This project is an attempt to preserve as many catalog and circular ads for electronic games as possible.
There are several reasons I think this is an important project. The way games are seen and the language used to talk about them has changed significantly over the years, and advertising copy is a good example. These ads show how much games cost when they were new, and how quickly or slowly that price changed as the game became older. We can compare prices of games across stores and see how different stores pushed different games, we can directly compare disc and cartridge based game prices, and we can track what a typical big release cost at launch over time. Sometimes games have beta or mockup cover art.
To be included the advertisement had to be from a retail store and it has to feature an electronic game or an accessory for such. Electronic game for our purposes includes consoles and games that are played on a television, handhelds with or without interchangeable media, computer games, and some miscellaneous gadgets that you can play games on, such as watches. All ads are from American stores and prices are in United States Dollars. I have a few from other countries I may get around to posting eventually. I came across a few examples of catalogs aimed at retail stores, made by manufacturers of software or hardware, those are not included.
The quality of these scans will vary considerably. Some have many watermarks, some are small, some were not scanned well, and some were in poor condition. I am including everything I could find in the name of preservation.
I currently have images from 1975 to 2020 and about 30 different stores. The ads are organized by alphabetically by store on each year page and by page number when applicable. When there are multiple catalogs or weeks of circular ads featured within a store section I have ordered them chronologically when possible. The amount of information I had about when the ad was released varied from exact date to nothing but the games featured.
You can click the images in the galleries to make them full size, press the left or right arrow keys to go to the previous or next image, and press escape or click outside of the lightbox to close it.
If you can find or scan any ads that you don’t think I have, please send me an e-mail at thespritecell@gmail.com, or message me on twitter at SpriteCell. I currently have posted everything I have from the United States.
Current total images: 2759
1970s
1975 – 2 images – Montgomery Ward, Sears
1976 – 5 images – Montgomery Ward, Sears
1977 – 16 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears, Spiegel
1978 – 12 images – JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears, Unknown
1979 – 14 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears
1980s
1980 – 15 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears
1981 – 21 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears, Skaggs Drug Centers/Alpha Beta Food & Drugs
1982 – 42 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1983 – 73 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears
1984 – 29 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears
1985 – 9 images – JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, RadioShack, Sears
1986 – 9 images – JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears
1987 – 25 images – Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Toys “R” Us
1988 – 46 images – Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1989 – 29 images – JCPenney, KB Toys, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1990s
1990 – 76 images – Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1991 – 159 images – Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, KB Toys, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1992 – 245 images – Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, KB Toys, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1993 – 168 images – Captron, Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Software Etc, Toys “R” Us
1994 – 101 images – Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears, Software Etc, Toys “R” Us, Unknown
1995 – 107 images – Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us, Unknown
1996 – 67 images – Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1997 – 117 images – Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, KB Toys, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1998 – 28 images – Electronics Boutique, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears, Toys “R” Us
1999 – 41 images – CompUSA, Electronics Boutique, FuncoLand, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears
2000s
2000 – 20 images – JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears
2001 – 20 images – Circuit City, JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears
2002 – 16 images – JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears
2003 – 15 images – JCPenney, RadioShack, Sears
2004 – 21 images – Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Fry’s Electronics, JCPenney, KMart, Kohl’s, Sears, Target, Walmart
2005 – 22 images – Best Buy, Circuit City, JCPenney, KMart, Kohl’s, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2006 – 24 images – Best Buy, Circuit City, GameStop, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2007 – 40 images – Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, FYE, JCPenney, KMart, Kohl’s, Microcenter, RadioShack, Sears, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2008 – 53 images – Best Buy, Circuit City, FYE, GameStop, KMart, Kohl’s, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Sears, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2009 – 40 images – AJWright, Best Buy, GameStop, JCPenney, KMart, Kohl’s, OfficeMax, RadioShack, Sears, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2010s
2010 – 34 images – AJWright, Best Buy, Fred’s, GameStop, Hastings, KMart, Kohl’s, OfficeMax, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Sears, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2011 – 36 images – Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics, GameStop, Hastings, KMart, Kohl’s, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Sears, Shopko, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2012 – 35 images – Best Buy, GameStop, Hastings, KMart, Kohl’s, Microcenter, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Shopko, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2013 – 49 images – Best Buy, eBay, Fred Meyer, Fry’s Electronics, GameStop, Hastings, KMart, Kohl’s, Sam’s Club, Sears, Shopko, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2014 – 46 images – Best Buy, eBay, Fred Meyer, Fry’s Electronics, Gordman’s, Hastings, KMart, Microcenter, Newegg, Sam’s Club, Sears, Shopko, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2015 – 37 images – Best Buy, Five Below, Fred Meyer, GameStop, Hastings, HHGregg, Kohl’s, Micro Center, Rakuten, Sam’s Club, Shopko, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2016 – 40 images – Best Buy, BJ’s, Circuit City, Fred Meyer, Gordman’s, HHGregg, Kohl’s, Rakuten, Sam’s Club, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart
2017 – 79 images – Best Buy, BJ’s, Fred Meyer, Fry’s Electronics, GameStop, Kohl’s, Newegg, Sam’s Club, Shopko, Target, Walmart
2018 – 230 images – Best Buy, BJ’s, eBay, Fry’s Electronics, GameStop, Kohl’s, Newegg, Shopko, Target, Walmart
2019 Part 1 – 212 images – Best Buy, BJ’s, Fred Meyer, GameStop
2019 Part 2 – 213 images – Gamestop, Kohl’s, Newegg, Sam’s Club, Target, Walmart
2020s
2020 – 30 images – GameStop, Target
Sources
Christmas Catalogs & Holiday Wishbooks has hundreds of text searchable catalogs.
Hughes Johnson has personally scanned a number of catalogs for his site and blog. His scans are available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license . No changes were made to his scans.
Video Game Art & Tidbits has personally scanned a number of catalogs, as well as other art & tidbits. The individual tweets are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Black Friday Archive has many ads from many stores from late November.
Weekly Ads has many weekly circular ads from many stores.
RadioShackCatalogs specializes in RadioShack catalogs. Some of their scans credit AlliedCatalogs.com.
Totally Target has many Target weekly ads.
Archive.org has all sorts of miscellaneous items. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 , 9
GottaDEAL has a lot of ads, especially for Black Friday.
BFAds has a lot of ads, especially for Black Friday.
Kotaku by way of reddit user Sketchbreaker.
BassGuitari from AtariAge contributed the Spiegel 1977 scans.
imgur user trolling4soup
imgur user ProfessorPancakes
Reddit user m08inthem08 (same as previous, this particular catalog is easily the most commonly posted)
Reddit user isaynonowords
Reddit user Dedennecheese
ResetEra user Deleted member 3321
Warosu’s archive of a 4chan thread.
Mother to Earth on Twitter thinks that this image is from Earthbound Central, but I couldn’t find it there.
Earthbound Central via “a fellow by the name of Mother_fan”
Vintage Computing took credit for scanning a Toys “R” Us ad which I got from somewhere else.