Afterburner!

Take a look around your local arcade and wherever you are, you are guaranteed to see a lot of similar machines. Time Crisis, Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter and maybe House of the Dead. These seem to be the usual suspects in every arcade I have ever visited. However, if you are lucky, tucked in the corner and possibly gathering dust you may just see an old Afterburner cabinet.

Originally released by Sega in 1987 after the success of the Tom Cruise film Top Gun, Afterburner was a hit in the arcade. The cabinet was a hulking behemoth which surrounded the player and immersed them in the game with surround sound speakers and a tilting motion which moved the whole cabinet whenever the player moved the control stick.

With Afterburner, the player was in control of an F14 Tomcat jet fighter gunning down waves of enemy planes while avoiding incoming fire. Throughout each stage the player could refuel and restock on missiles through landing on aircraft carriers. The fast paced action and emphasis on shooting rather then being an intense flight sim meant it proved to be a success for Sega who moved on to create a sequel, as well as several home versions.

I feel Afterburner is an extremely fun game which adds a lot to the genre of flight sims. It showed that they can be fun when played in small doses, as opposed to the long and drawn out affairs of super realistic flight sims on the home computers. Whereas the PC flight sims all required a significant investment of a players time to get good at, Afterburner provided instant thrills in the arcade enviroment.