The best way to predict the future is to look at the past, or so someone smarter than us once said. For this week’s Trailer Trash, we’re doing just that with a look back at some of our favorite retro game videos. Pages are arranged roughly by era, so feel free to skip around.

Early Times

Cosmic Ark

Ah, the good old days when building a fort to play games in was more exciting than the games themselves. And your gullible little brother still believed that watching you play meant that he was on your team, ergo also playing.  Sucker!

Missile Command/Learn French

See? Two out of three grandparents agree that videogames will turn your child into a bow tie-wearing, French-spouting little Einstein, not a sociopathic, puppy-torturing sodomite. See? The TV said so. Unless he turns into a sophisticated Bond villain intent on perpetrating DEFCON 1.

Donkey Kong

This clearly racist Reagan-era propaganda stoked the flames of white suburban paranoia during a time when increased consolidation of wealth in the hands of the elite was causing rampant crime across the nation. The solution? Nuke the whales, buy a gun, vote Republican and get you some Donkey Kong on the Colecovision.

Have you played Atari today?

From the looks of it, Atari spent this commercial’s entire budget on the awesome, “Have you played Atari today?” jingle and couldn’t afford, you know, actors. So some brilliant producer (who probably now owns a Caribbean island) got the great idea to just color in the storyboards and call it done.

The Fonz Pinball

While not strictly a videogame, we had to include The Fonz Pinball for the digitized Henry Winkler one-liners and that kid’s amazing shirt, which modern day hipsters would commit hara-kiri for.