■I'M THE OPERATOR WITH MY PC IDOL GENERATOR In the 80's female idols were still everywhere and advertised everything. The only thing different then in comparison to the previous decades was that since the 80's were the 「hi-tech」 era, idols were now advertising VCRs and PCs as much as candy bars and instant ramen. And when it came down to advertising personal computers in the 80's, no one did it better than the adorable-looking 「YUKI SAITO」.

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■POWERFUL FAMICOM・SUPER MOVIE !! RUNNING BOY : THE SECRET OF STAR SOLDIER (ランニングボーイ スター・ソルジャーの秘密) is an original anime film created by FILMING INTERNATIONAL for HUDSON SOFT.

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Today I'd like to reminsce about some of my favourite retro tokusatsu (live-action special film) TV shows. Here's three of them, feel free to tell me what you think!

・ロボット８ちゃん (ROBOT 8-CHAN) - 1981

Watching the opening of this show always makes me chuckle! ROBOT 8-CHAN is among the few tokusatsu programs I've got to see a re-run of it while I was a kid, so I have very fond memories of it. Being honest though, I don't think I ever quite understood what was going on in the show at the time. (^^;;

I even actually owned a ROBOT 8-CHAN toy figure when I was a kid. From what I can remember it was very cool, extremelly well-made for it's time, and heavy!

I wish I still had it... (T^T)


・がんばれ!!ロボコン (GANBARE!! ROBOCON) - 1974

Done by the great SHOTARU ISHINOMORI (the creator of CYBORG 009), this show was aired well before my time, so I never did watched it first-hand. Still, GAMBARE!! ROBOCON is certainly among the most hilarious (and well made!) tokusatsu programs I've seen (on 0:28 you can see very clearly one of the crew's strings though (^^;; )

For the '70s, I think this was the closest a live-action TV show got at resembling an actual manga or anime. I specially like all the little details and attention put into ROBOCON. The way they made so many little gadges come out of the costume, how the big clockwork key-thingie on top is always spinning, and how different ROBOCON eyes were used to show emotion. Definitely a top-notch show!


・SPIDER-MAN - 1978

Ok, let's just say that SPIDER-MAN in Japan was a "little" different than his American counterpart... (^^;;

Instead of PETER PARKER we have TAKUYA YAMASHIRO, a young motorcycle racer who sees an UFO falling to earth. The UFO turns out to be a spaceship called the「MARVELLER」which comes from planet「SPIDER」. The last surivor of SPIDER then gives TAKUYA the「Spider Bracelet」, which as you all probably already figured it out gives TAKUYA spider-like super powers.

Most interestingly is that SPIDER-MAN can summon the MARVELLER and make it transform into a super robot called LEOPARDON (!) (on 0:47 you can clearly hear SPIDEY yell「CHARGE LEOPARDON !!」)

I could be wrong, but I think the show is actually well-known by now overseas (or at least in America), so I guess many of you have seen it or heard of it already. If not, you can check the Wikipedia article on it for more info. The show is quite... interesting to say the least. (^^;;

Arguably the best game music band of all time performing live at the legendary Game Music Festival ver.90.

While all of the S.S.T. Band live performances are worthy of watching, these in 1990 are special since they feature some very cool video back-up footage from the actual SEGA games.

The band leader still at this point was none other than the legendary HIROSHI「HIRO」KAWAGUCHI (the main keyboard player with the ponytail), who is responsible for some of the most memorable SEGA game soundtracks of the '80s like FANTASY ZONE, HANG-ON, SPACE HARRIER, OUT RUN, AFTER BURNER, among many others.

This is the rest of the show :

SPRINTER (SUPER HANG-ON) ~ GALAXY FORCE Medley ~ BURNING POINT (THUNDER BLADE) ~ VERMILLION Medley ~ LAST WAVE (OUTRUN) ~ POWER DRIFT Medley ~ MAIN THEME (PHANTASY STAR III) .

I hope this post encourages at least some of you to look into the rest of the S.S.T. BAND stuff in YouTube, since of course is simply awesome.

This is definetly one of the best retro game commercials from the '80s, with a very professional TV anime show quality production.

Despite having some really great developer teams like WOLFTEAM and RIOT among their ranks, NIHON TELENET nonetheless gained a questionable reputation as a game publisher in Japan, since in general most of the games they published were praised more for their excellent character designs and decent storylines than for their gameplay.

This CM is further proof that NIHON TELENET were at their best when it came to come up with cool anime character designs and themes. So I really can't help but think they would have fared better if they had also incursionated as an animation studio.

Ironically, out of the 4 different incarnations of the original VALIS game, the FAMICOM version is by much the worst. But since the FAMICOM was by far and away the most popular home game system in Japan at the time, then it's very likely the sales expectations of the FC version were superior that those for the other versions, and that alone was probably more than enough incentive for NIHON TELENET to release this exceptional promo CM for it.