Crazy Console ads

[David]

Amazing what we did for marketing during the early console days. What other ads can you find? 

[David]

It really is too funny how our marketing has changed from the 70's / 80's to now.

Searching shows just how sexist it was. Old Video Game Ads

Just a few of the ads that  I found for games I played and starting off with one of my early computers I had.

[Drew Dowdell]

 

[David]

18 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

 

Wish I could put two emojis on this as the first would be laughing at the womans computer. The rest is straight up awesome cause even Nasa woman were some of the first programmers over guys. Very cool.

[Drew Dowdell]

This was a spoof if you didn't realize

[oldshurst442]

Maybe not crazy console ads, but crazy computer '80s stuff just the same...

 

[David]

10 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

This was a spoof if you didn't realize

LOL, I figured it was but still would have to LOL at the womans computer and like the rest, after all if we nerds did not dream up some crazy stuff, where would we be today.

Still two thumbs up for entertaining.  

4 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

Maybe not crazy console ads, but crazy computer '80s stuff just the same...

 

When has the computer industry not been purely sexual!

[Robert Hall]

Here's some fun old ads...

 

Had I been born a decade or so earlier, this one below could have been me.... a cool dude working on a Cray Supercomputer...

 

Or working here...Lawrence Livermore Lab in the 70s...

Edited March 25, 2019 by Robert Hall

[Drew Dowdell]

12 hours ago, Robert Hall said:

Here's some fun old ads...

 

Had I been born a decade or so earlier, this one below could have been me.... a cool dude working on a Cray Supercomputer...

 

Or working here...Lawrence Livermore Lab in the 70s...

You probably have more storage on your Macbook than in those computers combined. 

[Robert Hall]

I’m sure.  I would think programming would have been difficult in the space constrained earlier years...not to mention the punched card user interfaces.. I do remember working with green screen terminals in college..

[oldshurst442]

@Robert Hall

You are a computer geek, huh?

Nothing wrong wit dat!  Full respect! 

I regret that I did not become a computer geek myself.  I begged my parents to buy this for me

and one XMAS morning in 1982 or 1983,  that was under our tree.  I would end up having at least 60 games for it over the course of 7 years.  Including this game

 

And so I went the video game route, rather than the programming one.  A friend of mine had the Commodore VIC 20

But truth be told, I found the Vic 20 pretty boring.   

What amazes me is, though, is that, as a young kid, becoming a teenager and coming of age in the 1980s, I had the time to:  learn to play the guitar, learn to build plastic model airplane kits,  play sports big time and coming home late because of it, play video games, listen to music,  indulge in movies by going to the movie theater or renting VHS movies and going to school AND doing my homework. And I had time to do all that more or less at the same time.  My friends too. And other kids that were not my friends. We stayed active and I do not see that kind of motivation with most kids today.  And...to say, that, we had the same 24 hours in a day that kids have got today...

What went sooooo horribly wrong the last 30 years or so? 

Edited March 26, 2019 by oldshurst442

[Robert Hall]

I really never got much into video games as a kid and teenager in the 80s, but became fascinated by software and making it all work..programming languages, operating systems, compilers..first with a Commodore 64, then TRS-80s, then UNIX workstations in college and grad school.  Though I did contemplate becoming a math major and becoming an academic before getting into web development in the mid 90s..

[oldshurst442]

I always found these ads sooooo funny!

 

 

[David]

I had 3 paper routes to support my video game addiction.  Yet with that, I still went to medical school first before going back to school after a personal tragedy happened and getting a degree in Sales and Marketing and then deciding to take my hacker fascination with computers as my career. Been in storage ever since from Digital Computer Corporation to Compaq, to Microsoft, to way too many startups to name, then Legato, bought out by EMC, left to go back to Startups, then got bought out by Brocade, back to startups, then to bought out by EMC, stayed, bought out by Dell and still here. LOL

Love my Storage Job. Course I can say I am happy to have been a part of bringing you the Cloud. If you lose something, not my problem

[Robert Hall]

Living in the Seattle area, have you done a gig at Amazon?   Recruiters at Amazon are always pinging me about opportunities with AWS and their other enterprise products...

