[Bandit LOAF]

StarLancer! You know it, you love it… but no one else does. And one of the reasons for that is because of just how awful Microsoft's advertising campaign for the game was. I became interested in cataloging it because of the tagline, "From Erin and Chris Roberts, creators of the Wing Commander and Privater series"... and when I saw the "minimalist" UK versions of the ads I was horrified.





They continued this same theme for a bunch of related nonsense:





The United States version was much better, with a pair of cool propaganda-style images that sold the game with a sort of World War II vibe. They share the same tagline connecting the game back to Wing Commander and Privateer:





The Dreamcast port had some nice spaceships and the tagline was a bit more subdued. It simply mentions in the copy that StarLancer is "from the award winning designers of Wing Commander."




--
Original update published on May 10, 2026

 

[Dondragmer]

I remember 1992. My family would go into our local game shop and browse boxes like these.



(I never suggested buying Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe because I thought the cartoon-style labelling was too childish. I was in grade 5 or 6 at the time! I enjoyed Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, I'd probably have enjoyed one of Lawrence Holland's simulations! Foolish Dondragmer.)

Anyway, the day I walked in and saw this was like being an ape encountering the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.



Not that it motivated me to buy it; I was aware of the Ultima series by in those days didn't play many RPGs more complex than the Quest for Glory series.

I never looked at the back of the box back then. I was probably too short to even reach it on the top shelf. If I had looked at the back, I would probably have appreciated a little more information about what type of gameplay awaited on the 3½-inch disks inside the box. If I had noticed the "Voluntarily Rated MP-13" I would have decided it was not a game for me, I didn't play Wolfenstein 3D on its release for the same reason.

Also, that black box may have looked stylish on the shelf, but most of the box scans on Mobygames have become really scuffed in the decades since it was made!

I think several advertising campaigns from the late 1990s were by graphic designers who remembered the Ultima VII branding and wanted to recreate its quiet confidence. But I agree those Starlancer ads go a wide of the mark.

And it could have been worse, at least it wasn't Daikatana...

 

[Dyret]

That Daikatana ad is an absolute masterpiece in that people still associate John Romero more with it than his actual accomplishments like thirty years later.