After Burner

After Burner is a combat flight arcade game released by Sega in 1987, directed by Yu Suzuki. The player pilots an F-14-style fighter jet through fast, on-rails aerial combat, locking missiles onto swarms of enemy aircraft while barrel-rolling to evade incoming fire. It was among the most spectacular uses of Sega's Super Scaler hardware, filling the screen with rapidly scaling planes and missiles to sell the speed and chaos of a dogfight at a time when no affordable 3D hardware existed. Suzuki has said he deliberately gave the missiles a faceted, hexagonal look to suggest a polygonal feel. The game is best remembered for its deluxe cabinet, a rotating, hydraulically actuated cockpit that rolled and pitched with the player's movements, one of the most extravagant motion machines of the taikan era. After Burner was a major arcade hit, spawned sequels, and was ported widely to home systems. Together with Hang-On, Space Harrier, and Out Run, it completed the run of sprite-scaling spectacles that made Suzuki and AM2 synonymous with cutting-edge arcade design in the 1980s.