Welcome back to the Festival of Dread, The Splintering‘s month-long celebration of all things kooky, spooky, and altogether ooky.
It’s been a while since we’ve done one of our “Cheeky Gaming Ads” galleries, and while Halloween doesn’t quite lend itself to the same level of “cheeky-ness”, we thought it would be fun to gaze at a few horror-themed arcade game flyers from the glorious years past.*
So let’s get the head rolling!
The classic Ghost ‘N Goblins isn’t a bad place to start! It’s actually pretty crazy how well the art represents the characters in the actual game.
The live actors Konami used for its arcade flyers are the best. Oh, and for those not “in the know”, Haunted Castle was the arcade title for Castlevania.
SEGA’s Laser Ghost light gun game tried to capitalize off of the 80s Ghostbusters fame. It was still a good game, though.
The Devil World flyer sure looks like completely original artwork that doesn’t borrow from anything. Not at all.
I have zero memories of an arcade game titled Vampire, but it’s apparently an isometric overhead game from 1982 published by Brass International.
Why Jaws? Because monsters are scary and all, but sharks are terrifying as hell, and they’re actually real.
SNK’s gloriously violent Beast Busters was one of my favorite light-gun games, and it’s a damn tragedy that it never got a proper conversion on mainstream consoles.
SEGA’s Alien Syndrome certainly rode the coattails of the Alien movies, but it was a truly unnerving experience in its own right, with some truly pulse-pounding music.
The Ghouls ‘N Ghosts flyer has some very different artwork from its predecessor, but it still looks awesome.
Fun fact – the four “ghosts” in the original Pac-Man were actually called “monsters”
How many Castlevania flyers were there? Well, this Vs. Castlevania flyer was actually for Nintendo’s Vs. Arcade system. I kinda miss the live action actors, though.
Death Race: the game that started it all! All of the video game violence hysteria, that is. Why? Because you ran over stick figures with your car.
Not only was 1990’s Golly Ghost a challenging shooting gallery-style light gun game, but it also dispensed tickets depending on how many ghosts you zapped.
1982’s Lost Tomb puts the player in control of an Indiana Jones-type hero who navigates a spider, bat, and mummy-infested pyramid (mostly spiders)… all in search of treasure, of course.
Save the best for last? Not only is Splatterhouse arguably the greatest horror arcade game of all time, but this flyer artwork is friggin’ sick! It even features the chainsaw-armed boss!
Thanks for reading! To check out more of The Splintering’s Festival of Dread content, click here! To see more galleries of “Cheeky Gaming Ads”, go here!
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