After Burner Complete

After Burner Complete is a conversion of the famous flight combat arcade game, in which the player sits at the stick of a fighter jet and blasts through waves of enemy aircraft. The game is pure arcade action: the plane always points forward, throttle can be briefly increased or decreased, there's a machine gun with unlimited ammo, and a limited supply of homing missiles. The crucial skill is dodging — the opponent's shots come in swarms, and the only defense is a sharp sideways evasive maneuver accompanied by a dramatic barrel roll of the whole scene. Weapons are restocked between missions, and the pace gradually escalates all the way to the final levels, where there's no moment of rest left. Missiles can't be fired recklessly either, since the supply only refills between sections, and in dense waves locking onto several targets at once is the only way out.

The 32X version draws on the add-on's power exactly where it's needed: the picture stays smooth even when dozens of objects sweep across the screen, plane scaling looks convincing, and the fast horizon rotation during dodges doesn't drop the frame rate. Compared to the plain Mega Drive version, it's a noticeable leap in both density of action and color depth. The music takes over the famous rock themes from the arcade original, and together with the voice callouts and engine roar it creates just the right atmosphere of a cinematic dogfight that the game never takes too seriously.

At the time, the title was seen as a good showcase of what the 32X was suited for — fast arcade conversions — and also a reminder that the add-on received many older games in new clothes. In the genre, the original ranks among the pillars of the so-called super scaler arcade games that Sega made famous. Today, After Burner plays exactly like it did back then: a few minutes of intense trigger-mashing that's all about reflexes, and that's exactly why it's so replayable. More experienced players can also crank up the difficulty and chase high scores, turning a short game into a discipline for weeks of practice.