#27 - After Burner

You know there's a black cartridge inside that box. Awwwwww shoot.



It really is as fun as it looks.

Tengen? Sega? Nintendo? What in the world is going on? It would seem that some sort of weird cosmic force allowed Tengen to illegally publish one of Sega's most well-known arcade games for the Nintendo, despite the fact that the Master System had already been released, and in fact already had a version of After Burner on it. My question is, why oh why would you release a port of a incredibly technically advanced game (for its time) for a system that had no chance of handling it? Oh wait, ha ha, money.

No, this game isn't playable. Well, I mean... it is kind of. You hold a controller in your hand, press the directional pad to move up and down, "A" to shoot planes, and "B," well, I didn't play the game long enough to find out what "B" did. But am I ashamed? Oh mercy, no. I pride myself on never feeling sick during any sort of game whatsoever. The herky-jerkiest of FPS'es has never made me want to spew forth into the toilet, but this game actually made me a little nauseous so I stopped playing. Strangely, I remember playing it in the arcade as a kid and loving it; zero nauseousness. It was one of those sit-down cabinets that actually moved when you played the game, and honestly, it was more of a ride than a game. But it worked because it was the arcade, and not our technically inferior (albeit beloved) little gray box. As far as gameplay goes, you shoot planes and attempt to move out of the way of their projectiles. Sometimes you move, sometimes you don't. You get three lives, you die quickly, you start all over again, tra la la la, you wasted fifty-to-sixty bucks in 1987 because you thought After Burner could be successfully ported to the Nintendo.

I admire all three of the companies I mentioned in my first paragraph. Nintendo for its ability to make great games; Sega for its sort-of, kind-of hardcore spirit; and Tengen for just not giving a damn about legalities, and aside from this blah port, making some great games. I admire Tengen's balls for putting a Sega game on a Nintendo in 1987. Granted, Sega wasn't considered  a super-serious rival at the time, but still, the next time we'd see a Sega game on the Nintendo would be close to fifteen years later. A lot had happened in between 1987 and 2001/2, but most importantly, After Burner paved the way for greater things and was quickly and quietly forgotten. This is the way things were and should continue to be.

F