Gamertell

In browsing through my comic book archives I found an issue of Betty & Veronica Double Digest (No. 62, January 1997), published by Archie Comics. The issue’s cover features Betty playing a videogame against a typically cranky Veronica on an nondescript game system.

Archie comics has been running Nintendo game ads for years, although it seems to have skipped this particular issue or simply skipped the Digest line. The game controllers they are using instead look pretty similar to the Sega Genesis or Sega Saturn controllers rather than the then newer Nintendo 64 controllers, released in the US in 1997.

Maybe it’s the nature of the art but, if you look closely, notice that the controllers don’t have any wires. It’s either a wise prediction or fortuitous foreshadowing on the part of Archie artist Dan DeCarlo. Eleven years later and wireless controllers are the norm.

Another interesting bit of possible predicting is that the game they are playing features Betty, Veronica and Archie. To put it more plainly, the gamers are in the game, playing as themselves and even wearing the exact same clothes. Sounds pretty dang close to the ultimate goal of Nintendo’s Miis and Microsoft’s new custom avatar system, doesn’t it?

Maybe I’m pushing it here but that screen looks pretty high-def to me. Hard to tell the real thing from the TV screen. Oh, and 100% of the gamers on that cover are women.

Let’s just hope that the evil Colonel Computron from the 1980s Flash comics doesn’t come true, too.

For those who prefer to view the cover a bit closer:

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