A man needs, water, food, shelter, and After Burner II

User Rating: 8.5 | After Burner II ARC
I was 9 when After Burner II came out in 1987. And when I was 9, only 2 things were cooler than this game. Ghostbusters...and evil.

After Burner II is a simple, old arcade game. You are piloting a fighter jet, and you are fighting other fighter jets. Not much more too it than that. Well nothing else but killer graphics, intense situations of locking on a target, even more intense situations of somebody locking on you, and shooting up ground enemies as you fly by.

After Burner II was one of the first games I saw that really tried to give the impression of a 3-D game. Though it still used 2-D assets to create this feel, it was something different at the time. Most games with fighter jets were either top down views or side-scrollers. This was different. You went forward.

You would see jets coming in from the horizon. You would try to lock on them as soon as possible, but usually they would get off a few rounds before you could. Enemy missles would come at you from a distance. They would get larger as they rocketed toward you, giving you the impression of depth, space, and perspective. You could do a barrel roll and watch the world going topsy-turvy. And the ground beneath you would just fly by. So all of this combined made an amazing game. I mean come on... you were in a kick-ass fighter jet, flying for the U.S. of A., killing whoever didn't think like you, and flying a million miles an hour...what's not to love?

I remember tossing a load of quarters into this machine as a kid...and the thing is still fun. Of course there are games with "better" graphics nowadays, but this game is something special. It was a precursor to a lot of the things we have today. 3-D graphics, intense gameplay, explosions, testosterone, and freedom.

I guess we can thank "Top Gun" for this game. For those of you who don't know, there was a big craze in '86 through '88 for fighter jets and homosexuals...After Burner was a direct result of that. (They kept the fighter jets and dropped the homosexual aspect.) If you were alive back then, try playing the game once again and get back into the danger zone. If you weren't alive back then, rent Top Gun, see the beginning stages of Tom Cruise's lunacy, and then start playing with the boys. It will take your breath away....okay I'm done.