what if the 1990s had VHS tapes instead of game magazines?

[orthicviper]

Do you think it would have been a successful product? The screenshots in magazines were oftentimes sucky, plus seeing a game in motion would have been very helpful and a lot more content could have been covered! I think it would have been a huge success for magazines to sell supplemental tapes showing actual gameplay on dozens of games. I really wish I could have bought sometihng like that. Actually, it could have been freely given away by Sega and Nintendo. Like, you give them enough UPC codes to prove you're a frequent game buyer, and they send you free of charge a video catalog of games for their system.

[kitsunebi]

I remember receiving a video from Nintendo or Nintendo Power that was all about Star Fox, I believe.  Pure promotion, but I DID buy Star Fox, so maybe it worked? (EDIT: an internet search suggests that it was probably a video for Star Fox 64, which I DID buy at some point, but never actually took out of the box and played, so maybe the video wasn't so enticing after all?)

Nowadays, that sort of thing would be easy to do with a DVD that costs pennies.  But VHS tapes would have been MUCH more expensive to produce (let alone ship), so including them with magazines would have been cost-prohibitive.  It wasn't just game magazines, nobody was sending out free promotional VHS tapes.  Then ridiculously cheap CD-based media became a thing and suddenly you had an AOL disc in your mailbox every week.

[Kombatologist]

14 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

I remember receiving a video from Nintendo or Nintendo Power that was all about Star Fox, I believe.

I received that Star Fox 64 VHS tape as well. I still have it.

[orthicviper]

23 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Nowadays, that sort of thing would be easy to do with a DVD that costs pennies.  But VHS tapes would have been MUCH more expensive to produce (let alone ship), so including them with magazines would have been cost-prohibitive.  It wasn't just game magazines, nobody was sending out free promotional VHS tapes.  Then ridiculously cheap CD-based media became a thing and suddenly you had an AOL disc in your mailbox every week.

I didn't think they should include tapes with magazines, but offer them as a separate service one could pay for.

Nintendo also sent out a VHS tape (at least in the U.S.) to many SNES owners that was a promotional video for Donkey Kong Country explaining the technology of the game and at the end it showed about 5 seconds of Killer Instinct. I'm not aware of any other time they did that or of any company doing a similar thing.  

[kitsunebi]

2 minutes ago, orthicviper said:

I didn't think they should include tapes with magazines, but offer them as a separate service one could pay for.

Nintendo also sent out a VHS tape (at least in the U.S.) to many SNES owners that was a promotional video for Donkey Kong Country explaining the technology of the game and at the end it showed about 5 seconds of Killer Instinct. I'm not aware of any other time they did that or of any company doing a similar thing.  

That would be interesting.  Charging people to watch a commercial!   If anyone had the cajones to pull off something like that, it would have been Nintendo.

I don't think I would have had the money to buy advertising videos as a kid, but if there had been a free way of watching (like on TV), I'm positive I would have done so.  Dunno if kids these days even realize that without youtube and whatnot, we had no real way of knowing what a game we'd never played actually looked like (outside of screenshots) except in our imaginations.

[twiztor]

my subscription to Nintendo Power netted a handful of VHS tapes. i watched them all numerous times and dreamed about the day when i could play these games. Besides Star Fox 64, my favorite one was "Change the System". i loved these tapes, but the magazines let me read and reread at school, where a VHS would not have been possible. for that reason, i was happy to have the magazines.  Along with my saved magazine files, i also keep downloaded video files of these videos (from youtube or whatever). they worked well together and i'm happy for both.

[Leathco]

I remember getting a VHS tape for Diddy Kong Racing with Nintendo Power, was a funny watch.  If I remember right, Sega kidnaps a Nintendo dev in it.

[consumer]

I recall an attempt at this being made.  Here's a link to a guy talking about the VHS/magazine strategy guide that MTV produced back in the 90's...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRYC32bGYFU

 

[kitsunebi]

Game Player's sold VHS tapes for a while.  I remember the ads in their magazines, although I can't say I ever saw the videos for sale anywhere.  They may have been direct order only.

[Areala]

On 4/20/2019 at 5:23 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

Game Player's sold VHS tapes for a while.  I remember the ads in their magazines, although I can't say I ever saw the videos for sale anywhere.  They may have been direct order only.

They were never offered for sale in-stores, they were mail-order only. My brother and I had the one in the upper row, far right, but I don't remember how we got it...I think he may have traded a friend at school for it.

I, on the other hand, totally sent away for this from GameSpot (back when they were VideoGameSpot):

If you want to watch 45 minutes of VHS-quality Tomb Raiding glory though, some other enterprising soul posted it to YouTube! Rejoice and be glad, ye fellow Lara-holics!
 

