Editor's note: Not much to say...I'm a sucker for awesomely bad ads from the olden days. - Demian

Inspired by Aaron Thomas' article about radtacular video game ads from 1994, here are a few more ads that I just couldn't forget from the PC side of the world. Please allow me to sear them into your brain, so that we can suffer together.

You can click on each image to bring up a humongous version. And some of these are two-pagers! So be ready for that.

It's the CD-ROM revolution! The Golden Age of the Plastic Platter, the ultimate fusion of Hollywood and gaming: interactive movies! Well, it wasn't all sweet smelling zeroes and ones, especially in the early years, but the results were certainly memorable.

Unfortunately, Virgin Interactive couldn't get the real Gorbachev for Conspiracy, but a beardy Donald Sutherland is nothing to sneeze at. Well, unless you are Donald Sutherland, wearing that fake beard. (1993)

Actually, mom did warn me about nuclear war, she just left out the part about chicks in bikinis who like to party. Nuclear War starred such deliciously punny characters as Ronnie Raygun, Infidel Castro, Kookamamie, and Col. Kadaffy, as they escalated their way to the end.

The Cold War was still on everyone's mind when this came out in '89 (the ad was still running in magazines in 1990), though the fall of the Soviet Union was only a year or two away. Odd how in that time, movies, games, and books easily parodied what could have been the end of the world, while today, a title like Six Days in Fallujah can spark a shitstorm of controversy even with veterans from that battle participating in its development. (1990)

It was the 90s version of Death Race 2000 -- shortcuts through the beach, the local football arena, sidewalks, whatever. I almost never finished a race the 'right' way, since I'd always try and take out everyone else first. Or maybe that was the right way. (1997)

Anyone remember this FPS from '97? My PC at the time could barely run it. Note that the chicken is sweating -- back then that took some ninja Photoshop skills. (1997)

With the tag line of "Who wants some Wang?" Shadow Warrior was controversial not for its gore, but for what many viewed as a blatantly racist depiction of Asians. Satire or stereotype? Parody or paradox? Crude humor, one liners, and buckets of chunky blood were what the developers of Duke Nukem did best, but many believed that they may have gone a little too far with this one. It certainly was innovative in several gameplay aspects, though, especially the over-the-top sword fighting.

Personally, I'd be more offended by the voice acting in Raven Squad than by anything in this game. (1997)

Ripper was a murder mystery starring Christopher Walken, who was accompanied by several other stars who also jumped onto the CD-ROM bandwagon. And no, the solution was not his character in the Dining Room with a cowbell...even though that would have been incredibly epic. (1996)

This game was based off of Shatner's TekWar novels and the 90s TV series that followed on cable. As for the game itself, I only tried out a demo but it wasn't too bad. Hey, it's William Shatner, he can do whatever the hell he wants. Look at the shirt! Who else has the balls to wear a shirt like that in public? (1996)

MegaTech was like the tiny dark sprite lurking just behind Working Designs' vast shadow, focusing on importing and distributing eroge within the United States, which made it kind of odd to see in a magazine like CGW. Still, anime wasn't as widely known then as it is today, but it's kind of hard to miss the hints that the ad was throwing out. This was before CGW started running ads for pornographic games in the back at one point.

The games were notable for being translated imports of Japanese titles, but MegaTech was not the first PC publisher to ship in titles from Japan. For example, Sierra On-Line had previously imported Thexder (which would later evolve into the Silpheed series) and Nihon Falcom's (the creators of the Ys series) Sorcerian for PC. (1990)

How about this one? The Tetris concept was spun off into many variations, and this was one of the lesser-known ones...at least to me. I'd never heard of this until I saw the ad. The concept was that you could mix and match face parts to break down the columns. Sounds interesting, but it quietly disappeared and was never spoken of again. Too different? Too weird? (1990)