Now THIS is what I am talkin' about. i love the internet, in that you can totally randomly be searching for something and accidently find a crazy website loaded down with tons of goodies that you didn't even know existed.
Here's the latest:
http://projectjapandreames.neufblog.com/shootem_up/wallpapersflayers/index.html
A french site (break out the google translator!) - but honestly i haven't even started with the text just yet. This page is bleeding through with tons of oldschool gaming flyers/promo sheets for various arcade titles from the wonderful 16-Bit era. there was a time, albeit brief, when programmers were lazy and it was easy to churn out game after game after game with nearly identical engines "fly to the right. shoot guns. acquire larger more colorful weapons." hell even I could program that! But in those days graphics were suddenly stepping up a few levels and that glitz was enough to get the fans ecstatic (myself included among those numbers). In America it was still a kid's industry, but in Japan it seems like they were taking it a bit more seriously, promotion-wise. These flyers and wallpapers harken back to a time when ultra simplistic gameplay was no sweat, you were just excited to see pretty explosions and abominable biomechanical nigtmare bosses with glowing lifebars deteriorating in their midsections. These flyers portray some of the funniest engrish you'll ever see, and some of the illos are just bleed-from-your-jaw AWFUL, but it's all totally fun and reminds me of a time "best left in history" - the days of R-Type, Zero Wing, Truxton, and Chelnov. I want to print these all out in high quality and wallpaper a room (I wish!)