Afterburner II (Sega Genesis)

Afterburner II is an arcade flight simulator (loosely speaking...there's much more "arcade" than "simulator"). It was released to arcades in 1987 and was ultimately ported to a wide variety of systems. From the name you would think this is a sequel to After Burner, however it's really just a minor enhancement to the original, adding features such as additional levels and throttle controls.

Game play is pretty straightforward. You control an F-14 Tomcat from a third person behind the plane point of view. You progress through various missions shooting down any opponents that get in your way. Graphics were pretty spectacular for the time but I always thought replayability was rather limited. There was a deluxe arcade version that made things a little more fun. It mimicked a cockpit and would roll and move based on the movements of the plane. However, it was also more expensive to play this version.

After Burner II made a great tech demo for the Sega Genesis. it was released pretty early in the life of that system and the graphics were close enough to the arcade version to still be impressive. However, home versions, including the Genesis version, lost out a bit on the realism due to the lack of throttle controls and a moving cockpit.

While the Genesis version was among the best home ports there were a variety of others as well, including ports for the 32X (one of the best), Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, TurboGrafx-16, and later, the Sega Saturn. It was also released in Japan as part of Sega Ages for the PS2. Even later, it was ported to the Nintendo 3DS via the eShop.

Afterburner was probably the first of its kind but a lot of other games later imitated it. The graphics were impressive and hold up pretty well today. I find this particular kind of game a bit repetitive for my tastes but Afterburner II is still worth picking up for the Sega Genesis (or the system of your choice) to give it a try. There is no doubt that it was quite popular and loved by many.

The review above is from the November 1990 issue of Mega Play. Screen shots are from the Sega Genesis version of the game.