March 3, 2026
Neon nostalgia knife fight
TV's TV (1987) & TV Games Encyclopedia (1988)
Fans clash over a 1987 midnight game-show fever dream—and the bubble-era book it spawned
TLDR: A 1987 late-night Fuji TV experiment showcasing global games—and its ambitious 1988 encyclopedia—just reignited retro fandom. Fans are torn between calling it art or ad, Amiga heads are duking it out with console purists, and collectors demand preservation while prices and hype inflate like it’s the bubble era again.
Retro corners of the internet are losing it over a rediscovered oddity: TV’s TV, a four-hour, past-midnight Japanese broadcast from 1987 that blasted 100 rapid-fire video game clips across a wall of screens—like your cousin’s YouTube playlist before YouTube. The kicker? It was steered by future heavyweights: music by Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa), CG by Toshio Iwai, and overseen by Tsunekazu Ishihara—yes, the future Pokémon boss. A year later came the follow-up: the lavish 1988 TV Games Encyclopedia, born in Japan’s spend-like-there’s-no-tomorrow bubble economy.
Commenters are split into turf wars. One camp calls the show “vaporwave before vaporwave,” an art piece that let Japan peek at Amiga, Apple II, and Atari for the first time. Others snark it was basically “an infomercial fever dream”—cool, but an ad wall with good vibes. The book sparked collector chaos: fans drool over its ambition, while skeptics call it a pricey “coffee table flex” from the bubble years.
Memes? Plenty. People keep posting photos of living rooms stacked with old CRTs captioned “TV’s TV starter pack.” Preservationists are begging for scans and clean uploads of the full program, while scalpers circle the ISBN like sharks. It’s nostalgia, art-school debate, and yard-sale panic—all in one neon-soaked time capsule.
Key Points
- •TV’s TV aired on Fuji TV in Japan from 01:55 to 05:55 on March 14, 1987, as a four-hour late-night program.
- •The program presented 100 TV spots in a wall-of-TVs format, showcasing video games from around the world.
- •For many Japanese viewers, TV’s TV introduced Western platforms like the Amiga, Apple II, and Atari.
- •Key creators included Toshio Iwai (CG using Amiga), Masaya Matsuura (music), and Tsunekazu Ishihara (production overseer).
- •The following year, the team produced TV Games Encyclopedia (May 1988, published by UPU), contextualized within Japan’s bubble economy.