Gaming slogans throughout the ages

The big 'N' had loads of slogans for the N64. It was kinda sad to see the 'fastest, most powerful games console in the world' degrade over time until the last few ads just mumbled something about how many colours you could buy the console in. But still, 'get Nor get out'was just inspired.

EA Sports

EA Sports had a bit more success than the Actua series. Everybody's familiar with the boot-up slogan 'E. A. Sports - It's in the game'. But that doesn't really make sense, does it? What's in the game? Well, here's the answer, from the original FIFA International Soccer's box:

See that? If it's in the game, it's in the game. That makes much more sense. Interesting point to note also is that the voice that says 'It's in the game' at the start of EA games is NOT that of David 'Solid Snake' Hayter. It's Andrew Anthony, who hasthis tutorialon how to pronounce the slogan. Capital E, capital A, capital SPORTS. Damn straight.

Microsoft

Microsoft haven't been big on slogans. Or, at least, their best slogans haven't been that big. This two-worder is probably the best:


Jump in? That's a great slogan. For a swimming pool. Look -

We want that swimming pool now. Mind you, it works better than 'It's good to play together', which was reminiscent of Dreamcast's 'We all play games - let's play together'. Better than playing with yourself, right?

Then of course there was the infamousbanned advert. We think it was very powerful, but that's just us. A baby is born (explosively), soars through the air aging rapidly as it goes. It becomes an old man before landing... straight into an open grave. Macabre, perhaps, but the slogan was brilliant:

You can't really argue with that.

Sony



Designed to compensate for the PS3's frankly astronomical launch price (all better now, thankfully), This is Living implies you can improve your quality of life if you splash out on a PS3. Don't suppose they could've used 'jump in' without everyone crayoning in 'to debt' after it. As it was, thewhole E3 'target footage' debacleled to a new meme: 'This is lying'. Good old interwebs.

And of course there's this:

Except Linux, right?

Gremlin Interactive

Finally, while more game-specific than the rest, there's the Actua series of games that were around in the mid '90s. Look at this bold claim:

Thiswas a cheap shot at the virtual reality craze of a few years previous and Sega's highly successful Virtua game series.Actua Soccerwas the first to be fully rendered in 3D, so it did have something to shout about. Now, we're looking at it some 15 years later, but these graphics look pretty 'virtual' from here.


Above: Yep, it has ACTUAL GRAPHICS. Nice use of 'grey' instead of a net

What's been your favourite? 'The third place'?

09 Apr, 2010

Justin Towell

Justin was a GamesRadar staffer for 10 years but is now a freelancer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.