Promo Man: Klip Art

How do you convey the gore and violence of Mortal Kombat 3 without printing just another ad filled with severed limbs and soaked with blood? You raid a clip art archive for images of painful looking torture devices. I think the solution was pretty elegant at the time, making for a much more memorable — even stylish — ad that implies the pain and torment of the game without showing anything.

The tagline “First on PlayStation” is another reminder that the things that bug us about gaming today have been going on for decades. Terms like “console exclusive debut” weren’t a thing in the 90’s but it was happening nonetheless.