Data East Corporation released Astro Fighter in Japan in 1979. It was well received and became one of the top earners thoughtout 1980, getting beaten out only by the three mega-hits: Asteroids, Galaxian and Space Invaders.

Astro Figher was popular enough to get licensed by Sega / Gremlin for the US market, while the cocktail version was distributed simultaneously by DECO themselves.

Astro Figher is one of the unique DECO games from this period which did not get a DECO Cassette release. The Cassette System did get a sequel however called Super Astro Fighter which arguably isn’t all that super.

The game PCB is a cage stack of several boards, and comes in two flavors, the DECO version and the slightly modified Sega / Gremlin version. The pinout is nearly identical for both, but the Sega version requires an external sound amplifier which is built into the adapter. The adapter supports both versions of the game.