1987 Christmas Video Games Ad - What would you have chosen?

[InvaderPac]

Video Game Ad Christmas 1987 from JC Penney catalog.

 

Put yourself in 1987 and you don't know the future. Which system would you have chosen? Both systems are $80. Atari's carts are $12 while most NES carts are $30 to $35 but the classic Donkey Kong is $22.

[Leonard Smith]

Hard to say.  I would have wanted both.  

 

I already had an NES in 1987, but the 7800 was a mystery to me.  So I'm thinking that I would have been intrigued by the 7800.

 

 

[MrMaddog]

It's funny, back then I already had a NES but I also wanted a 7800 cause to me it felt like a continuation of the original Atari I once knew as a kid.  But having a 130XE which happened to play XEGS carts was just as good.

 

 

[Hwlngmad]

NES without a doubt for me.

[Goochman]

7800 had nothing against Super Mario Bros - hands down people went for the NES.  Lightgun, Robot, better looking?  The 7800 looks like something found in the clearance rack with the white label PP II.

[Crazy Climber]

Well I had an NES in 1987 and not an Atari 7800 so I guess 1987 Crazy Climber picked NES lol.

 

I love Atari, but honestly it would have been a really hard sale to convince me to get a 7800. Yeah, we're all tired of Super Mario Bros now but when it was new and shiny it was da bomb

[CapitanClassic]

I think they had demo units in many JC Penny, Sears, Montgomery Wards by Christmas 87. After playing Super Mario Bros, I couldn’t see wanting to get anything other than an NES.

 

The SMB is an exemplary model of the action platform genre. I don’t think the 7800 had a killer app that would make me want to own one. Pretty much all the launch titles were Arcade ports (Joust, MsPacman and Galaga being the best), or games released much earlier on already for the 800 (Balblazer)

 

[fiddlepaddle]

At that point, I was already buying all my games at the flea market (used), so... both.  

 

I remember getting really frustrated with the NES units I was picking up used.  I had a terrible time getting one working the first time with the flaky cart connector and AC power supply and no instructions.  Eventually bought a new one, then figured out nothing was wrong with the units I already had, just had some cleaning to do.

[Crazy Climber]

10 hours ago, fiddlepaddle said:

At that point, I was already buying all my games at the flea market (used), so... both.  

 

I remember getting really frustrated with the NES units I was picking up used.  I had a terrible time getting one working the first time with the flaky cart connector and AC power supply and no instructions.  Eventually bought a new one, then figured out nothing was wrong with the units I already had, just had some cleaning to do.

You were finding flaky NES systems at flea markets in 1987? 

[Leonard Smith]

Looking back, the 7800 has a library of games that appeal to me more than the NES.

I prefer quick-burst arcade games and I think I would have been happy with a 7800 back then (either as my primary or secondary system).

 

Yes, the NES gets all the accolades but I've maintained that 90% of the library isn't so good. 
SMB, Zelda and Punchout were fun back in the day, but I have zero desire to revisit those games today.  Younger retronerds will disagree of course, because the NES library is still shiny and new to them.

[zzip]

On 7/21/2022 at 9:45 AM, InvaderPac said:

Video Game Ad Christmas 1987 from JC Penney catalog.

 

Put yourself in 1987 and you don't know the future. Which system would you have chosen? Both systems are $80. Atari's carts are $12 while most NES carts are $30 to $35 but the classic Donkey Kong is $22.

For me it would have been the Atari 7800 for two reasons:

1) I was already an Atari fan, and was salivating over the 7800 when I first saw the announcement in 84.

2) NES had not yet made a dent in my area-  didn't know anyone who had one yet,  and games like SMB felt to "kiddie" to me and weren't appealing.   It was 88/89 when all my friends started getting NES's 

 

I never owned either system because I was more into computers at the time and ignored the console side.

[RodLightning]

Atari 7800, if I could have torn myself away from playing games on my Atari 48k 400 or 64k 600XL.  In 1987, plenty of games were available cheap or free for Atari 8bit.  By 1993, I already had a used 7800 and a few cartridges, so I can imagine picking up one a few years earlier if I was in the right place and time to buy one new.  It took me a while warming up to the NES.  Those gamepads were a foreign concept to me at the time.

[fiddlepaddle]

13 hours ago, Crazy Climber said:

You were finding flaky NES systems at flea markets in 1987? 

Well, flea markets can be dirty places, especially when a seller sources from dumpsters, and people sometimes sell systems with missing parts really cheap, even relatively recent technology.  I was using unverified 3rd party/second hand power supplies, which didn't help.  I didn't follow the new stuff coming out.  My thrill was accumulating lots of mysterious game equipment and piecing together working systems, and getting lots of carts to try out, of course.

