I recommend this Mastodon account for more retro ads l: https://botsin.space/@gamemagprintads
This is great! Followed.
They were going with a “sex sells” approach to marketing, but what they got was just an unrelatable and cringe piece of 90s trash.
Never played it, did they fuck up the triangles?
That shiny green top is definitely not as sexy irl
Yeah I’ve seen several IRL actresses portraying classic Lara Croft as wearing like a polished vinyl top for some reason?
It’s like older superhero movies with spandex. No imagination.
Well I mean, Superman’s costume is pretty unusual. People don’t dress like that, so when you turn to your wardrobe department and say “make me a Superman costume” there’s some head scratching.
Lara Croft wears a tank top, shorts, a pistol belt, white socks and boots. Extremely easy cosplay to source, but so many folks interpret Lara’s shirt as some stiff glossy plastic, I guess because that pre-rendered cover art of the first game looked shinier than cloth?
Superman wore a carnival strongman’s outfit. That’s why he’s got the trunks. They just added a full sleeve shirt and leggings to it.
But yeah all you need for Lara Croft is a tank top, short shorts, and some belts.
I remember TR3 was a huge disappointment after 1 and 2. The new mechanics weren’t very good and the level design was more confusing. I remember they added the Desert Eagle pistol and it was a giant brick (seriously the model consisted of probably 3-4 polygons total).
It really felt like they were just milking the franchise at that point.
milking lara croft? 🤔
let’s not kink shame…
This is a case study in the phenomenon where reading comprehension drops at the mention of Lara Croft
Holy fuck, where to start haha
Pretty amusing to see what they were up to with ads.
I guess it really was a different time back then where people were able to laugh about things instead of being uptight and serious.
Is there a reason they used the “You wouldn’t download a car” font?
Default late-90s design intern font.
Tomb Raider 3 came out in 1998. Well before the anti-piracy campaigns.
Gen X edgy font?
The entire design is just janky somehow.
Also, do y’all remember the time Arby’s of all people used this concept for an ad? It was a TV commercial, we see a guy waiting on a bed and hear a woman’s voice from the bathroom “This is really what you want? Well I’m only doing it once.” and she comes out dressed as an Arby’s cashier with a tray of meat sandwiches.
Hmm, 1998. Is that Gen. X or Millenials? Makers are Gen. X, target group probably Millenials.
I thought they were cringy even then.
I was hitting puberty, this was prime material
Media today might be less sexist but I think part of it is also that it became drastically more sex averse. Mortal Kombat is gorier than ever for anyone to see, but god forbid anything shows a nipple.
The thing that gets me about the Tomb Raider reboot is they toned down the sex appeal, but apparently graphically brutalizing Lara is perfectly okay.
Sexy Lara: Sexist!
Beating the ever loving shit out of Lara: Not sexist!
Characters with big breasts must be inherently sexist, or else we can’t explain why characters who used to have big breasts now need to have them toned down.
However, it’s perfectly okay if the supposedly feminist prequel you’re going to release has references to the female player character being about to be sexually abused if you lose, because nothing speaks about female empowerment like threatening the player with turning their character into a SA victim if they don’t play well enough.
Man, 90s video game ads were wild lmao
I’ll fight anyone who says 1998 is retro. I’m getting old, but give me a few more years damn.
Bro, we lost that fight. I was watching a Youtube video of a guy clearing games from his Steam backlog and introduced one with, “So, many of you watching probably weren’t alive when this game came out. Everyone talks about what a classic this is, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has actually played this game.”
I died a little inside when it turned out he was talking about the first Half-Life.
Those few years between 1992-1998 were as … game-changing … for games as probably the two decades that followed. We started it with side scrollers, Dune and Doom and ended it with Diablo II, StarCraft and Half-Life.
I spent sooooooooo much time on StarCraft and Diablo II. First video game I remember playing was Wolfenstein 3D, then Duke Nukem. Found RTS soon after.
I remember upgrading my PC from 4MB to 8MB, just to be able to play Duke3D, cost me a pretty penny as well
Blizzard used to give me such warm fuzzies.
Now they just price gouge you, and sexuality harass the employees.
Bro, 2010 is retro now
You are a bad person.
Why must you be so hurtful.
I launched Arkham Asylum on steam earlier this week and it recommended a 9800GTX lmao.
1GB ram, 2GB if you were running Vista.
We’re gonna have to rethink definitions at some point. Yes, video games are still a comparatively new medium, but nobody would call a 2010 film a retro film, nevermind books or paintings.
