I’ve had a small stack of gaming promotional VHS tapes sitting in a box for years that I recently digitized and posted on YouTube. Let’s take a look…

The Coin-Op Tapes

My dad was a coin-op operator. These five Atari Games tapes were sent to him in the late 90s. Atari Games was a Midway subsidiary at that point, the coin-op business was well into its decline, and these were among their last titles. Two or so years later Atari Games was gone.

San Francisco Rush: The Rock, Alcatraz Edition (1997)

The standalone and upgrade kit for San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing, adding extra tracks and cars. For an operator, it’s showcasing this title as a dedicated cabinet or an upgrade for an existing San Francisco Rush cabinet they might already have on location.

Atari Games Product Demo (1998)

The tape is really a three-in-one. It’s labeled “Atari Games Product Demo,” runs five and a half minutes, and is dated 2/3/98. It contains info on California Speed, Surf Planet (a licensed Gaelco game), and the Area 51/Maximum Force Duo Kit, which packed both light gun games into a single conversion. That mix is the operator pitch in miniature, one new dedicated cabinet and two cheaper ways to refresh something already on location.

Gauntlet Legends (1998)

Gauntlet Legends is the four player 3D revival of Gauntlet, with character progression you could carry between sessions. Persistent characters were a genuinely clever operator pitch: a player who has leveled something up has a reason to come back to your machine specifically.

Radikal Bikers (1998)

This one contains a number of short clips mentioning the entire Atari Games lineup, followed by Radikal Bikers, a pizza delivery by scooter game, developed by Gaelco in Spain and distributed in the US by Atari Games.

Vapor TRX / Area 51: Site 4 Preview (1998)

Two games on one tape. Vapor TRX is a futuristic hover racer. Area 51: Site 4 is a light gun shooter, the sequel to Area 51 and Maximum Force.

The Console Tapes

These tapes were mailed direct to consumers, promoting console games of the era. These cover Genesis, SNES, and PlayStation games from Capcom and Namco.

Aladdin and Goof Troop for SNES (Capcom, 1993)

Aladdin and Goof Troop are both Capcom’s own SNES titles, not to be confused with the Genesis version of Aladdin from Virgin.

Front Back

Powered By Namco (1995)

A tape filled with Namco titles for the PlayStation, Genesis, and SNES surrounded by lots of goofy skits. Ridge Racer, Starblade, Tekken, Air Combat, Cyber Sled and Weaponlord all make an appearance.

Front Back

And there we have it, direct to operator and direct to consumer promo tapes from the 90s. Enjoy!