[Tanooki]

I know it's the wrong forum of all places to say this, but knowing even what I did at that point as a kid (1987 I'd be 10 going on 11 with that Christmas) I wouldn't touch that 7800 as even I could see the detail there in other ads of the time from comics, other catalogs and stuff it was ok in a bubble of its own, but not good against what the NES had by that time point at all.

 

I remember going through the catalogs from them, Montgomery Ward, KayBee, Toys R Us, Sears, etc.  You'd get the page with the console and a few nods to the games mentioned on one page, but then you'd get pages of spreads with a mix of poorly drawn copies of the boxes themselves, maybe real images, and you'd get a screen shot (or 2 if super lucky) of a game, and some would reprint some of the rear of the box blurb to try and suck you in.  Weighing all that and at 1987 seeing what was there it would be very clear by that point which of the two is a bad purchase to a kid.  That and when you have a really small allowance where you can buy just a few games a year and hope you get a few more on the other holidays+b'day you stick with it.  I would have never parted my funds too thin even then.

[schuwalker]

8 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I know it's the wrong forum of all places to say this, but knowing even what I did at that point as a kid (1987 I'd be 10 going on 11 with that Christmas) I wouldn't touch that 7800 as even I could see the detail there in other ads of the time from comics, other catalogs and stuff it was ok in a bubble of its own, but not good against what the NES had by that time point at all.

 

I remember going through the catalogs from them, Montgomery Ward, KayBee, Toys R Us, Sears, etc.  You'd get the page with the console and a few nods to the games mentioned on one page, but then you'd get pages of spreads with a mix of poorly drawn copies of the boxes themselves, maybe real images, and you'd get a screen shot (or 2 if super lucky) of a game, and some would reprint some of the rear of the box blurb to try and suck you in.  Weighing all that and at 1987 seeing what was there it would be very clear by that point which of the two is a bad purchase to a kid.  That and when you have a really small allowance where you can buy just a few games a year and hope you get a few more on the other holidays+b'day you stick with it.  I would have never parted my funds too thin even then.

I have a few years on you but share the same logic. My buddy Derek had a 7800 around this era - thinking more of '88. I recall playing Food Fight (only arcade port on this system), Desert Falcon and some golden age classics: Donkey Kong, Xevious and I'm thinking Pole Position. I felt at this point ports the early 80's classics really getting long in the tooth especially ones done numerous times already. NES was getting ports of the JAMMA era of arcade games especially from the heavy 3rd party hitters like Konami and Capcom; I also had a Sega Master System at this time which was nailing some of Sega's monster arcade ports. Coupled with those two, I felt owning a 7800 would be futile.

[turboxray]

11 hours ago, fiddlepaddle said:

Well, flea markets can be dirty places, especially when a seller sources from dumpsters, and people sometimes sell systems with missing parts really cheap, even relatively recent technology.  I was using unverified 3rd party/second hand power supplies, which didn't help.  I didn't follow the new stuff coming out.  My thrill was accumulating lots of mysterious game equipment and piecing together working systems, and getting lots of carts to try out, of course.

I think you confusing 1987 and the actual years later that you encountered this hahah Multiple NES?

 

We had a gigantic flea market in my city. You could definitely fold old Atari/Coleco/etc stuff. But in 1987, the NES was still new. If you found it at a flea market, it wouldn't be a simple $5 pickup. Used systems were selling at like ~65% of the new price. Same for games. You definitely weren't bargin bin hunting multiple NES units. That wasn't a thing until years later.

[turboxray]

9 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I know it's the wrong forum of all places to say this, but knowing even what I did at that point as a kid (1987 I'd be 10 going on 11 with that Christmas) I wouldn't touch that 7800 as even I could see the detail there in other ads of the time from comics, other catalogs and stuff it was ok in a bubble of its own, but not good against what the NES had by that time point at all.

 

I remember going through the catalogs from them, Montgomery Ward, KayBee, Toys R Us, Sears, etc.  You'd get the page with the console and a few nods to the games mentioned on one page, but then you'd get pages of spreads with a mix of poorly drawn copies of the boxes themselves, maybe real images, and you'd get a screen shot (or 2 if super lucky) of a game, and some would reprint some of the rear of the box blurb to try and suck you in.  Weighing all that and at 1987 seeing what was there it would be very clear by that point which of the two is a bad purchase to a kid.  That and when you have a really small allowance where you can buy just a few games a year and hope you get a few more on the other holidays+b'day you stick with it.  I would have never parted my funds too thin even then.