[David]

30 minutes ago, Robert Hall said:

Living in the Seattle area, have you done a gig at Amazon?   Recruiters at Amazon are always pinging me about opportunities with AWS and their other enterprise products...

Hi Robert, I can honestly say that while I have never worked there, it is an amazing company that one needs to be single to work for. Single people who sign on usually get either a signing bonus or stock grants that mature over 4 years. Depending on the group you work in, it can either be the traditional 40 to 60 hrs a week or 80 plus. Decent pay and a big pay out at the end of 4 years, though Amazon is famous for adding stocks to keep you there longer.

The reason I say single is that I have a better work life balance at Dell than I would at Amazon. Every person I know that is / was married either left and came back here to save their marriage or ended up divorced and focused on their career and the money they could make.

All depends on what you want to achieve. Amazon makes life very easy with their food stores all over the city here where you have the app on your cell phone and walk in, browse, grab what you want and walk out, no checkouts, pretty cool weird shopping experience. They also have everything in house from dentist, doctors, dry cleaning, etc. Amazon very much like Google, want you to be at your desk working all the time, so make everything else very easy for their workers.

Amazon is a BIG BIG BIG Dog loving company, they built dog parks for their employees to play with their dogs during breaks around the city here and you can have them at your desk. Dogs are 6,000 strong at the HQ here and have benefits on par to humans. Crazy.

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/photos-amazon-opens-dog-park-next-spheres-employees-public/

https://www.thisdogslife.co/amazons-dog-friendly-headquarters-6000-pups-strong/

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/how-much-does-amazon-love-dogs-just-ask-one-of-the-6-000-pups-that-work-here

Dog lover like you would love it there.

My son's girlfriend works there and has a decent work life balance, but I know it is her group she is in. So take it with a grain of salt, Amazon could be the best company you ever worked for or it could be hell, heck even somewhere in between. Good luck if you decide to talk to them.

[Robert Hall]

I have heard a variety of good and bad about them...I've used AWS and other products for years, so I know their technology is solid.   Who knows, maybe in a few years I'll be ready for a change of scenery.  I like being back in NE Ohio for now but there are pragmatic reasons I'm here that will eventually be worked out and I'd be open to moves down the road..I do miss some aspects of living in the West (not the desert).  

[David]

3 minutes ago, Robert Hall said:

I have heard a variety of good and bad about them...I've used AWS and other products for years, so I know their technology is solid.   Who knows, maybe in a few years I'll be ready for a change of scenery.  I like being back in NE Ohio for now but there are pragmatic reasons I'm here that will eventually be worked out and I'd be open to moves down the road..I do miss some aspects of living in the West (not the desert).  

We would always be happy to have you in Seattle, one big multicultural melting pot of friendly liberal people.

[frogger]

I remember starting out on the Vic 20 and then the Commodore 64 and Amiga before going to the MS Dos/Windows world.. Typing out the code they included in the back of Compute! magazine...

https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-gallery/commodore-compute-magazines-issue-1-through-43/

Picked up a dirt cheap used Wii U and bunch of kid friendly games for my 5 year old a few weeks ago.

 

 

[David]

I remember coding on my Pet and saving it all to cassette. I do have to admit, while I never dealt with punch cards and the nightmare if you dropped them of getting them back in order. My first coding was on an HP server that used a Ribbon punch programming methode. It was crazy how big a reel one could get depending on how you coded your program.

[Robert Hall]

Cool...never programmed on anything like that, my first experiences were BASIC then Pascal on TRS-80s in high school...then in college got into C and UNIX, working on a variety of workstations...even did COBOL on a Vax green screen..

[Drew Dowdell]

I paid for my computer games with a job at Egghead Software... yes, I really was (am) an Egghead.