Video games try to tell you about themselves through their ads. Sometimes they tell you about their attitude, or their humor, or their special subject matter. Each ad tells you what's most important about the game in order to spark your interest. Here are ads for Twisted Metal Black, Worms World Party, and Zone of the Enders I scanned recently from some old Spectre comics.
An ad with attitude is this Twisted Metal Black two pager. The busted up stop sign and the crudely made stitches tell you some horrible car related accident has occured .The smaller images at the bottom spell out what the game is about more explicitly but it's the stop sign that delivers the attitude of the game very forcefully. It's all about a horror themed battle of vehicles.
This Worms World Party ad talks to the humor of the game and assumes the audience is mostly hetro males by putting one in the center and surrounding him with a typical male fantasy. The message is: think of this fantasy; our game is better; look at her butt; it's got our logo on it. Ad makers know their audience and use images to draw them to their product. 
An ad that just drops lots of images of the game in front of you is this Zone of the Ender two pager. This game is clearly shown to be about mechs in a anime style. What more do you need to know with a game like this? You either love anime mechs or you don't. The niche audience for this kind of game responds to these images, so that's all you need. 
Each of these ads says something different to turn you on to the game and to appeal to you, their audience. Like trailers, they offten claim more than the game delivers, but they provide a sweet delicious lie that I enjoy in its own right. I haven't even played any of these three games, but I love their ads and dutifully collect them to look at. Am I bit like Graham Dalton in the film Sex, Lies and Videotape? Not exactly but yea, just like that.
I remember having a bunch of comics from the 90s and would love looking at the ads for games. My favourite had to be Phalanx for the SNES.
Cool!
Every week I pick a few old comics for 25 cents each alongside my new stuff hoping to find some ads. Marvel and DC both load their comics with ads of all sorts. Some of the smaller publishers don't though.
I alway thought this was such a wierd ass ad. I suppose the intent was maybe to connect wild west shoot out to outerspace dogfights. But this is just a hill billy strummin his banjo chillin with his dog, not a gun slinging cowboy. I just don't get it. If I remember right this was also the box art too.
Speaking of false advertising, I think all I know of Sex, Lies, and Videotape was thinking it was something different in my adolescence cause I saw it was on Cinemax at a late time.
Then I realized it was a movie movie, and never watched it again.
I watched it on Wiki, meaning I read the plot. The title has always stuck in my mind. It's very catchy.
I've been thinning out my old game mags lately,so I am looking at tons of ads. Most of them consist almost 80% of ad content. You are right about how much sex is crammed into them. Never had an effect on my buying of games,but I do like the boobs and butts! I remember that movie and the strip scene. James Spader plays creepy very well! Print ads lack the style they had back in the 80's and 90's. Now they are pretty direct and pander to the lowest common denominator.
They've gotten too good at them. It makes them less interesting. Too slick and too predictable. I'm thinking of the Bioshock Infinite and Last of Us ads I scanned recently. They aren't bad, but they are not too interesting. I think game ads used to be targeted to a younger audience and so there was more humor. The ads targeted to an older gamer, like the ones I just mentioned, are all serious and dark. I like the humor, attitude and giant mechs or fantastic flying ships in my ads.