'The best Sega Fanboy video ever. Recorded in 1992'

I've just today been emailed over this huge 2 hour archive of Sega footage from UK TV in 1992, recorded on video back in the day and compiled now 20 years later by Youtube user DodgyKebaab. He wrote:

Hello, I used to be a huge Sega Fanboy back in the early 90's and I used to make VHS tapes of anything Sega related that I saw on TV.  Video game shows, TV adverts, promo tapes I managed to get my hands on, etc. All the footage is from British TV because that's where I live, anyway you can see the whole 2 hours worth of Sega rare footage here.

Included is clips from TV shows like Gamesmaster, Bad Influence and High Five, an ITV news report about the lanuch of Sonic 2, Chris Evans and the puppets Zig and Zag on the Big Breakfast show talking about the Mega CD and other games, promotional videos of games (one of which I recall owning), an episode of Adventures of Sonic and more. It's quite a mess, some adverts are featured several times in a row, and some are of Lego and other things, but well worth watching.

This right here is my childhood. List of highlights after the jump.

Early '80's SEGA Ads Are... Interesting.

Thanks to the awesome free to use television archive site fuzzymemories.tv, operated by The Museum of Classic Chicago Television, I came across three very old SEGA ads for games released to arcades, Atari and ColecoVision consoles. That's right, these are pre-Master System ads! Funny how SEGA was a publisher then, and they're a publisher now. When you think about it, SEGA really wasn't in the console business for long when you look at their entire history as a company.

After the break, check out three old ads!

French commercials! Why not?

Remember ages back when we showed you a European commercial that made the game Gear look as though it ran Mega Drive games? Well this commercial from France isn't quite in that leauge of false advertising but it's still a blatant lie. The ad is for Sonic Complication and features footage of Sonic 1, 2 and 3. Sonic 3 wasn't on this cart at all, it had Robotniks Mean Bean Machine as it's third game. Yeesh. The commercial uses clips from that 'Sonic the Ride' animation most of us saw for the first time on Sonic Jam, a collection that did have Sonic 3. Man there's been so many Sonic collections now it's hard to keep up.

Let's rewind a little to this commercial from France for Sonic 1. There's a few of these ads with some biker punk straight out of Fist of the North Star getting pummeled by random things (here's one for Moonwalker, and another for Revenge of Shinobi), but this one is most notable for the I presume beta footage of the game with some very odd differences like the first boss having a spinning red ball and a spring shooting out really far. I'm sure Sonic Retro already analyzed the hell out of this footage but for those who haven't seen it before it sure is bizarre.

I suspect both the previous and this slightly later campaign cost Sega Europe a lot of money, what with all the explosions and special effects. This one above kind of reminds me of the pretentious Sega launch ad we had in the UK, only this is for the Terminator and looks like it almost cost as much as the movie itself to make. Here's a similar one for that crappy Indiana Jones game, and another for Super Monaco GP.Throw tons of money into a commercial = make tons of money! That's the 90's Sega way! Didn't that tactic work out well? :S

Finally here's an ad of a doll being crushed by a over priced pointless pain to set up mushroom shaped lump called a Sega 32X. Oh, and the slogan for all these commercials translates out to 'Sega is stronger than you'. Probably because every commercial involves the player getting his arse kicked. I guess it's still not as obnoxious as the pissing contest Sega had against Nintendo in America..

Did i mention I just picked up a 32X recently, a well as a Pico? Oh wait, I've been a lazy bum and have been letting Barry do all the work around here recently, haven't I? :E

The oldest Sega Commercials Youtube can offer

You probably already knew this, but the infamous 'SEGA!' voice wasn't first used at the start of Sonic 1, but in fact many years earlier in commercials on Japanese TV as far back as 1983! Hunting around Youtube you can find plenty of just-about watchable recording of some of these relics of Sega advertising, starting with this collection of ads selling Sega's first ever console the SG-1000. Oh, and you may want to watch this with your fingers in your ears at the start, as they may hurt otherwise.

Another lazy commercial videos post!

The 'Genesis' is 20 years old from it's American release this week so why not?



This is a promo video presumably from 1989/90, before Sonic had even shown up. It's pretty long as it's a collection of commercials stringed together, but at least skip to 3:27 for the hilariously bad Stallone impression the narrator makes when talking about Rambo III.

This one is from Australia sometime around 1994/5 I'd imagine, when dodgy looking 3D animation like this was all the range. Vaguely interesting notes: the Ren & Stimpy footage shown is from an early beta build of the game, which you can find floating around the 'net' (which according to this Sega created). The beta is extremely basic with almost non existent level design and backgrounds. Also, when it talks about turning into Super Sonic in Sonic 3, doesn't that sound an awful lot like who currently voices Sonic in the modern games? Just a coincidence of course.



And yes, if you didn't already know in Australia they really do pronounce Sega as 'See-ga'. I wonder if the Aussie version of the Sonic games changed the logo voice to that. Probably not. This ad above for the master System is mainly notable for the rather ace rendition of the After Burner music. I also like how you could rent a Master System console in a sweet Sega branded suitcase of sorts.



