Later games in the series had even more impressive death sequences, with plenty of seizure-inducing screen flashing. There are also some damn nice explosions – get hit by enemy fire and your engines will smoke as you careen downwards, creating a line of fire and destruction as you hit the ground. The sense of speed is still unrivaled by most video games even today. At its best moments, you need to keep enemy fighters in your targets, dodge incoming missiles, and attempt to keep track of your own airplane amidst the explosions and smoke trails, all while the scenery is rocketing by, rotating completely out of control. Other than the color of the sky and the changing landscapes, the core game never changes, but that’s not really important, because After Burner excels at throwing all kinds of crazy stuff in your face. There’s very little variety there are a few stages set in a canyon, where you need to weave between the walls, but these are really just bonus stages. Thankfully, every few stages, a friendly plane comes by and replenishes your stock.

Trying to hit anything with bullets is nearly impossible unless your target’s at close range, so conserving your missiles is extremely important. Unfortunately, missiles are in limited supply, so you’ll need to rely on your Vulcan cannons for easier enemies.

Your primary weapon is heat-seeking missiles – just line up an incoming enemy fighter with your crosshairs, wait for the “lock-on“ to appear (usually accompanied by a frantic voice yelling “Fire!“) and hit the fire button. It’s impossible to crash into the ground, and for the most part, you don’t need to worry about anything but dodging enemy fire. Turning back and forth rapidly will send your plane spinning dizzily, which looks cool but ultimately doesn’t do much.

The controls in the first game are fairly limited: you can climb, descend, and rotate your plane. After Burner and After Burner II are both powered by the Sega X board, which is an improvement over the boards that ran previous “super scaler“ games like OutRun and Space Harrier, all directed by Yu Suzuki.

After burner pc