Get Info made a substantial post on a couple of significant pieces of Japanese gaming ephemera, a four hour long program that aired overnight on March 14, 1987 that was basically 100 segments on a variety of games (and other things really), and a book that was released later that was an encyclopedia of gaming from around that time. A lot of it is as inexplicabe as Japanese media can be to non-Japanese speakers, but it’s very interesting as a gaming time capsule from the era. Clips are presented not just from Japanese properties but also games from around the world.
Nearly the whole program (with minor edits for copyright) is on Youtube (4 hours), with a table of contents with links in its description. Although, unless you have an insatiable hunger for random gaming clips, you’ll probably want to go through the TOC.
This post is mostly intended to point you to Get Info’s much more substantive piece, but here are links to a few of the more recognizable clips these days: Ballblazer, Space Invaders, Out Run, Flight Simulator, Super Mario Bros., Eliza, Zanac, Little Computer People, Fantasy Zone, Karateka, Pinball Construction Set, Marble Madness, Rescue on Fractalus, Wizardry and Galaxian. All 100 clips are also on Youtube separated out into individual videos (and with better image quality overall).
The book that followed contains Denshi Yuugi Taizen : TV Games,” presents 40 interviews with a who’s-who of game creation at the time, including Nolan Bushnell, Ed Logg, Steve Cartwright, Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji, Trip Hawkins, Freefall Associates, Timothy Leary, Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Horii, Toru Iwatani, Sir-Tech, Shigesato Itoi and many more. A full scan of the book is on the Internet Archive.
