Just came across an old advertisement for Quake and laughed pretty hard. Some background: The German ratings agency is a lot more sensitive to violence than other rating agencies. If a game gets a 18+ rating, that means that the game can not be shown in public (yes, that includes the box) and that it can't be advertised. This ad was actually published before Quake got a rating. But knowing that it would eventually get the feared 18+ rating, and that nothing short of completely rewriting the game would change that, id's ad agency decided to make fun about how this was a game "only for adults", by using the style and descriptions usually found on family games like Monopoly.
Do you have similar memories of other campaigns? How about some pictures, then...

By far, the greatest advertisement campaign was for Daikatana. It was just a black page with the words JOHN CARMACK IS ABOUT TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH or something along the lines of that. Didn't even say the damn title of the game.
Edit: Whoops, John Romero. I thought of the wrong gaming legend. :)

Never seen that one, but a google search brought up plenty of results. Maybe it wasn't published in Germany (Daikatana appeared at a time when most people, including me, got their news out of magazines... you know ... paper). Kinda sad if you remember the game ... it wasn't bad, but it wasn't going to... what the ad said.
Image attached.

There was an ad on here for Oddworld that was brilliant.

well Atari ones spring instantly to mind, lovely artwork on the box, somewhat less so in the game
: [url=http://neatorama.cachefly.net/images/2008-05/space-invaders-atari.gif]Game
: [url=http://ultraorange.net/media/2008/06/gaming-atari-empire-strikes-back-2600.jpg]Game
Sure made us enthusiastic about the games so I guess they were good ads. That was back in the day they could legitimately say you have to use your imagination to do the 16x antialiasing though, assuming your brain supported it...

Some of the old 80's era comics I have stashed someplace have... game adverts.
What's odd about them is the poor job they did of communicating just what the game was.
I remember seeing one of Streets of Rage, thinking it was a shoddy knockoff of Street Fighter. The entire page was hand drawn pictures (roughly 30 or 40) of the main characters fighting *each other*. And a chunk of text at the bottom with legal jargon.
Things did improve into the 1990s.

Love the Quake ad.
I saw a similar one in a UK edition of PC Gamer, with a grandmother serving up a steaming apple pie (which featured a quake logo instead of the normal 3 slits).
From memory, the text was "just like mom used to make".

This confirms that the entire continent of Japan has a secret stash of drugs that they are not willing to share with the rest of the world.

Anybody remember the *original* Legend of Zelda advertisements by Nintendo waaaaaaay back in the 80's???
Zelda!!!. That's what I'm talking about.

hot linking is not allowed

Here you go...

I agree fully to this.

Damn, they must have loaded from my cache when I previewed the post. Thanks.
After opening those fabulous exciting boxes (remember it was the early 80s, easier to impress people back then), you got the kind of fun pictured in the attached screenshots
Ahh just looking at that picturesque flamingo pink hoth sky takes me back...

Anyone remember The Power Glove from Nintendo?? Yes it's still bad ...so bad!