I might have encountered one, but I wasn't, and so I've never used one.
I was 24 and My Atari 2600 was my console and from 84 to 86 gaming was looking bleak but back then i was in a band and was more involved in drums then video games lol!!!
Yea, I was a sports nut, playing a lot of Baseball and Tennis. Somehow I found the time to bike down to the arcades in the Mall and play Wizardry on Sundays however.
The arcades was the thing back then sinastar stargate lol!!
Every darn night, all I hear in my dreams is "Beware, I live" and "I hunger, coward". Someone make it stop!
I am wondering if that ad was in one of the few comics I read back then (Spider-Ham, anyone?) because it really looks familiar, especially the final panel.
The Mario Bros. arcade cab is kind of cool. Has the same design as the other Nintendo cabs but was wider to accommodate two players.
Nice! I know I must've seen that cabinet in the Mall arcades. They had so many games there. I guess I played Donkey Kong ('81), then Donkey Kong Jr. ('82) and then missed out on Mario Bros. ('83). Maybe since that was the year I got my driver's liscense, I stopped playing kid's games and grew up. Ha ha ha ha! Seriously, I crack me up sometimes.
In '84 I was 7, and every once in a while my folks would give me one or two quarters and take me to arcade in the mall (I miss the smell, and sounds of mall arcades). I would play the sit down version of Pole Position, and the folks would push down on the pedals while I drove.
I miss the mall arcades too. There's a Dave & Busters in mall near me, but it's not quite the same thing. They don't have the games I want to play either.
1983 was 9 years before I was born. My dad was 13. I wasn't even a sperm in 1983 lol.
Maybe you had a past life in '84? One in which you were a grumpy old man cussin' the kids for playin' their newfangled TV games. Or maybe you were an arcade owner who was an ex-video game designer. Ex because your chief rival stole your games and then fired you. So you hacked into the company's computer, only to be digitized by the Master Control Program... wait... that's Tron ('82).
Yep. In my past life I was Jeff Bridges.
I frickin' knew it!
I think my dad and mom were in their teens then, they probably didn't even meet each other yet.
And game advertisements these days dont have the spunk that they used to! Nowadays all they do is show you a picture and a logo, and expect you to buy the game. There are no words, screenshots, or anything!
Yea, modern ads are so uncreative. They just show the main character in some action pose with the game's name over top. Dull dull dull.