Experience the weird wonder of GTV (no, not that GTV)
Before PlayStation, Sony sponsored its own monthly games mag, Game Tech Video... on VHS?
Sometimes, there are no words. Such is the case with this digital rip of the first issue of Sony's VHS-based magazine, Game Tech Video:
Well, OK, maybe a few words are in order.
You have to understand that the overall economy in Japan was booming back in the 1980s. Remember when you got that stimulus check during the pandemic, and you weren't spending anything on gasoline or public transit because you weren't allowed to go anywhere, so you suddenly had a lot of free cash to use however you wanted? Well, imagine that for everyone in the country for an entire decade. That's ’80s Japan.
A lot of cool things came out of that brief period when Japan had unlocked the infinite money glitch. A whole lot of great anime and video games, for one. And lots of things related to them. Like games magazines.
Somewhere along the way, someone had the great idea to create a games magazine on video. After all, VHS decks were suddenly affordable, and video games are a very visual medium. What if you could have actual footage shipped to your home each month to watch on tape, allowing you to really see what these games looked like in motion? VHS-based magazines were an experience that transcended the pedestrian screenshot, and several of these emerged in Japan around 1988 as the console wars heated up around the launches of Hudson's PC Engine and Sega's Mega Drive.
Game Tech Video was the strangest of these publications. Family Magazine published Famimaga Video, which took a fairly direct approach to turning print into video. Lots of previews and cheats. GTV, on the other hand, went in its own direction, taking a more surreal, comedy-tinged approach that feels like what you'd get if Jim Henson puppetry were a public access program about video games. Each episode of GTV is hosted by a woman named Sophie, a very low-quality puppet who was clearly riffing on Max Headroom. Sometimes there are cavemen. Other times, you have guys dressed as luchadors, swamis, or schoolgirls. There are comedy routine inserts. It's a strange video.
But, GTV also includes a lot of really interesting stuff, delving into less mainstream titles than other magazines of the era. Later on, they also began chronicling the histories of different genres and game publishers. It's a great window into some of the more esoteric slices of a specific moment in time, and it's also very strange. And somehow, this whole thing was sponsored by Sony, who published a handful of Famicom games but mostly wanted you to buy their audio gear and CDs.
I've uploaded the first episode for you, with more to come throughout the year. If you don't speak Japanese, I highly recommend turning on YouTube's auto-translation subtitle feature. It's not as good as a human translation, but you should be able to get the gist. Except maybe with the comedy stuff... but I'm not convinced those "jokes" landed even in Japanese.
