Remember the time during Nintendo and SEGA’s bitter rivalry in the 90’s? Who could ever forget SEGA’s massive ad campaign against Nintendo, with ads like SEGA does what NINTENDON’T.

In a seeming parallel in today’s console wars, SEGA tried hard to market their console as the hardcore condole, leaving the casuals to Nintendo. In fact some of these ads are extremely subliminal as a couple of examples here below:

What a better way of saying that the Sonic series was a real man’s game than having an analogy to balls? If you don’t have Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, you basically don’t have the balls! Certainly effective for their target audience.

This has got to be one of the most blatant (and awesome) ads SEGA has ever come up with. With numerous references in playing with your junk, it certainly defines the era of over the top advertisement of the 90’s.

This advertisement for the SEGA + Altered Beast bundle features a phallic image with several phrases such as “the more you play with it, the harder it gets”, and “shooting all over the place”. Its a miracle how this advert got past the censors.

It is amazing how intense the rivalry was between these two companies. And it is harder to imagine that nowadays, these two are working more closely together with the development of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games, and the inclusion of Sonic in Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

And as console cycles go, it seems that history is repeating itself once again, with both Sony and Microsoft taunting Nintendo as the casual and kiddie console. As long as these rivalries exists, we can expect more entertaining ads such as these.