The early 1980s were a wild time for video games. Atari was at the center of the boom, marketing the Atari 2600 as the console for bringing arcade fun into the home. But in 1981, the company rolled out one of its more unusual advertising campaigns—featuring none other than Stevie Wonder.
The ad shows the legendary musician smiling while holding an Atari joystick, with the bold headline:
“If I could play video games, you bet it would be ATARI!”
On the surface, it’s a typical star-powered endorsement. Atari often leaned on celebrity appeal to set itself apart from competitors like Mattel’s Intellivision and ColecoVision. But the choice of Stevie Wonder—an artist who has been blind since infancy—to endorse a product so heavily reliant on visuals is striking.
The Marketing Pitch
The ad copy does its best to play off Stevie’s persona with a tongue-in-cheek tone:
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It emphasizes Atari’s “simple, straightforward controllers” that “even Stevie can fumble through with a joystick.”
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It stresses that you “don’t need two people, or even two eyes” to have fun on an Atari 2600.
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Stevie is quoted as saying, “My friends tell me the graphics are the best. I don’t know what that means, but I know with the Atari 2600, they must be upright and outta sight!”
It’s playful, if not a little eyebrow-raising by today’s standards. The humor leans on Stevie’s blindness in a way that feels dated, but back then it was framed as lighthearted wordplay rather than mean-spirited.
Atari’s Strategy
This ad fits neatly into Atari’s push to make the 2600 synonymous with fun for everyone. By the early ‘80s, video games were no longer just a niche hobby for tech enthusiasts—they were a living room activity for families, kids, and casual players. Using a universally beloved celebrity like Stevie Wonder underscored the message: Atari wasn’t just for hardcore arcade fans, it was for anybody who wanted entertainment at home.
Looking Back
From a modern perspective, this ad is both fascinating and a little awkward. Today, companies are more sensitive about how they represent disabilities in marketing. But it also reflects how embedded video games had become in pop culture by 1981—big enough that even Stevie Wonder’s name was being used to sell joysticks and cartridges.
More than four decades later, this piece of advertising history stands as a quirky reminder of just how far gaming, marketing, and cultural attitudes have evolved. Atari may not dominate living rooms anymore, but ads like this are still “outta sight” in their own retro way.
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