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Bizarre game magazine rap contest in the 90s?


McThud

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Hi everyone,

I'm trying to find the promo page for a bizarre US video game magazine contest that I won back in the Sega Genesis era. It was for ToeJam & Earl, and I don't remember which magazine it was in. Did anyone participate in something similar?

To enter, you would record a custom TJ&E rap on a cassette tape and mail it in. The best raps won goofy ToeJam & Earl swag prizes. The contest description mentioned using the ToeJam & Earl 'Jam Out' feature (a sound test where you can press the A,B,C buttons to play sound effects over the game's music tracks).

I remember when I first read about this contest, I flipped out. TJ&E was the greatest game ever! I dropped the hottest ToeJam & Earl mixtape my kid brain could think of (pretty sure with no clue of what "Jam Out" was and just rapping over the title screen) and mailed it in. Weeks later, I got my prize, a ToeJam & Earl hanging mobile! I was ecstatic. It looked like this (Instagram archive, check toysaurus23's "Toejam and Earl hanging mobile" post):

https://www.jadagram.com/i/tag/segacd?next=1206140384913130833

In the prize letter, I think they mentioned they liked my (terrible) rap. I'm sure they did, I bet it was a hoot. The prize I got wasn't first place, but it was still awesome.

  • I looked through most back issues of Sega Visions, starting with 1991 and ending in 1993. Nothing there. I was surprised to see those exact TJ&E hanging mobiles for sale in a couple of early issues, but I found no sign of the contest
  • I remember I had subscriptions to GamePro, EGM and Mega Play, can't remember the others. The "Lombard, IL" mailing address for EGM/Mega Play somehow jogs my memory - did I mail it there?
  • But, my memory is also telling me that it was in a different, lesser known US magazine. Did the bigger magazines run quirky contests like this one? I also looked through the handful of the 1991-1993 Mega Play issues that I could find online, no dice

Who knows - maybe, knowing where the contest came from, there's a million-to-one chance those ridiculous raps could be tracked down before the magnetic tapes disintegrate forever.

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So, you're saying it wasn't exactly a story about how your life got flip-turned upside down? :P

In seriousness, did you check through Game Players? Sounds like something they might have done, the quirky folks that they were...

As for finding those tapes, I think you might be a bit generous with your odds, but who knows? Occasionally I still find a cassette here and there, mostly in used cars.

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