Deep inside another dimension: Heroquest!
One of my gateways as a kiddo to adventure boardgaming. βοΈ
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A snippet of an earlier attempt to bring over subbed anime in a big way to NA - by a Japanese company.
Gaga Communications shopped around a hype reel of OVAs with new names in 1987 to anyone who they figured might be interested in licensing them.
Bubblegum Crisis? Futurescape!
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Live action VG commercial goodness and my favourite TRPG series, combining in 1992! Tactical RPG Shining Force!
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Taken from a Namco promo disc from late 2005 (so the quality is a little crunchy) the JPN version of Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War's trailer. Celebrating its 20th birthday today.
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Ripped from a SpaceWorld 2000 promo disc: a look ahead to what Nintendo had on the boil for their GameCube, now on the horizon.
Note the radically different graphical style for their Legend of Zelda tech demo, looking more of a proto-Twilight Princess/Ocarina continuation.
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A low-key ad in comparison to some Final Fantasy commercials, but one that gives us a wonderful glimpse of the game in development, Square's dev offices, and the computers they used to make Final Fantasy II for Famicom.
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Mario! Mario RPG! RPG! πΆ
All the singing piranha plants you wish for in an oh-so-cute Mario RPG commercial. Celebrating its 30th anniversary in Japan. π
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A Superb Owl Going Supernova: Psygnosis in '96 into 1997!
This is a pretty awesome hype reel, a snippet from a longer video, from my overall favourite software dev/publisher (and developer of key dev kit hardware for the PS1) of the past.
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From the Mega Driveβ¦ closed-fist action: Bare Knuckle II, aka Streets of Rage II. π₯
What a cool live-action commercial from Japan for one of my favourite brawlers.
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Take a Leap of Faith in November 2008 with Mirror's Edge...
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Not just a glimpse of Legend of Zelda in action on its 40th birthday in this Japanese commercial, but also of the Famicom Disk System and the kiosks that supported its ecosystem. For 500 yen, you could have an existing game overwritten, and it would supply new disk labels and a manual.
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I do love a bit of cheesy live action in video game commercials. This one for Dragon Warrior from '89 is rich with pungent flavour, airing as Dragon Quest makes its way over from Japan with a name and presentation change.
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An early glimpse of the PlayStation on British TV in 1994 with Video games news, reviews, and tech news show Bad Influence.
I had a floppy-driven Commodore Amiga at the time, and had already been drooling over 3DO, so this really did look like something wholly unreal.
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Many a Dungeoneer's quest in UK TV 'virtual reality' late 80s/90s adventure game show Knightmare came to an abrupt end due to being given wrong or hasty instructions by their guiding team.
This moment here is probably the biggest 'Why, why did you say that?' of the entire run. ;o;
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The announcement of Virtual Console as a headline feature for the Nintendo Wii (still titled Revolution) during E3 2005.
For Iwata, it would redefine backward capability as not just hardware but also as software: multiple prior generations of console games all in one machine.
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Ooh, the hype! Blazing a trail(er) for the last generation of AD&D 2E games at E3 1998: Baldur's Gate!
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In all its 320x240, 700kbps crunchy glory and pulled from the Rez JP website: A snippet of a live performance at Rez Live at Shibuya-AX in 2001.
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When Poogie and Palico join forces to take down monsters... Monster Hunter G!
Monster Hunter G was another port of an expanded version of the original Monster Hunter, bundled with a themed Classic Controller and a demo of Monster Hunter Tri.
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Ace Combat 2: The game that's still on your mind even in the office, especially when you've got model planes to hand!.
What a cute ad, just now pulled from a 1997 EDGE CD-ROM's 'Big in Japan' section.
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"And now you say... you want a Revolution?"
The magic moment where one of my favourite consoles and its backward compatibility features were unveiled at E3 2005.
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STANDBY FOR DATABLAST!
One neat thing that early-mid 90s UK games reviews and tech news TV show Bad Influence did was the Datablast: a bonus text-and-images magazine readable for those with VCRs that could do frame advance.
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"Imagine if you had the power to see the future... just before it happened."
Coming soon in August 2000 on FOX Kids: The Vision of Escaflowne. Now with a new intro theme from and partly re-scored by Inon Zur.
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I love catching glimpses of earlier VR tech, and media from 1992-94 is a rich resource for it, as there was a major push to introduce it then.
Here, in a 1992 episode of Computer Chronicles, we get a peek at one of the VR headsets and the glove input devices used for with it.
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"Be afraid, be very afraid! One life-sucking Metroid survived the first Metroid adventure and is multiplying rapidly!"
A call to arms in '91 to pick up Samus's new adventure. βοΈ
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Joust - You don't play it, you LIVE it!
One of my favourite Williams arcade games. π
πΊ: Joust commercial, Atari 2600/5200 version (1983)
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You may know DivX as a codec, but did you know that it was also once a competing format to DVD in the late 90s?
DivX movie discs had DRM that required a fee of $4.49 to unlock by phone and modem for 48 hours. Then they'd go unwatchable until you paid $3.25 for another 48 hours.
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Rising from its grave, the imposing stop-motion warrior, AshGuine, star of three games and unofficial mascot for Panasonic's version of the MSX: The A1.
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The Second Life of its day: Lucasfilm's Habitat (1986-1988)
Lucasfilm were one of the companies at the cutting edge of computer game software, and pioneering some really cool stuff, such as this social MMO for the Commodore 64 available via the QuantumLink service.
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When directions fail in the heat of the moment - as they often did on virtual television adventure game Knightmare!
Ooh, nasty~
Broadcast between 1987-1994 in the UK (with French and Spanish adaptations) Knightmare pitted a team of kids to guide a friend through a perilous dungeon.
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How did Mega Drive masterwork Streets of Rage II fare under 90s UK tech news and game reviews show Bad Influence's review scrutiny?
Bad Influence's remit was to have the target audience review the games they featured as, well, they'd be saving up/asking for and playing them.
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