After Burner Climax
While in the midst of a family day at the Mall of America, I took a break from the Farris Wheel and the Kiddie Cars to check out the arcade. Usually I despise this arcade, which is found in the midst of the mall’s amusement park, as it shares more in common with the roller coasters than with Pac-Man and there isn’t a pinball machine in sight.
As I walked in, to my surprise, I discovered that a sequel to one of my favorite late 80′s arcade games had been made. After Burner Climax is a sequel to the 1987 SEGA classic, After Burner. Popular for it’s Top Gun style F-14 Tomcat and simple “shoot down everything from the sky” gameplay, it sucked a lot of quarters out of my pocket as a kid. Climax takes the formula and adds niftier graphics and a new “Climax Mode” to the game.
Sounds dirty.
Climax Mode is simply a combo system that fills a meter as you either shoot down planes from the sky or keep your speed at full throttle. As your meter fills, you can push the throttle past the “full” stage and into another notch which triggers the Climax Mode. Whenever you are in this mode, the enemies slow down and allow you to deal more damage and target more of them for missile attacks at one time.
Overall, the game looks pretty good, although it’s really hard to be impressed by arcade graphics anymore. The soundtrack is the usual arcade wank-rock inspired crap but it serves the purpose. What kicks ass is how the game retains the fast paced, easy death, enemy spamming fun of the original. It’s a tough game that wants your quarters and isn’t going to baby sit you as you play it. But it’s still a lot of fun and a great sequel to a fantastic arcade title.
I realize I’m late to the party on this one as SEGA released this in 2006 but with the state of arcades these days, it’s no wonder nobody knows about it. So, for those looking for a blast from the past, you may want to go check out the arcade near you for After Burner Climax.
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Tags: afterburner, afterburner climax, arcade, coin-op, sega
November 6th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
It’s got to be better than Climax, Michigan mode.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
It reminds me of the time I had a climax followed by an afterburn. Some pills cleared that right up.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I love you guys.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Easy jokes aside… this game really lost it’s joy after being strapped in with a with several tons of rocket fuel behind you. If only they could emulate this on the TRE-700 flight sim. That would be a rush!
November 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am
OMFGWTFROFLCOPTER!!!!!!!!!!!
I LOVED Afterburner!!! Hilden, write that down, when I come up, we’re hitting the Mall!
November 7th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I did love playing Afterburner at my best friend’s house. His parents bought him all the game systems. I can’t remember if it was on the Master System or the Genesis, though. Probably Genesis.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
“I LOVED Afterburner!!! Hilden, write that down, when I come up, we’re hitting the Mall!”
Done.
“I can’t remember if it was on the Master System or the Genesis, though. Probably Genesis.”
I seem to remember this being a Master System game. It would have been in the 1987-1988 years and that would be Master System, I believe.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
ABII came out on the Genesis, then they did an arcade port on the 32x (which was actually really good.) Also the PC Engine Afterburner was better than expected.