After Burner II
System: Genesis
Release Date: July 1990
Developer: Dempa
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Shoot ‘em Up
Take it to the skies to save your country in After Burner II! A fictional nation is under attack by a fictional general and his army. Enter you in your Skycat jet fighter. You’ve got 22 levels to get through and you’re going to need all the skill and luck you can get.
Like the original After Burner, this is a behind the back shooter. There are several control schemes available, but most of them continuously shoot your vulcan gun for you. I suppose this was fine, but it took away some agency. Instead, you want to aim at an enemy to lock on so you can shoot them with a heat seeking missile.
You can either speed up or slow down. You’ll need to do this in order to shake any enemies that might show up behind you, or dodge any missiles that lock on from behind. If bogeys on your 12 are a problem, you can try a barrel roll by moving all the way in one direction and then pressing the opposite. It’s no guarantee, but it’s a start.
Each subsequent level throws more enemies at you. There are no boss fights, it’s just a matter of surviving until the end. There are two bonus levels that you can jack up your score during by blowing up as much as you possibly can. Missiles are a finite resource, but you earn 50 extra missiles at every fill up position. I didn’t have the patience to get through this one legitimately, but I did see the ending.
Graphics: 2.0
There is a real sense of speed, but it doesn’t look great by any means.
Sound: 2.0
Music and sound effects are good enough. There’s nothing special on display.
Gameplay: 1.5
It all comes down to painting your targets and shooting missiles at them, but the crosshairs don’t really feel that good at locking on.
Difficulty: 1.0
There is mostly garbage difficulty on display. You need to be lucky and even if you’re super twitchy, you’ll die a lot.
Fun Factor: 1.0
I didn’t have a lot of fun playing through this one. The speed doesn’t really play much of a role and there’s very little depth.
Overall Rating: 1.5
After Burner II earns a C-. I had this one as a kid and hope that it was bought on a deep sale. Not recommended.