The early 90's was the tail end of a bizarre super-economic decadence in Japan. When people here tell me how they used to spray money around back in the late 80's, it's easy to believe that the Laseractive and its games happened like they did. You know all that money successful American businesspeople have spent on cocaine during high times? Imagine that being portioned toward electronic gadgets instead.
I know a woman who used to work as a hostess in the local red-light district back then, and she claims her boss used to count his money not by the number of yen itself, but by how many centimeters high his stack of 10,000 yen bills was. Like he couldn't even be bothered to count it properly. She said he'd periodically peel off a centimeter and go party with it. In his case, however, I suspect video games were not involved.
It'd be pretty funny if they were, though.