I really enjoy arcade flyers, in part because they have served as the perfect media for many stories ran here on Arcade Heroes. Some have great artwork which makes them fascinating, others went for the humorous angle, usually providing more comedy than the games themselves. In recent years, many flyers haven’t been cheesy or fun and at worst, not informative as to the product they are supposed to market. However, new flyers are made for every new game that is produced and while they might lack flare in some areas, they are still worth documenting (some recent exceptions that come to mind are the Star Wars Battle Pod and Showdown flyers which were all business but very nice quality and informative). I collect them to display at my arcade, behind my front desk I have a number of them pasted on the wall, even though I don’t have most of the games and I have a pile of them I haven’t used yet, that I will do something with eventually.
My collection of flyers picked up at IAAPA 2014 where several flyers were actually pretty good.
For the most part, flyers have been documented by The Arcade Flyer Archive, which was a site ran by a fan of flyers until he sold it to KLOV back in 2012. They haven’t really been doing anything with the site lately, the last update featured flyers for Pac-Man Battle Royale which was released…back in 2012. After taking a break, Dan H. who created that site is back with a new online archive for flyers called Flyer Fever. According to Dan:
The new site showcases only my flyer collection but they are higher quality, accurately tagged and cross referenced.
Since October I’ve posted newly acquired flyers that are not on TAFA – in case you might be interested.
The new site also features a more modern look and design that is easy to browse with high quality previews. It should be interesting to see how this new site will develop, I will certainly be keeping an eye on it.
To end, here is one of those fun flyers from the past that is on Flyer Fever:
Little update – Flyer Fever is now taking user submissions!