It would be a bit of understatement to say I get excited whenever I find cultural archives, especially ones of contemporary culture and doubly so to do with games. I've extolled the virtues of the Arcade Flyer archive before but today, after finding it many months ago and forgetting about it, I present to you a random YouTube channel that has an incredibly thorough compilation of video game commercials televised in Japan over the decades.
As a whole these commercials effectively tell the story of how video game hardware and software were marketed and presented to the Japanese viewing public, in particular the 1980s and 1990s although there's plenty from the 2000s as well. Individually, seeing a given game or franchise presented in the way that it is and/or seeing how its presentation changes over time is incredibly fascinating. And, for games I don't know or recognize it can be a fun time trying to figure out what that game is and often learn about games unreleased or obscure to the Western market. I think the best part and the strength of this collection is it's comprehensiveness. The commercials run the gamut from Japan's most famous and well known games and consoles to the most obscure and short-lived Japan-only shit and everything in-between.
For anyone that even has a remote interest in Japanese video games and the culture that makes them, this is definitely worth checking out. Below are the first two videos in the collection to give you a taste:
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