afterburner sit down arcade game for sale

In 2010, Sega produced Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. It was heart-stoppingly beautiful, showing that AM2's team knew exactly what it was doing while treating its hallowed IP with impeccable respect - right down to including those vectorballs in the original's intro, re-imagined now as HD spheres. Again, I was dazzled by the visual finesse. I was lucky enough to play the cab at the Trocadero in London.

It was a swansong of sorts - a fabulous tribute to 80s excess along much the same lines as OutRun 2, the imagery turned into modern polygons with a fancy new gameplay mechanic on top. 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.ġ8 years later, Sega released After Burner Climax into the arcades. 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. I remember being agape at my flaming plane diving into the ground, astonished by the sheer intensity of it all. It may have cost two goes on Double Dragon, but After Burner was worth every penny - even the death explosions were value for money. A pricey unit, it's hard to find in the wild. The cabinet harks back to Yu Suzuki's no compromise approach when he was back at AM2. The sight of that white F-14 hurtling across sun-blazed tropical seas, dark cityscapes and desert canyons was enough. 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 giveaway was in the numerals encoded in a vectorball logo, which span around as part of the attract sequence.

It was actually After Burner 2, but no-one really cared to notice.

It was 50p a credit, but it was glorious. But there was something new - a brand-new sit-down with a jet fighter control stick and a throttle lever. Magical Sound Shower blares from a stand-up OutRun, sitting right next to a dog-eared Hang-On cabinet that no-one ever plays. 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. I remember it well: it was the spring of 1988 and the fair was in town.

Afterburner sit down arcade game for sale