Toys R Us Atari 2600 Commercial from 1981

[iamspider]

Ludwig von Drake?

[astroass34]

Wow, pretty expensive back then.

[lucario197able]

I got mine and 10 games for 5 bucks at a garage sale. :P

[Matlike1]

This was like gold back in the day.

[GustavoMsTrashCan]

Opinions =/= facts. And thus, people tend to confuse between difficulty with having fun. So does thinking that graphics provides more ways of entertaining than a game with variety.

In short: Humankind Is doomed.

[Matlike1]

@GustavoMsTrashCan so is your social life.

[daniel69725]

toys R us , fue donde dross compro por primera vez FF7 !

[AnubisMusicOfficial]

lol My family owned a bunch of Toys R Us stocks when they first came out.

Why?

My Great-Grandmother pointed to a stock on my Great-Grandfather's table and said "Buy a LOT of those stocks! What a cute name!"

[WBVIEW]

Gene Wilder

[TheCatandOwlandBat]

$139.84? $18.87? WTF kind of prices are those?

[xPixelDudeX]

@astrangedave haha epic

[DragonxxxFan]

HELMUT the Bird! O__O

[lxassassinxl]

how much would a game like halo or modern warfare or god of war gone for back then? theyre brains would explode with such epicness

[MrCorporalTunnel]

@lxassassinxl

Processing power was an evolutionary process that pretty much followed Moore's law to the letter. Had microprocessors been invented in the 40's, we would have had Modern Warfare by the 80's. I'll bet cavemen's heads would have exploded looking at a TV screen with an Atari hooked up or even listening to Edison's phonograph, but such comments are an exercise in pointlessness.

[SacreligousTurkey]

HA GOT MINE AT THE BLIND STORE FOR 4 DOLLERS!!!!!!!!!!

[TheYids1]

00:03 i swear he says Bin Laden.

[SethGreenMachine2010]

@TheYids1 I find it ironic that he is dead now after that comment!

[TheBelieverAmen]

Grandma the clown was a professor???

[jacksonutton]

he's lost it

[SunsetSupermanRMB]

$37 for a game cartridge was expensive in 81, I remember.

[MistrEgg]

139.84....that's random

[Myjuiceisveryfine]

$18.97 to $36.97. What an awkward price range.

[SoaringEagle2005]

That vaguely looks like and definitely sounds like Greg Proops when he does the German accent on Whose Line..

[LtSticky]

ok the xbox 360 and the ps3 aside it is amazind how litle the price of new gaming concoles has changed ofver the years

[WebVMan]

Can I have some of your seeds... Cause I'm coo-coo! Coo-Coo!!!

[Sanosuke004]

Ah memories. I once walked the halls of the now empty 1196 borregas head office in 1989 in Sunnyvale! That was when I was just 17 and still a nerd with my atari 1040st. Even met with the head programmer who designed the atari st roms. Nogalistic indeed.

[Nasrotag]

Wow, $139.84 almost 30 years ago! Thats a lot of moola for something at the time was called a computer system and had awesome graphics. LOL! I remember spending a lot of time in front of my Atari. A friend of mine borrowed his kids retro atari to play with, and to be honest, we are very spoiled with what systems can do today, and I can't even bare to play the old Atari games anymore! Too funny how we have evolved!

[xXZayzeXx]

he say atali not atari lol

[gjc82071]

I remember this commercial as a kid! Years ago I actually had a dream about it! I was dreaming that I actually went to a similar school & played Atari all day. "Jeff, you need to focus & time the asteroids. Remember, you need 1 million points to pass this class. I am recommending 2hrs of "homework"/game play". Have your parents sign your score sheet". Then I woke to "Wake up!, You'll be late". Reality set in & it was off to Catholic school surrounded daily by shrill voiced Italian nuns.

[blingdaddy1]

Turdee six ninety seven

[NashinBledak]

sounds a litte expensive for the time...ummm

[PatTheNESpunk]

$139.84? Could they have chosen a more random price?

[gjc82071]

@PatTheNESpunk Ya know? When we bought ours on initial release in 1977, it cost $277 or around $800+ today! I was the 1st kid in school with 1.

[FreezeFilms12]

what a rip atari sold them for under 50 bucks

[Nasrotag]

@FreezeFilms12 They dropped the price when they were loosing a battle with Intellivision and Colecovision, plus at the time the economy was going into the tank, and game designers were getting hosed by the system companies.

[WebVMan]

2041: We'll be watching commercials for the 360 with Geometry Wars shown... or probably Halo 3.

[gjc82071]

@WebVMan Ya know? & THEN, imagine how the Atari, NES games will look!!! Like "cave drawings" I wonder if or when technology will ever reach the point where like, instead of (but similar to) a Star Trek "Holodeck", they have something that somehow interacts with your brain, inserting images/sounds, smell, touch, etc. Like an interactive "Total Recall". Since brain functions are electrical, a device that manipulates electric currents in the brain. The total sum/end game for "Virtual Reality".

[Nasrotag]

@WebVMan Heck, COD Black ops will be a joke in 30 years!

[jobocan]

@Nasrotag

Black Ops was already a joke before even coming out.

[megamormonman]

is that the guy that did the voice for that one short scientist duck for Disney?

[theonslaught]

From the thumbnail. I thought it was Estelle Getty.

[mahoromaticfan15]

thats funny, because now you can pick that stuff up for like 50 cents at the local flea market!

[SkoogGaming]

@mahoromaticfan15 on ebay alot of that stuff has retained its value

[Jabjabs]

If Dr Strangelove could walk this would be what he would be up to apparently.

[lightningturtle4]

NO MY SEEDS!!!!!!

