This 1991 advert for rice balls features J-pop singer Arisa Mizuki (観月ありさ) who was just making her singing debut at the time this commercial was shown. Arisa had been modeling as a child since the age of four, but her big break came with the TV drama Mou dare mo Aisanai which was followed by her first single record Densetsu no Shoujo. In addition during this time she also provided vocals for the Sailor Moon song Kaze Mo, Sora Mo, Kitto.

When was the last time that retail employees wore a tie? The year is 1991 and this training video show retail employees how to dodge problem customers who want to return their Gameboy and NES Sports Sets. My favorite example in the video is the “nice customer” who is using the wrong port and is so grateful for the help that she offers to bring the store employee a pie. By the way notice how the customer is always at fault in this video as if Nintendo would never ship a defective product.

There’s something very haunting about some of the Russian animation that I’ve seen over the years, there’s a sense of surrealism but there’s something very unnerving underneath the surface. This animated film is from 1991 and is titled Frother (Потец) — it’s based upon a poem Alexander Vvedensky from 1937. The film’s director was Alexander Fedulov (1947 – 1996) and the other worldly art direction is by Vladimir Burkin. Here’s the second part of the film:

Space Fantasy Zone （スペースファンタジーゾーン）was the unreleased followup to the 1985 Sega arcade game Fantasy Zone (ファンタジーゾーン) which was later ported to a wide range of systems from the Nintendo Famicom to the Sharp X68000. The reason Space Fantasy Zone was never released was because NEC developed the game without getting permission from Sega who made it a point of not letting them put it out. The 1991 title was created for the NEC PC Engine Super CD-ROM2 platform which is known in the United States as the TurboGrafx-CD. Over the years a prototype of the game has been floating around (which is what this video is from) and rumor has it that an ISO of the SuperCD has been leaked in the past.

I’d love to see Sega burry the hatchet and allow an official release after all of these years. What I love about this lost gem are all of the cute little anime elements sprinkled through out the game: