As featured in Retrogaming Times Monthly issue #8, January 2005.

Aside from the Atari created arcade games Tengen ported over to the NES, they branched out in an attempt to profit off what ever was hot at the arcades at the time.  After Burner is one such case, one of Yu Suzuki’s classic Sega arcade games, released in 1987.  After Burner centers around flying an F-14 fighter plane through enemy infested unfriendly skies, making ground assault runs and refueling stops along the way.  The action is viewed from behind your plane, targeting is controlled via a targeting sight that your flight controls lead around the play field.  You have a vulcan cannon and air-to-air missiles at your disposal, moving your targeting sight against an enemy target will give you a lock, upon firing a missile it will follow the locked target and destroy it.  No doubt, this game was based after the modern classic movie, Top Gun.  The NES port shares things from the arcade games After Burner and After Burner II.  It contains 23 stages where as After Burner (arcade) contained 19, however After Burner II (arcade) contained 23.

Graphically Tengen did their best to get this fast moving game to be playable on the NES hardware.  Your plane is a decent size however both it and the enemy sprites are somewhat small compared to the scale of their arcade counterparts.  The targeting sight grows around targets you’ve obtained lock on and your missiles track their targets smoothly and accurately, in other words the scaling detail is pretty good for an NES game.  Graphical detail limitations don’t allow stages to bleed into one another as they did in the arcade, instead your plane will automatically fly up high enough so that the ground will disappear off-screen and when you level back off the new stage terrain will be beneath you.  Surprisingly the ground assault stages are in the NES version and they’re actually really well done and measure up good when compared to the arcade version.  If there’s one graphical aspect of the game that simply does not translate well onto the NES it’s the roll rotation.  Banking left and right in the arcade version was extremely smooth as was performing a barrel roll.  In the NES version you get multiple horizon angles that play out in sequence, it’s basically like every fifth frame of a smooth bank or barrel roll.  It takes a little while to get used to but it’s not big enough of a distraction to hinder game play.  When shot down your plane has all the multiple crash sequences it did in the arcade, a nice touch for the home version.  The big difference between the two is the HUD.  Instead of having your remaining missiles, score, remaining planes, and hit count on screen they come up when you reach a new stage or return from being shot down.

Tengen got all the music of the Sega arcade classic into the NES version, albeit in digitized 8 bit versions. Sound effects are pretty bland but it’s not that big of a deal.  Instead of having the digitized “the enemy!” clip when you are being tracked from behind, a beeping lock-on sound plays.  Even though they’re not exact to the arcade the sound effects in the NES version are passable for a home version of this era.  The digitized soundtrack taken from the arcade version is what holds the audio together.  The arcade cabinet was controlled via a flight stick with a trigger for the cannon and a button for missiles as well as a thrust control to activate the after burner.  The NES version adapts the control pad for fight controls, the A button fires your cannon, the B button fires your missiles, and the Start button activates your after burner.  It takes a little while to get used to hitting Start to engage the after burner but it’s no more inconvenient than hitting Start to perform an uppercut in the NES classic Punch-Out!!

According to the manual there are 23 stages (the farthest I’ve ever been able to get to is Stage 17) which matches the amount of stages in After Burner II.  Also the stages that involve landing on a runway and having your plane reloaded by a ground team were introduced in After Burner II, however the NES version doesn’t have variable plane speed (that was introduced in After Burner II) so it sits as a hybrid between the two arcade games.  While it may not deliver the fast and furious excitement the arcade version did, NES After Burner retains enough of the original games features to warrant it a decent port of a true classic.  If you can adjust to the slightly sluggish response then you’ll find a rewarding NES experience and a challenging take on air combat.
 

"InsaneDavid" also runs a slowly growing gaming site at http://www.classicplastic.net/dvgi

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