(Edit: Apparently that account got hit with a copyright strike for this video, so it doesn't work any longer. I'll update this when/if I find a new link.)

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

6 hours ago, Areala said:

 My brother and I had the one in the upper row, far right, but I don't remember how we got it...I think he may have traded a friend at school for it.

That's the only one in the picture that isn't a Game Player's video.  I just grabbed the pic off of an eBay listing since it had all 6 of the GP vids in one place.

[MkMoveList]

It would be really cool if the archivists on this forum acquired those tapes and transferred them to video files and uploaded them here to archive.

[kitsunebi]

9 minutes ago, MkMoveList said:

It would be really cool if the archivists on this forum acquired those tapes and transferred them to video files and uploaded them here to archive.

I'm not jumping down your throat or anything, especially since you've contributed a few things to the site yourself.  It's just that comments like this one can be misinterpreted by newbies to mean that there are members of this site whose responsibility or purpose is to archive things, and that just isn't true. 

There are no "archivists" on this forum.  All of the people who contribute anything to the site are just regular people who joined the site in order to download stuff, and at some point decided to use their own time and materials to try their hand at scanning/editing in order to give something back. Anyone is just as capable as anyone else of contributing here.  E-Day scans a lot of magazines simply because E-Day decided to scan a lot of magazines, not because it's his job.  A newb could join the site today and immediately start releasing twice as many scans as E-Day if they were willing to put in the work necessary.

So regarding the videos, a less misleading statement would simply be: "It would be really cool if someone acquired those tapes and transferred them to video files and uploaded them here to archive."  We've got over 15,000 members who are equally qualified for the task.  All it takes is for one of them to actually do it.

[E-Day]

Does anyone here even have the equipment necessary to transfer those VHS to digital video? Plus we don't do video here. Ideally this would be something to send to My Life in Gaming as they have a sub-channel just for VHS transfers of these types of things.

[kitsunebi]

 

[KiwiArcader]

I transferred a VHS tape of the Sci-Fi movie Moontrap to DVD a long time ago. Then I subsequently ripped that as an MKV file. The movie featured Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell but I think I was really after making sure Leigh Lombardi's lovely naked breasts were not lost forever when my VHS finally crapped out. 

[kitsunebi]

25 minutes ago, KiwiArcader said:

I transferred a VHS tape of the Sci-Fi movie Moontrap to DVD a long time ago. Then I subsequently ripped that as an MKV file. The movie featured Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell but I think I was really after making sure Leigh Lombardi's lovely naked breasts were not lost forever when my VHS finally crapped out. 

1:08:20 for the curious.

 

[KiwiArcader]

Yeah, they released a Blu-ray and completely wrecked it with over-saturated color/noise removal and THEN made a 4:3 picture widescreen so the scene at 1:08:33 had her wobbly bits chopped by the re-framing. If a movie was made 4:3 keep it 4:3. Dopes!!! 

[kitsunebi]

It used to be everything that was 16:9 got cropped to 4:3 and now it's the other way around.  People just hate black bars with a vengeance, not matter which side of the screen they're on.

[DPsx7]

Wanna say I have one that's DK related. Dunno where it's at but I wouldn't have tossed it.

[kitsunebi]

2 minutes ago, DPsx7 said:

Wanna say I have one that's DK related. Dunno where it's at but I wouldn't have tossed it.

Probably this one.  I think anyone who ever had a Nintendo Power sub got this in the mail.

[DPsx7]

Yeah that rings a bell. I didn't have a sub until late (GBA gen I think). All my early mags were from a friend that was cleaning out his room and they ended up here. And now that I'm wondering there may be a second VHS, possibly a promo from TrU. I mean this is from a long time ago but I swear I had something else that wasn't NP related.

Funny in a way. I've always collected the games. It's the side stuff that you don't quite pay attention to that makes neat finds. Posters, plushies, demos, accessories, carry cases, etc.

[kitsunebi]

I was just guessing about it being related to a NP subscription.  It's not a NP-related video, it's just advertising directly from Nintendo itself.  It could have been from registering a game with Nintendo via a postcard or something.

What's surprising is that they never took this tactic later on by sending out advertising on DVDs.  VHS tapes were expensive to produce and ship in the mail, whereas a DVD could be produced for pennies and the shipping would have been much lower.

[E-Day]

They mostly got away from competitive advertising after the 16-bit era, and if I remember correctly the tape took some shots at Sega. Maybe they found sending this sort of thing out wasn't that effective.

[DPsx7]

Maybe it was store related as I don't recall filling out any cards. Don't think online surveys were a thing at the time.

By the time I started getting CD's or DVD's they were for demos rather than advertising.