Advertainment 1: FCI's Super Exciting, Outerspace Video Games

Every year when December rolls around, there's a little something different in the air...something that's always there, but at this time of year it becomes a little more important, a little more in the forefront of our lives. Of course I'm talking about:

Advertisements!

So in that spirit, all December long I'm going to be looking at ~~old~~ classic NES advertisements I found in the back of some old "Conan" comic books. Enjoy!

Terrific News! Arcade Classics To Play At Home

The first thing you might notice -- aside from the dubious choices of capitalizing small words in the title like "To" and "At", and of calling these games "Arcade Classics", and I guess you'd probably notice the swell-sounding offer of a FREE $2 MagMax Poster (jeez, I wonder if that's still valid*) -- well, there's a lot going on.

*: sadly, "Offer expires Dec. 31, 1988"

But what I meant to say was, there's two fun aspects of this ad:

There's some amazing ad copy summarizing each game!
the pictures for these games is just a comic book-color-scheme simplification of the games' actual cover art.
Extra Bonus Fun Aspect: in the fine print, we learn "FCI" stands for "Fujisankei Communications International"! I haven't been so excited since I learned what TH*Q stands for!

Well then -- let's enjoy each game's ad copy & comic-book-ified cover art! I'll start with the one in the bottom-left corner, because I'm more familiar with it:

Seicross - the hype

In Seicross, you race a super space bike through an army of enemy suicide bikers. Gather Energy Packs to attack the Dinosaur Tank and rescue the captive Petras people

Racing a space bike? Pshaw!

Oh -- did you say it was a SUPER space bike? I'M THERE!

Seicross - the ink-n-paint version of the cover art

I appear to be riding a Tron lightcycle through a giant pinball machine, whilst being chased by those floor-buffer cars from the Reb Brown movie, Space Mutiny...but with lots of lasers!

Seicross - the reality:

Hmmm, I think I talked about the Energy Packs before...

and come to think of it, I also covered the Dinosaur Tanks as well!

Anything else?

Oh, an army of enemy suicide bikers, you say?

Done and done!

I guess they really hit the game's high points in their ad copy. They get a sore-Nintendo-controller THUMB'S UP for truth in advertising!

Ok, on to the other game:

MagMax - the Hype:

You take the controls of MagMax, the giant robot warrior, and fight a three-headed mechanical space monster trying to destroy the human race.

Oooo!

MagMax - the ink-n-paint version of the cover art:

Ahhh!

Wait, is MagMax holding a lightsaber and blowing up the central dragon monster with a groin laser?

In space, no one can hear you experience a painful burning sensation.

MagMax - the reality:

Well, you start as an itty-bitty spaceship...

But as you proceed, you CAN collect more and more parts of the MagMax robot for more firepower/hitpoints,

And if you're quick/lucky enough, you too may fight the three-headed mechanical ~~dragon~~ space monster using the entire Giant Robot Warrior (complete with groin laser!)

But usually the more pieces you get the bigger a target you are, so they get blown off pretty quickly.

And forget dramatically blowing space dragon heads off (with or without your groin-laser):

When you've shot it enough, there's an explosion,

Then it just goes inert (as indicated by the little twinkle going out of its eyes/pods/base hover-thingie) and you fly right over it. Can you call this moderately-upgradable space shooter game a Giant Robot Warrior vs. Mechanical Space Monster throwdown? I don't think so!

And I hate to kick a game while its down, but you're not even in space. You spend the game either rolling along the surface of a planet, or (after you drive over a featureless gray teleporter pad) flying through caverns under the planet's surface.