Oh hey, here's some more Pirate TV ads I haven't linked to before! Above is a musical number about the Cyber Razor cut, and below is a rather bizarre shower scene Game Gear ad. Still my favorite Sega ad campaign of the lot.

Some odd Commercials to kill some brain cells

Can't say I've seen these before, but the first video above popped up on Destructoid and it's advertising the Mega Drive to the public of India, starring a rather bizarrely voiced Sonic invading a kid's TV to BLOW HIM AWAY with Sega. Sega Who? WRONG ANSWER.



Next up is a commercial for Sonic Spaghetti (of all things) and what could of possibly of been one of Sega's many rejected mega Drive add on ideas: a food can holder thing that transports food from the screen into your gob. Yeah..



Speaking of Sonic junk food, here is what I presume is just a short snippit of a commercial for Sonic 3 life savers, that or it's the shortest most confusing commercial ever. Blink and you'll miss it, which is hardly a bad thing as when you do see it you might not be able to sleep tonight.



Darn it, as I'm writing this article I keep finding more oddities I haven't seen before. Here's one for one of those terrible Sonic Tiger handhelds. I had a few of these, unfortunately. They were barely playable and made horrid noises. Sega put there name on a whole slew of these, from After Burner to Virtua Fighter and even a Virtua Cop one that had a little gun you point at it's screen. Some were slightly better than others, but that's not saying much. Still, they're quite collectable now so i might write an article about them one day.

More Sega Pirate TV ads!

The British Sega TV ad campain from the early 90's is under rated on this here internet of ours. Fussy old clips of the American Sega commercials from the same time are everywhere for all to see, but the UK ones are harder to track down. Thanks to the odd Youtuber such as SegaMarkUK and Chrisofthetube though, they are slowly all being dug up again so they can give a new generation of viewers a good headache or a healthy old seizure. To say many of these make little sense and are batshit insane is probably a bit of an under statement.



First off, some huge budget epic, probably shown at half time of footie matches, that has Pirate TV regular Steve O'Donnell AKA Spudgun from Bottom fighting mutant pigs using a mega Drive II and games like Street Fighter II and Shinobi III amongst others, with the mega CD 2 thrown in for good (or bad, which ever way you look at it) measure. "This is the end!...and this is the other end!" Yes, I have no idea what they were thinking with this commercial either.



As if that commercial wasn't baffling enough, here's one for Sonic Spinball that blows your brains out with subliminal nonsense before finally showing off the game itself, all flashing by with rock music in 20 seconds flat.



The Mega Drive Aladdin game next, and much like the last one it whizzes by so quickly you barely get a chance to take anything in. It kind of looks like an episode of the Games master on fast forward. In this case the American ad was actually better because you know, it made sense.



This rather earlier one, when the campaign was a little less noisy, has that bloke on the rotating chair telly thing again talking us through the first Sonic game, which then goes into some odd ninja action scene and some guy that sounds a bit like Benny Hill talking over the top with Monty Python style animation.



Finally, an extended and very high quality transfer of that Mega CD commercial I linked to before, with a whole lot more brilliant animation of the skull character and more shit interactive games being shown off. £270? No wonder no one bought the bloody thing. One again, I have no idea what's going on by the time it goes into some war movie parody, but then again, either do the guys singing in it by the sounds of it. I think this could be the explanation as to way Sega eventually went close to bankruptcy, this commercial must of cost a bomb.

Random odd fact: While Sega had Steve O'Donnell as a regular for their 90's ads. Nintendo in the UK went with another star of Bottom: Rik Mayall. Oo-er.

A Goldmine of Sega Marketing waffle!

UK: Resistance, the original Sega nutters website and one of the main inspirations behind this blog, have stumbled across a video that pretty much sums up everything that made Sega so huge in the UK back in the 16-bit era, particularly in 1994. This two video spilt into two parts for Youtube and submitted there by Shenmueaddit, gives us a glimpse into all the marketing pies Sega had their fingers in at the time, from TV commercials (Remember the Pirate TV campaign I told you about? You'll see more of it here), radio competitions (Sonic CD music on the radio, folks!), merchandise, that awful Right Said Fred song, the Sega tour buses, the food promotions (Sonic tomato ketchup!), even the sponsorship with Damon Hill!

This, my friends, is why Sega ruled the world (or at least the UK), during my childhood. These videos pretty much sum up what this blog is all about, and the exact kind of content I've been looking for. If anyone can recall and bring up details on any of the stuff seen here (like photos, videos, magazine scans etc), please send it my way and I'll be more than happy to share it here. =)

Pirate TV: Best Sega Europe Ad-campaign ever.

A La Kat Food? Ecco Washing Powder? The Cyber Razor Cut? What the bloody hell am I talking about?

(Click for a news snippet out of...where else? Sonic the Comic. Issue 2, to be precise.)

More after the jump..

Educational Outrun and False Advertising