I define “retro” as anything made before an average Army Private was born, so about 19-20 years. By this standard, games released in the early 80’s were retro when the current generation of Privates was born, so how do we call that ? I propose the term “paleogaming” for those.
By that definition, 9/11 is retro.
If in 1998 you would have argued that 1972 is retro, then I’m sorry to tell you that 1998 is retro
No, you’re retro! runs away sobbing
I am retro. You have no power here.
Embrace it! Gonna happen anyhow whether you want it to or not
I’ve hurt my hip. Leave me alone.
Come, now. Let’s settle you down for your 3rd nap, huh?
I understand saying you don’t feel like 2010 is retro, but 1998? That’s been retro for a long time. You’re in a really extreme place in your head when you stick to not calling something that’s 25 years old retro.
Hate to break it to you, but they play rock from the 90s and 00s on the CLASSIC rock stations now.
Hell, I can remember when the word retro meant something new inspired by something older. Now it just means old / classic.
Bro that’s so last century
Last millennium, even.
You mean the late 1900’s
You and me both, but to be fair it’s a year closer to the creation of console gaming to modern day. So I’ll let it pass.
People who call my music vintage or classic can get right the fuck back, though.
Why does she looks like Aphex Twin?
Come to daddy
Come to Daddy
Fun fact Tomb Raider was the first game with a nude mod.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_content_in_video_games
Tomb Raider came out in 1996
I did a search on that page for “mod” and didn’t seem to get any relevant hits. What were you referring to?
I don’t remember a mod but I seem to remember that Gamepro magazine would sometimes parody their own magazine calling themselves “Lamepro” followed by a few pages of fake upcoming games, a nude Lara Croft I think was part of all that.
It has been years, but there was this whole easter egg thing about when you dive off a certain spot into the pool in her mansion she gets back out naked. They always put in a bunch of different easter egg challenges in her house.
I’m still waiting for John Romero to make us all his bitch.
He can’t do it without his friend Superfly.
The early 00s was pretty mysoginistic.
I originally came from a conservative country, and yet there were plenty of ads for softcore porns in TVs and billboards in those days. Even as a child, I questioned why do they show such images in front of full view to everyone.
The thing is, such mysoginy was the norm without us even realising it. I remember reading an article of a woman reminiscing her college days in early 00s. There were pictures of college girls on pin up boards and they get graded on how beautiful they are. The author said no one thought bad about it but looking back, it was very degrading and also invading privacy. There was also the matter of the infamous wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson. She got all the public spotlight afterwards because she is a woman, but Justin Timberlake pretty much got away with it for free. JT also shamed Britney Spears about losing her virginity to him, instead of keeping his mouth shut, while Britney was branded as slut.
I’m sure in the 2040s, people will say the 2020s were misogynistic too. And they’ll be right. Equality isn’t here yet.
Progress always seems to mostly march onwards, but you only have to watch Beverly Hills Cop 2 to see Eddie Murphy calling Brigitte Neilsen “that big bitch” like it was perfectly acceptable. And even that was probably considered pretty forward thinking at the time having a woman being cast in an action role, rather than just being fucked or fridged like pretty much every other 80s action movie.
This. The funny thing is some folks think that progress just happens. The amount of people who died or ruined their lives in the name of progress is baffling to me.
Worth considering that if Alien was produced today, there would be a lot of criticism of it being “too woke”. Not only progress doesn’t just happen, but it’s also not granted to stick unless people are still pushing for it.
Absolutely no doubt. In coding they say „regression“ is something breaks after and update. Its no different from the real world imo.
You focus on fixing issues, if the only peeps caring about progress are the ones profiting from hate, chaos and fear, the things we took for granted go away.
I think science will come up with an explanation for this. Boomers hoarding all the wealth was quite possible but somehow its no longer discussed. I dont get why.
The Man Show was on air for 6 consecutive seasons starting in 1999. Their premier episode featured Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel sitting outside trying to get people to sign a petition to end women’s suffrage (as a joke, bro. Obviously it’s a joke!)
Was that not just to take advantage of the fact that “suffrage” sounds like a bad thing (like “suffering”)?
Exactly, playing on people’s ignorance like current talk show on-the-street segments do. The joke was not that they thought women shouldn’t be able to vote… It is just humorous to hear people say they are anti-sufferage not understanding what theyre saying.
It’s like asking people if they are afraid of dihydrogen monoxide in their water…
yeah the whole Janet Jackson thing wouldn’t have happened today
Since she’s a a Tomb Raider, a dungeon crawler, a spelunker, does that mean he wants her to peg him? Color me interested.
