Yes it’s true. This site hosts the comprehensive list of all VG TV spots from the dawn of gaming till now. Searchable, indexed by platform or country of origin, and thumbnailed in a well designed and navigable format, this is the ad critic for VGs. Sweet holy nostalgia.

Thank you Beauchamp for bringing GamePressure.com to my attention. I’ve just wasted an hour of my life watching the zany Japanese commercial for Katamari Damacy, laughing at the doomed 64 bit Atari Jaguar , and scratching my head over the German Commercial for the SNES title “Smerfs” (roughly translated to English, that’s “Smurfs”) .

The Atari Pitfall commercial is the one spot I recall the most from my childhood - a spokesman with horrible hair and an even worse suit (but buzzy attitude!) attempts to retain ownership of his pitfall game cartridge from the klepto stagehands reachin-in from offscreen. Oh the hilarity and zaniness of it all! ‘Makes me want to buy the game all over again. That guy has zip!

Then there’s the Cosmic Ark. The costume designer for this spot over-committed his portrait of the American - je ne sais quai… ‘cool dork’. This kid can hardly bear the weight of his own clothes. Or maybe he’s just meant to personify the Cosmic Ark itself which also remains large, red, motionless and relatively unanimated. Gotta love the old school.

It’s odd though - not all of these commercials are filmed in any of the same style. Today we’re somewhat used to game commercials bordering on somewhat of the surreal. Most don’t even show gameplay, but instead extract one element of the game and place into everyday life. Ratchet and Clank: Up your Arsenal’s shock blaster commercial comes immediately to mind. (It’s funny actually, one of Steve’s friends reminds of Chris but with more hair. But maybe that’s because I can picture that Chris would do something like this in real life if given the chance, and also maybe because Chris is also a touch of surreal, too.)

Back in the day things were much, much, more business-like. Check out this little ditty about the Gravitar. It’s more like an infomercial than a commercial.. selling a single title arcade machine as if it were a car or a TV. This marketing approach ultimately short lived but probably had to be done at some point. Perahaps this promo was shown at arcade tradeshows? Its hard to tell

Anyway - there are tons of videos here. One of the site’s taglines is “We got 2479 classic and contemporary videogame TV commercials.” The text ‘2479′ is highlighted in friendly ‘hamburgers-served yellow. I don’t know for a fact if this site hosts the comprehensive list of VG Commercials from all time. But 2479 is way more than I would have guessed the total number of TV spots for VGs would be.

I should also note that these videos are only a subsection of a larger site: Gamepressure.com which also contains an amazing Gaming Encylopedia. And for those who prefer a linear progression to their gaming history, then grab a glass of scotch and set aside some time to read through AtariMuseum.com - a site that probably deserves a post of it’s own, but I’m too tired and too far through my own glass of Scotch to commit to a full writeup.