The first couple of photos are black and white. In 1990, everyone used color photographs except newspapers. Are they purposefully black and white to make it feel older?
If you were someone who was serious about photography to the extent of "I have a nice camera and know how to use it" - maybe it's your hobby, maybe you're somewhere on the path from "likes to take photos" to "makes a living as A Photographer" - then you would have been aware of working in B&W as a valid artistic choice that changes the overall mood of the imagery. A sharp, crisp B&W photo felt pretty modern versus a faded old one.
Look at the work done by the classic photographer Fan Ho
https://petapixel.com/2014/08/25/fan-hos-incredible-black-an...
I would not have stumbled upon those unless you had shared; and I’m considering making one my iPhone wallpaper, they are so striking. :)
Someone in film told me black and white does offer better detail in analog as color saturation can sometimes blur lines. They also told me that as a student they filmed in black and white since in color every object in the scene can mean more because of its. Like if you had a normal 80s bedroom but just one pillow on the bed was red then that could imply something even if you didn't mean to (maybe romance, not sure).
If you look carefully, you'll notice that in the black and white photos the operators are wearing headsets, there are posters on the walls and in one of them there is a SNES on the table.
According to the article, this would place them at the same timeframe as the other photos.
https://twitter.com/MarioBrothBlog/status/145631381574689178...
Or to put it another way - for photography indoors, B&W gives a much more reliable result.
Im not sure this is the case here, but from my limited understanding of camera, b&w camera will produce higher resolution picture just because of how the monochrome sensor work vs colour sensor
Not to mention, that B&W films and pictures with very good results could develop every amateur and during the development process add various effects - sepia is one of them, but you could get blue tint by mixing some other chemicals.
In 1998(or maybe even 1999) I was working on the first and latest Japanese machines that had digital color screen(where you could adjust colors and crop photos), that was bought from Japanese company as one of the earliest in Europe and that was all the rage, when Kodak was killed off because of them, because of FUJI. In most of the 1990s everyone were making photographies on machines with negative screen(sometimes not even zoomed film frame) - they could not see photos the way they would be before they were printed out. The final peak of color photographies on film coincided when digital cameras started to become "bearable". So, looking on my album, it is 2003(Canon Power Shot A70, which came out in 2003), when I had first digital photos(and their quality IMO were getting close to what you could get from film camera), so actually that company that bought that expensive automatic color photo printer had ~5 years to operate it...
Though, it was a crapy job - I was making on average 3000 photos per day(if it was a late shift, it was going into very late night, so max 12h) in summer and had a junior salary... with that quality of pictures(cropped and color adjustments) I was giving out with that machine, what other operators did not care that much.
So, more or less good color photographies, that were comparable to B&W were only couple of years before first digital cameras appeared(so more like - late 1990s), so it could not be possible, that in 1990 everyone was using color photos. 1990ies were becoming very global very quickly, but at that time, if in Japan everyone had color photos, it did not apply for everyone else outside of Japan for 1-2 years, because market had to catch up(and if you were able to buy equipment and a film, it did not mean, that you were able to develop your film and make photos, if your local photo shop was not able do those). US maybe had shorter time, but by late 1990s it still had a gap what you could get in Japan and what was available in US and here in Europe these things appeared as last.
Unless there is a mix-up about Polaroids, that "everyone used" according to MTV - have not owned them, because they were not cheap and most probably their paper was not on cheap side as well.
People rarely has photo nowadays, because they have phone. So, the whole era of things has gone - that includes calculators, alarms, radios and music players. Mobile phones killed them all.