Batman Is The Best New Wacker Game Ever

One of the greatest things about the Internet is that no matter how obscure you think something might be, there's someone out there dedicating their time to creating an archive of it so that you're never more than a few minutes away from finding out which ads ran in early issues of "Thrasher" magazine, seeing sprites from the less-than-classic "Amagon" for the NES, or hearing corporate covers of rock songs like "We Built This Starbucks."

This benefit of modern life was underscored for me recently when I ran across The Arcade Flyer Archive, a truly awesome collection of flyers and print ads for the past thirty years of video games. And what made it truly awesome was this:

A 2009 ad for a Batman arcade game where you punch out super-villains.I've never actually seen one of these in the wild--the only arcade in my town closed down years ago, although I think the movie theater has a "House of the Dead" coin-op--but this ad has already given me more joy than I think the actual game probably could. Even if it does include Batman gloves that you wear so you can punch the Joker. Although, now that I'm looking at it, it also encourages kids to slug Catwoman in the jaw, which is probably the wrong message.

Regardless, once you get past the logo--which looks like it owes more to a box of markers than any actual Batman logo I've ever seen--the text of the flyer is just fantastic...

...if for no other reason than it identifies Batman as "Legendary Comic Book Super Hero!" for anyone who might not know who he is already. Admittedly, I have a hard time imagining anyone not knowing that fact already, but to be fair that is a pretty accurate description.

It pales in comparison, however, to the other big caption:

Obviously "'Wacker' Game" is the industry term for the "Whack-a-Mole" style attraction where players attempt to physically smack things around before they're drawn back into the console and that's a perfectly logical term for it, but it's also totally hilarious. I love this blurb so much that I want it to enter the slang lexicon.

So congratulations, Batman Wacker Game Flyer: You have made me a fan. Now if we could only get one of these for the CA offices...