Show of hands: who among you has ventured off to YouTube in order to re-experience a TV commercial from their youth? We sure have! Ads are everywhere these days, and while a reprieve from the constant marketing bombardment is probably healthier for you in the long run, there's still something special about venturing down memory lane to relive the jingles and slogans of days gone by. Were ads better in the 80s and 90s? That's up for debate, but they sure were different! Fog machines, funky lighting, and the outfits...oh man, those outfits.
And thanks to the efforts of preservation-minded people worldwide, there's a pretty good chance that you can find the ads you're looking for. But they don't always look the way you remember, do they? Alas, the finger of the monkey's paw curls inward: yes, you can watch that commercial...but it's going to be blurry, blocky, low-resolution, and maybe even using the wrong aspect ratio or frame rate if you're extra unlucky.
Of course, any capture of lost media is better than no capture at all; we'd rather see an upload of someone pointing their 2005 point-and-shoot camera at a TV compared to nothing! But it still highlights just how important it is for high quality footage to be preserved when it is discovered. Magnetic media has a limited lifespan, and anything put to tape in the 80s and 90s is degrading as we speak!
With that in mind, Hit Save is beyond excited to announce the latest addition to our archive: Nintendo 1991 Funente Oy, a Finnish VHS tape containing nearly 20 minutes of commercials for NES and Game Boy systems, games, and accessories. Most of them are from the USA and still in their original English, but there's one Swedish ad at the end that we're willing to bet you've never seen before!
This unassuming VHS is a Point-of-Sale tape that was distributed to Finnish retailers by Funente Oy, the first official Nintendo distributor in Finland. Tapes like these were intended to be played on storefront TVs, and often contained the same content looped multiple times to avoid the need for constant rewinds. Such is the case for this tape; 18:21 of content looped nearly 7 times for a total duration of 124 minutes. And while two hours of unique ads would have certainly been more exciting, loops like this are still a good thing. Why? Because they allow us to edit out damaged sections or even blend the duplicate copies together to eliminate noise!
Repeated playback of a VHS tape will cause it to deteriorate as well, so if this tape had indeed lived a full life looping Nintendo commercials to Scandinavian shoppers for days on end, we might not have been so lucky. Fortunately that was not the case; this tape is in absolutely fantastic shape, and might not have ever been played at all before we got our hands on it!
But before we dive any deeper, let's get the answer to your big question out of the way:
Nothing on this tape is new.
All 24 commercials on this tape are easily findable online as long as you know what to search for. But remember what we were saying about quality? That wasn't just pre-recipe fluff; the quality of the footage we got from this tape far exceeds that of the versions we've seen online in almost every case. That is a HUGE win!
There is one noteworthy caveat though: This is a PAL tape full of video from the USA, which means that the ads were unfortunately converted from their original NTSC format in order to be played on European hardware. In doing so, the footage was scaled up to fit the higher PAL resolution, and the frame rate was dropped to 25 fps from its original 29.97. Even when done well, this process can leave some unsavory imperfections in the footage, such as missing or duplicated frames, color inaccuracies, and reduced visual fidelity. So while the overall quality is still a huge improvement compared to what's online, there's always the potential for better if NTSC copies are ever discovered.
Where would such copies come from? Typically the best possible sources for commercials like these would be masters from production companies, TV stations, or marketing departments. Copies like that are often on far more obscure formats than VHS, like professional Betacam tapes or even film reels! Coming across those is like finding a needle in a field of haystacks, but believe it or not we actually DO have a few in the Hit Save archive, courtesy of a donation by Brock of Nostalgist's Archive! If you missed our 12 Days of Hit Save event last year, check out our Commercial Video Tapes collection to see what we're talking about. And of course, if you happen to have old gaming-related video tapes or discs that you'd like to see preserved, feel free to reach out!
But back to Nintendo 1991.
This tape contains some of Nintendo's most famous commercials from the late 80s, including ads for Zelda II, Top Gun, Super Mario Bros 2, Castlevania II, and Duck Tales. There's also ads and an informercial for the original Game Boy, an ad for a wireless controller made by Acclaim, and the intro to the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles TV cartoon...for some reason. You read that right, Hero Turtles. That was their localized name over there!
Some still frame highlights. See the full list and watch the ads on our archive site!
But wait, there's more! Also featured in these commercials are some early and/or altered packaging designs, and even a prototype Tetris cartridge!
Early box art, unreleased box art, or just some hasty mockups? You be the judge!
And what is going on with this Tetris label? The Game Boy informercial used Japanese cartridges and a Tetris prototype cartridge during production, and while they did have access to artwork similar to the final Tetris label we know and love...it seems they didn't have a lot of time to get it on the cartridge. Oof. Maybe viewers didn't notice...after all, TVs were a lot smaller back then!
Kudos to the production team for using real games and hardware at least!
Last but not least, remember when we said there was a Swedish ad you've probably never seen? At the very end of the reel is an ad for the Game Boy that we're very confident was produced in Scandinavia, or Europe at the very least. It features two detectives playing Tetris while on a stakeout, seemingly unaware of the burglary that is happening in the building behind them. Ahh, classic.
"Fängslar alla" translates to "Captivates everyone."
Being produced in Europe means it was shot natively in PAL format, and as such didn't undergo any conversion like the NTSC American ads did. What that means is that the ad on this tape is very likely the best possible copy that anyone will ever find! Feels good, man. That said, we'd love to be wrong; preservation is a team effort, and new discoveries are a win for everyone!
Because this tape is full of commercials meant to be screened to the public, Hit Save has made them all available to view on our archive in a compressed format. And of course, they will also be streaming on our 24/7 livestream, along with heaps of other historical gaming-related content!
Special thanks go to Togemet2, who spotted the tape for sale and helped us make the purchase. Togemet2 also with the research of the tape's contents, along with Foxhack and F_T_B. We salute you!
Thank you for your service!
Speaking of gratitudes, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Hit Save is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We're all volunteer and funded exclusively by donations, so if you like the work we're doing, we'd be thrilled to bits if you'd consider donating via Patreon or PayPal. Every little bit helps!
Now then, we're off to hunt for more media to preserve and stories to tell. Catch you on the flip side!
