Square Enix Archivist Traces History of Game Promotional Tools at CEDEC 2026
The session positions storefront advertising as archival material on par with development documents, giving the industry's physical sales history a preservation claim it has not previously held.
Key Facts
- Toshiyuki Inoue of Square Enix presented the CEDEC 2026 session on the history and future of promotional tools on August 31, 2026.
- The SAVE project, which Inoue works on, began in summer 2019 to archive development materials into an internal database.
- CERO was founded in 2002, and its age ratings led Square Enix to produce dedicated promotional tools for Z-rated software.
- Inoue said Famicom and Super Famicom era promotional tools rarely survive, while PlayStation era materials are partially confirmed.
- Inoue's ten years as a sales representative left more than 1,000 photos of in-store promotional deployments.
Reporting from 2 sources: Game Spark, GameBusiness.jp.
At CEDEC 2026, Square Enix researcher Toshiyuki Inoue delivered a session on the history of promotional tools, the posters, POP displays, and in-store materials used to sell packaged games. Inoue, who works in the company's SAVE project as a game development materials preservation researcher, walked through decades of storefront advertising and argued these materials deserve the same preservation treatment as development documents. He framed promotional tools as one type of 'intermediate deliverable' produced between development and the moment a user plays the game, and as part of the game industry's supply chain connecting developers to customers. The session traced the shift from PC magazine ads in the early 1980s to store posters and flyers after the Famicom appeared in 1983, the arrival of in-store TV monitors in the late 1980s, and the 2002 founding of CERO, which led to dedicated tools for Z-rated software. Inoue also described the wide range of formats his company has produced, from B2 posters to dummy jackets, standing panels, and floor stickers.
Inoue joined a Bandai-affiliated company in 1987 to plan board games, moved to Square in 1989 for map production, transferred to the publicity division in 1994, and shifted to sales in 2015 before joining the SAVE project in 2024. The SAVE project, which began in summer 2019, archives development materials stored in company warehouses into a database any employee can use.
His slides catalogued the formats Square Enix has deployed: B2 posters for walls and monitor areas, B1 posters twice that size, 'tanjaku' posters at a quarter of B2 for tight spaces, cutouts, dummy jackets in reservation and product variants, BOX POP, layered 3D pops, top boards, rail pops, swing pops, standing panels of 150 to 180 centimeters, cheaper 'nama stands,' small character stand pops, separators, hanging flags, and floor stickers. He noted that Famicom and Super Famicom era tools rarely survive, while PlayStation era materials are partially confirmed, and that his ten years in sales left more than 1,000 deployment photos. He also observed that overseas store displays differ by region, with tower box builds and flags common but protruding aisle displays and monitor decorations rare.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 2 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.