Shout out to user Jumpman over at Gaming Alexandra for this one.
A while back I wrote about the development of Namco’s classic shooter Xevious. Check the article out here if you missed it.
Along the way, I noted that Xevious was the first classic arcade gaming to be advertised directly to the public on American TV networks.
It was unusual for arcade games to be advertised on the TV, a first for Atari and the industry it seems. This trade magazine advertisement announced the media campaign. Clearly Atari felt Xevious had the potential to be a big game for everyone concerned:
The ad states:
Millions of players have rocked with excitement from watching the Xevious TV commercial on major networks in selected markets and on national cable Music Television…..XEVIOUS is the first coin video game to receive major consumer advertising support in many metro markets.
Up until now, that commercial, created by Atari, who licenced the game for release in the USA and Europe, was thought to have been long lost. The only surviving artefact was tape recording of the commercial (you can listen to that here if you’re interested).
Well wouldn’t you know it, while watching an old video of a baseball game from April 1983, (Phillies vs Mets opening game of the season to be precise!), Jumpman noticed the commercial sat there during one of the commercial breaks.
The video of the whole game is here:
Buried in that video at the 1:22:57 mark is this!
So there it is, in plain sight, a 30-second commercial for Xevious, hidden in the middle of a 3-hour taped baseball game, that has been online for over three years.
Xevious – The Atari Game You Can’t Play At Home
Here’s the original announcement from Atari, letting Operators know about the campaign:
Here’s another much longer Xevious video reel – this one aimed at Operators (rather than the general public) for completeness:
The lost commercial has now been archived at archive.org. Cool stuff!
Oh, The Mets won the baseball game in case you were wondering.
Thanks for checking in this week.
Tony
P.S. While I’m here, here’s an interesting tidbit, regarding a Xevious movie, released for a very short while in Japan:
