After Burner

Overview

After Burner, is an arcade flight sim/shooter, developed by SEGA and first released in 1987 in Japanese Arcades. It was designed by legendary Sega game developer Yu Suzuki. It was ported onto many systems, including Sega's own Sega Master System just a few months after the Arcade launch, but most of them weren't able to match the original Arcade version's visceral speed and graphical/sound quality.

It is the first game among a series of franchise sequels such as After Burner II, After Burner III and the 2006 release of After Burner Climax which ran on the then newly developed SEGA Lindbergh arcade hardware. After Burner II was re-released in 2004 for the Playstation 2, in the SEGA AGES 2500 series of budget anniversary re-releases.

In After Burner the player controls a F-14 Tomcat, a type of jet, and the object of the game is simply to shoot down other enemy jets while evading their return fire with deft maneuvers. The player-controlled Tomcat is equipped with a machine gun and a small number of missiles as a secondary weapon which replenishes after each completed stage.

The original After Burner machine is a rarity, exclusively available in the Japanese Arcades. It was controlled with a simulating flight stick, with buttons that controlled the cannon and missile weapons. Movement such as dropping/gaining altitude and barrelrolling was also perfomed by movements with the flight stick.

The arcade version also featured a deluxe cabinet, which rotated according to the player's movements (much like Space Harrier and Galaxy Force). This was featured in the arcade scene of the 1991 hit movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day, where it was being played by a teenage John Connor.