By Flynn De Marco

Dec 29, 2007 7:00 PM

11,624

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read more: #afas, #arcadeflyerartsaturday

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: A Retrospective

Judging from the comments on the article I wrote mentioning a hiatus for the Arcade Flyer Art Saturday feature, a lot of you have grown to love my little pet project. When I first started this feature over a year ago, I really wanted to put a focus on what I considered to be a highly overlooked portion of arcade history. These flyers, lovingly scanned and cataloged by Dan and friends over at TAFA are something that consumers were never really meant to see. They were meant solely for the purpose of enticing arcade owners into purchasing the games for their respective "stores" in the hopes of cashing in on the huge arcade trend of the 80s and 90s.

Sadly, the American arcade is a dying breed, relegated mostly these days to airports, truck stops and bowling alleys. There are still some good old fashioned arcades out there, but they are few and far between and soon the "arcade flyer" will cease to exist. This makes it doubly important (in my eyes anyway) to make sure that we document and remember some of these games that we may never see again outside of a MAME emulator.

Starting next year, Arcade Flyer Art Saturday will be back in a new format. One of the things I have discovered over the last year is that often there are amazing game flyers that have little to no explanation as to what the actual game is about. In an effort not to leave out some of these gems, the new AFAS articles will be a little bit shorter and more to the point, but still full of as much information on them as I can find. This way, it will be a bit easier for me to bring you some of this great art without pulling out my hair trying to find out what the enemies were in some obscure game no one remembers anymore.

So, today we take a look back at all the AFAS articles of the past year. Some were great, some were ridiculous, but they all did one important thing; they reminded us that gaming is (and was) more than just the latest console and HD game, but an industry with a rich and important history that shouldn't be lost.

Make the jump for the full list of past flyer features.

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Devastators

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Kyros

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Death Smiles

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Crazy Climber

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: B.Rap Boys

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Super Don Quix-ote

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: The Classics Edition

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Top Secret/Bionic Commando

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom

Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Punk Shot