I was turning 11 that summer (which I already had an NES). I remember a friend had gotten a 7800 for xmas. I was pretty curious, but when I went over to play it.. omg! I was soo embarrassed for him. I could see the look of disappointment and defeat in his face that he didn't get an NES. I felt really bad because I knew he wanted an NES and his parents were just clueless hahah. 

[Greg2600]

First off I had this ad!  My mom got all those books.  So at that Christmas, hard to say because I didn't know anyone who had one yet.  My neighbor got one right then, and we were enthralled by it.  I doubt I would have said 7800 prior to, because in my 9 year old brain I wouldn't have computed the 7800 was an upgrade from 2600 that I had.  I remember reading then old catalog posters with 5200 games on it, and wondering how to get some of those.  Again, didn't comprehend there were different systems, and my parents obviously had no clue.  So I probably would have bailed on both, and chose what I did get, which I think were more GI Joe's, RC cars, Tyco 440-H2 slot cars, and a mini-pool table LOL.

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, schuwalker said:

I have a few years on you but share the same logic. My buddy Derek had a 7800 around this era - thinking more of '88. I recall playing Food Fight (only arcade port on this system), Desert Falcon and some golden age classics: Donkey Kong, Xevious and I'm thinking Pole Position. I felt at this point ports the early 80's classics really getting long in the tooth especially ones done numerous times already. NES was getting ports of the JAMMA era of arcade games especially from the heavy 3rd party hitters like Konami and Capcom; I also had a Sega Master System at this time which was nailing some of Sega's monster arcade ports. Coupled with those two, I felt owning a 7800 would be futile.

Maybe so, I had a friend or two with a 2600 which got a little play, but didn't get any real use once the NES showed up as it required a bit much more imagination I guess, and my mom and her best friend had these fairchild channel F2 systems so I did use older stuff a bit but they were basic.  7800 was basic too, even if they finally got some fairly decent graphics and audio going, it was so delayed it still would struggle in quality against a base Famicom with the early memory expansions (pre-MMC stuff.)  Long in the tooth is exactly it, ages old arcade games ported when arcades by then were getting into the quality you'd see from Gradius, Super Dodgeball, Double Dragon, the pre-CPS1 gems basically.  It looked and sounded terrible even against the Master System which struggled to make any form of a slight dent, it had no chance, and I had a friend with that and SMS was good stuff, and in the decades since I've own 2-3 of them for a period.  I could not see ever owning or using a 7800 much then or now, other than in passing and if it were like given to me.

3 hours ago, turboxray said:

I was turning 11 that summer (which I already had an NES). I remember a friend had gotten a 7800 for xmas. I was pretty curious, but when I went over to play it.. omg! I was soo embarrassed for him. I could see the look of disappointment and defeat in his face that he didn't get an NES. I felt really bad because I knew he wanted an NES and his parents were just clueless hahah. 

Basically this, entirely.  I had seen a store display, and in the later 90s into the 00s of earlier emulation on the internet it really was a system for the fans of the 70s former beast.  Your pity to your friend, was the pity I had for a friend who was trying to wow me with Gremlins in the very early 90s, and how cool Mario Bros, DK, etc were and I'm like...I'm bored, this sucks, have this on NES and plays better, looks better, sounds better and I think about that time it was months away from the SNES arriving.  He was happy though, or at least faked it well.

[raskar42]

I wish I could have bought ROB when it was new 

[Flojomojo]

I’d like both, but even in 1987 it was clear that the NES had more legs, even though it was missing some of the arcade ports from 7800. 
 

I liked the “action set” with 2 controllers, zapper, SMB/duck hunt best. 

[toiletunes]

Based only on that ad,

 

Nintendo has twice as many games, but they cost twice as much. I don't know about that Nintendo controller, can I get used to a flat thumb pad? That 7800 controller doesn't look too good either. Nintendo has more accessories too.

I guess I'll go with atari, it would be easier to save my allowance for those games, but I'd probably like the Nintendo better if money was no object.

[youxia]

NES is a no-brainer. You don't need to know the future: as a videogame nerd you can foresee it based on available data (NES's been out few years already and done rather well for itself, and Atari has been blundering for quite a while too).

 

However, I'd get a ZX Spectrum, or save up a bit and stretch it to C64.

Edited July 23, 2022 by youxia

[Cebus Capucinis]

4 minutes ago, youxia said:

However, I'd get a ZX Spectrum, or save up a bit and stretch it to C64.

In before the DON'T YOU KNOW THOSE SYSTEMS ARE TRASH guy who seems to follow you around replies....

[pablum]

The NES.

 

I had played Vs. Super Mario Bros. at a local bowling alley prior to ever hearing about the NES and thought it was pretty awesome.

 

By 1987 I had some of those 7800 games in their Atari 5200 versions and wasn't looking to reproduce that experience again.