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I remember it well: it was the spring of 1988 and the fair was in town. The arcades were singing with sounds from JAMMA's finest era - Double Dragon's coin drop noise punctuated the chatter of Operation Wolf's plastic Uzi. Magical Sound Shower blares from a stand-up OutRun, sitting right next to a dog-eared Hang-On cabinet that no-one ever plays. But there was something new - a brand-new sit-down with a jet fighter control stick and a throttle lever. It was 50p a credit, but it was glorious. It was After Burner.It was actually After Burner 2, but no-one really cared to notice. The giveaway was in the numerals encoded in a vectorball logo, which span around as part of the attract sequence. This tour-de-force in sprite scaling was a subtle testament to the power of Sega's System-X board, but the game didn't really need abstract demoscene-esque trickery to make jaws drop. The sight of that white F-14 hurtling across sun-blazed tropical seas, dark cityscapes and desert canyons was enough.
It may have cost two goes on Double Dragon, but After Burner was worth every penny - even the death explosions were value for money. I remember being agape at my flaming plane diving into the ground, astonished by the sheer intensity of it all. Some called it shallow - it was an on-rails shooter, with less control than Space Harrier, but its depth wasn't from its game mechanics. It was from the visceral rush of Sega's System-X board with the throttle at max, chucking around AM2's glorious vistas with a smoothness and fidelity we'd never see at home.
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