Marketing, 1995 Style (March 7, 2023)

[Bandit LOAF]

Here's a Wing Commander/Origin ad I don't think I've seen before. Unfortunately, it's... not great. From the May 1995 issue of Wired:





And here's an Apple ad from 1996 with Wing Commander IV! All that empty space is because the Macintosh only had these ten games in 1996.




--
Original update published on March 7, 2023

 

[Klavs81]

Here's a Wing Commander/Origin ad I don't think I've seen before. Unfortunately, it's... not great. From the May 1995 issue of Wired:





And here's an Apple ad from 1996 with Wing Commander IV! All that empty space is because the Macintosh only had these ten games in 1996.




--
Original update published on March 7, 2023

Bit harsh, inn't? While there were fewer 'big name' titles, there were a ton of smaller (what we'd call indie games today) titles available as shareware on Mac during this time. Also Super Wing Commander, which was released in '95!

1996 marked the year that Escape Velocity, a top down space trading & adventure game was released on Mac. It was heavily inspired by Privateer and 'Asteroids,' spawning a 3 game series. Written by my brother at age 16-17, it made enough for him to put himself through college and buy a house. Pretty amazing considering the payment method was "send in $20 - if you want to!" The game was fully functional except for a ship that would fly by occasionally and say "don't forget to register Escape Velocity!" (and would attack you if you played without paying for something like 6 months (but you could just change the system clock and it would fix it)

The terrible models I built for that game were my first job in video games!

It also had a pretty decent Wing Commander conversion too!

https://www.wcnews.com/fanprojects/escapevelocity

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The Mac had Wing Commander III, too!

 

[wcnut]

All that empty space is because the Macintosh only had these ten games in 1996.

My sarcasm detector is going off...but I wasn't sure. I had a Mac in 1996, we had a lot more than that... We had 20 games!

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Hah sorry, yes it was just sarcasm... remembering a youth of Mac and PC folks teasing each other. In reality there were tens and tens of Macintosh games.

 

[Klavs81]

Hah sorry, yes it was just sarcasm... remembering a youth of Mac and PC folks teasing each other. In reality there were tens and tens of Macintosh games.

That's better! Hey, waitaminute...