About this project

Welcome to UK Game Adverts. Here we are trying to archive and chronicle the long history of video game print advertisements in the UK. One day we will branch out into global video game advertisements but for now it is Britain-centric. We offer information on the games, consoles, accessories, stores and magazines that helped shaped the video game press.

Why UK Game Adverts?

The British gaming landscape has changed and evolved over the years but through the late 80's, 90's and early 00's it had the highest output of Video Game magazines anywhere in the world and is still seen as one of the last bastions of print journalism today with the likes of Edge, Play and Retro Gamer still heralded.

This vast history of video game periodicals also produced a gargantuan quantity of advertisements. From the early, simple ads that described and defined the home computer era, to the colourful attitude of the 16-bit generation and on to the loutish and inappropriate lads-mag era of the late 90's and early 00's; this collection covers it all. It can also be viewed as a time capsule showcasing the changes in taste, acceptability and design over five decades.

Information on our advert profiles

Each advert is added to our database with key information that we try to keep within a stylistic guide. Information on this is found below:

Title of the advert - for single games this will just be the game title for accessories and consoles we try to use the name of the product or the advert title.

Year of publication - Below the title will be the year of publication. The year given will be the earliest known year the advert was printed in the UK.

Upload date - The date the advert was added to our database.

Image view - The selected advert image will be displayed in large. This can be clicked on to show full screen, heart or download. Our most hearted adverts will eventually get their own rankings and popular adverts will be featured on the home page of the site. Below the main image will be images of any other adverts with the same title. For example all of a singular games adverts will be displayed together.

Magazines featured in - Listed here are the titles of magazines the currently selected advert has been featured in (as known to ourselves). Magazines are listed in alphabetical order and are titled as publishers have described (usually on the cover page or opening editorial).

Advert notes - Any related information to the advert will be posted here.

Featured games - will take you to an individual games page where you can see all the adverts that game is featured in along with key information. All of our information regarding release dates, notes and platforms for games, systems, series and magazines is sourced directly from Wikipedia where available. This information is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. We try and reference and link to the the original Wikipedia pages where possible.

If any of our information is incorrect or needs changing please contact us here.