[TheDutchGame]

Hitler???

[daro2096]

It was £199.99 in the UK as I remember.

[daro2096]

@daro2096

And one game was £29.99. In fact I remember them all were £30 each.

[ccricers]

What kind of teacher announces a pop quiz ahead of time?

[ClassicCommercials4U]

@ccricers I had a history teacher in high school who did that. He was also the girls' basketball coach, so teaching wasn't really a priority for him.

[RunandGunPictures]

@ccricers I had some that did it, but it would within the same session that he was teaching. Like a 20 minute heads up.

[QVrat123]

139.94 how much would that be today, around the same price of a $300 PS3 right, fair enough i guess

[mrpoe99]

why does mr. mad scientist man want the birdies seeds?

[RunandGunPictures]

@mrpoe99 Think that's more tweedy professor than mad scientist... And I think he wants the seeds, because he is hungry.

[TheBillbot]

What is up with those prices 87,86 97? now a days things are always 99.

[loetzfan]

This cannot be 1981. Asteroids was not for sale at that point. Besides, we paid $230 for ours in 1982, and that was the going price.

[ClassicCommercials4U]

I went by the copyright date at the beginning, which says 1981.

[motherthing]

@loetzfan Asteroids, CX2649, was completed in 1981; the cartridge has a 1981 copyright date. I don't know for certain when it hit the market, but I would suspect it was in time for Christmas 1981. The woodgrain 2600A (four switches, instead of 6 for the 2600) shown was produced in 1980-1981. By 1982, they dropped the woodgrain print.

[jb68025]

@loetzfan $230 in 1982? we got ours in feb 83 at Topps in NJ and paid $66. and asteroids came out for the 2600 in 81.

[yomanwazzap]

@loetzfan actually the 2600 was under 50$ US

[zettelschreck]

@yomanwazzap not in 1981

[Draknfyre]

@yomanwazzap

Like hell it was. You might be remembering when at the very end of the consoles life, they rereleased it for a $50 price tag, but the console was not $50 when it came out.

[SacreligousTurkey]

@loetzfan 230? GOD DAMN. wasnt the nes out then?

[carsonsmith]

awesome!!

[mystaplerisblue]

I seriously thought that was Estelle Getty when I saw the thumbnail of the video LOL.

[tronfan]

Atari VCS... it was re-badged "2600" with the release of the 5200 in 1982. I would point out how little video gaming has advanced in 30 years -- you're still just using a joystick to move something on a 2-D video display.

[chobot00]

umm...

can I have some of your seeds?

[jeremysart]

@chobot00 I was thinking the same thing

[ladd428]

SO expensive.

[bagladyssuck]

Artie Johnson.  Very Interesting but stupid

[liusproduction]

because Atari was the pioneer of the video game counsel.

[loveupskirts]

how did people think that technology was adavanced?

and intresting use of the german as a mad scientist.

ever since einstein and 'project paperclip" germans have been sterotyped as bonkers inventors.

[lordurias]

remember, there was no other home game console, so the idea was astounding

[Bokyotheturnip]

In 30 years, we'll be saying the same stuff for the xbox and ps3

[Nasrotag]

@Bokyotheturnip Very true! At the time, we thought "It cant get any better than this! I can't wait to see what 30 years will bring us! Of course, I will be 70, but I am sure I will still be gaming!

[magnus87]

@Bokyotheturnip but with HD Commercials xD

[Seiferzed]

@Bokyotheturnip fuck no ! thats a stupid assumption ... 16 bit games are just too fuckin retarded ! you can never say a game with a story and great graphics from PS3 or Xbox360 can ever be looked to like a friggin piece of shit floating and shooting other pieces of shit ...

[ClassicCommercials4U]

@Seiferzed I assume you mean early 8-bit games? (Atari 2600 and such) Because 16 bit means games on Super NES and Genesis, many of which had great stories.Hell, many later 8 bit games on NES had much better gameplay and stories than alot of modern games. Learn a little history, kid.

[Seiferzed]

@ClassicCommercials4U were you wearing your diapers while typing that comment ? and no stupid ! none of 8 bit games is much better than any modern game , you have to stop being a retard for your own sake ....

[MrCorporalTunnel]

@Seiferzed

It's all relative. There are no absolutes. For me, gameplay is most important. All eras have fun, playable games.

[Seiferzed]

@MrCorporalTunnel yea all eras have fun games but that doesn't mean you can compare a moving low res pixelated silly figure to a dead space realistic 3D character and environment , it does not make sense to think that we will look at that game like we are looking now to atari games , its just wrong ... we may have better games but we already have ones that are close to perfection !

[parkfun101]

@MrCorporalTunnel I agree! I have played games that look crappy (bad graphics), but are actually fun. I've also played awesome looking games, that have horrible gameplay. Video games are really an art form just like a movie, song, or a piece of artwork.

[fuzzywzhe]

@Bokyotheturnip "In 30 years, we'll be saying the same stuff for the xbox and ps3"

Probably not actually. Meade's law is no longer in effect. The speed of your computer today will be about the speed of your computer 10 years from now.

I'm using an AMD Athalon I bought in 2004, and I'm an electrical engineer. There are faster chips, but not much faster. From 1984 to 1991, the gains in computing power were astronomical.

[EXetoC]

@fuzzywzhe Modern CPU's have multiple cores, and each core is a lot faster than the CPU you have now.

[chunkybongo]

@fuzzywzhe i think Moore's Law is what you're referring to

[mukatuna]

Because thirty plus years ago, it was advanced technology. 160-180 years ago the steam engine was advanced technology. Every piece of technology was advanced at one time or another.