Who Had Print Ads to Win?

[cessnaace]

Remember all the ads that use to appear in gaming mags years ago where you solved a puzzle to win an entertainment setup with TV, LaserDisc player, Genesis, 3DO, Jaguar, SNES, etc.? Anyone remember who the advertiser was? I've checked thru the ad scans here and can't find the ads I'm remembering.


STAY AWESOME!

[Wraith Storm]

I know exactly what you are talking about. I recently came across it flipping through some of my old game mags.

I always wondered if anyone ever won anything. I remember solving the first crossword and decoding the secret word (which was "power") but I never sent anything in. I'll see if I can't dig out the mag and take a pic.

[Baloo]

Funny, I remember reading an article about that not too long ago, where you solved the puzzle and won an entertainment system. Apparently it was all just a scam according to the article, which went into details about multiple incidents with that contest. No one ever won the prize.

[XYXZYZ]

The most striking thing I remember about those ads was the Neo Geo. The 40 inch TV and stereo were nice, but the thought of winning a Neo Geo was what blew my mind.

Here's the 1992 version of the ad-


And here's an article about the contest-
15 Years of Not Winning The Ultimate Gaming Rig
Apparently you enter by solving the simple puzzle, pay an entry fee, receive a second puzzle, pay another entry fee, 3rd puzzle, 3rd fee, and so on until you finish the last puzzle and supposedly win. And the guy who ran the contest collected the fees but never actually gave the prizes out.


Of course, my gaming rig now is better than that one.

[TonyTheTiger]

These things littered Game Informer since their inception.

Even as a kid, reading those things always struck me as too good to be true. Nintendo Power was notorious for contests bordering on scams, too. I read somewhere (may have been here) that some contest where the grand prize was to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger ended with the winner having to wait some ungodly amount of time (years) which culminated in a passing handshake.

Whenever I saw one of these contests I always thought of that one really good episode of Doug that poked all kinds of fun at these shenanigans. Doug gets caught up in one of those "you may have already won" schemes and ends up blowing a crap load of money in each stage of the contest.

[boatofcar]

Thanks for linking to that article XYXZYZ. Interesting stuff.

[Robocop2]

I remember that thing and that I fell for it back then as well.

It's kind of funny that Sinestron is on the screen and yet the TG16 doesn't appear to even be hooked up let alone with a hucard in the system

[Superman]

I thought it would be cool to win one of those contests, but I never entered, because I figured the odds were against me.

Apparently, it is a good thing I didn't enter this one.

[Emperor Megas]

I thought it would be cool to win one of those contests, but I never entered, because I figured the odds were against me.

It wouldn't be a contest if the odds weren't against you.

[TonyTheTiger]

You'd think that if people do win on a fairly regular basis over the course of many years, the cure for the public perception that nobody ever wins should be a simple one. Just acknowledge past winners in each subsequent ad.

That's of course assuming there were winners at all. If the contests were legit the hosts presumably would have taken steps to dispel rumors to the contrary rather than allow their exposure to shrink to nothing. One thing I was hoping the article would have done is sought out actual winners. The lack of information on even a single one over the course of 15 years is pretty damning.

[SpaceHarrier]

I remember drooling over the screenshots of these ads for years through various video game magazines.. funny to hear how it's more-or-less been scandalous all this time..

[Tupin]

You'd think that if people do win on a fairly regular basis over the course of many years, the cure for the public perception that nobody ever wins should be a simple one. Just acknowledge past winners in each subsequent ad.

That's of course assuming there were winners at all. If the contests were legit the hosts presumably would have taken steps to dispel rumors to the contrary rather than allow their exposure to shrink to nothing. One thing I was hoping the article would have done is sought out actual winners. The lack of information on even a single one over the course of 15 years is pretty damning.

One of the comments says he won the contest several times and always got the run-around from the company saying they were bankrupt or the guy running it had problems. He got some, but not all of the prizes he won.

[TonyTheTiger]

Haha. What a sham. If the commenter is on the level I'm surprised he got anything at all, honestly.

[Cryomancer]

I entered a phase or two of this once. It indeed did feel like a scam and I didn't get very far. Although if you think about it, this would work out well as a legit contest too, just use the entry fees to buy the shit, give it to one guy, keep what's left, repeat. They probably would have done better to do it that way than to just scam all the cash, hell they could still be doing this contest today if they did it legit.

[TonyTheTiger]

I entered a phase or two of this once. It indeed did feel like a scam and I didn't get very far. Although if you think about it, this would work out well as a legit contest too, just use the entry fees to buy the shit, give it to one guy, keep what's left, repeat. They probably would have done better to do it that way than to just scam all the cash, hell they could still be doing this contest today if they did it legit.

It's possible that they intended to do it legit but the number of entries didn't make it worth it. It wouldn't be an isolated incident. Apparently the perception that these write-in contests have impossibly low odds is so prevalent that the vast majority of people simply never enter. There was a story that some lady used to win tons of stuff (although usually not big things) because she always entered contests. And since they often had so few entrants her chances were actually pretty decent.

It becomes a catch-22. If you want to run a legit contest for huge prizes it's perceived to be too unlikely to win at best and outright fraudulent at worst. And then, of course, because it ends up not being self-sustaining, the actual winners get screwed which only reinforces that these contests are bullshit. And the irony is that it's unlikely I'll ever enter one specifically because it's so deeply ingrained in my psyche that they aren't worth it even if it's proven to be legit.

[Cryomancer]

They had to be doing ok, they had this ad in gamepro in seemingly every issue I ever saw of the magazine. I do remember that the setup would constantly change though, maybe buying all those launch-price Jaguars and shit set em back too much.

I'd like to see someone assemble one of these AV/setups and play some turbografx on em and see if they were even any good though, that'd be neat.

[Robocop2]

It would probably be all fun and games until you got burn-in on that fancy projection screen TV.

[c2000]

This was also running in the UK.

[bangtango]

For me, the most legitimate contests are the ones that don't require any entry fees.

Those entertainment center/Neo Geo contests the OP is talking about were also in every single issue of EGM for several years. In addition to the Neo Geo and LaserActive grand prizes, they also had smaller prizes including a Master System 2 setup, which was later replaced by a Turbo Duo bundle when the Master System dried up in the US.

I never fell for it, though I came close. At the time I was thinking of entering, my father actually explained that they probably don't even have the prizes available and are hoping to make enough money from the entry fees coming in to go out and buy those items if someone actually wins the whole thing. Meaning if nobody wins, they will have made a lot of money but don't have to go out and buy squat. Made sense to me at the time.

During the Ed Semrad, 410 pages per issue, Street Fighter cover on every other issue era of the early 90's, EGM had at least a dozen very obvious fly by night companies who showed up in every issue for 2-3 years running. This contest was one of them, Innovation Products was another, the Gamage game enhancer people were frauds and there was also some company who claimed to sell old, sealed 2600/INTV games but you could only get a catalog of their available products by sending them $5 cash.

[cessnaace]

Apparently you enter by solving the simple puzzle, pay an entry fee, receive a second puzzle, pay another entry fee, 3rd puzzle, 3rd fee, and so on until you finish the last puzzle and supposedly win. And the guy who ran the contest collected the fees but never actually gave the prizes out.

Of course, my gaming rig now is better than that one.

Thanks for the info! I tried finding a copy of the ad in my magazine collection but was having no luck.

STAY AWESOME!