Afterburner Climax - A Flight Down Memory Lane
by Sam Witt
01/08/2011

I have fond memories of sitting in my room late at night playing video games as a kid. The lights were off and the soft glow of my small 16 inch television caused an array of hues to dance on the walls behind me. Of all the games I played as a child, one of my favorites was After Burner for the Sega Master System. Each new level brought more excitement and each time I died it created new determination to try again to reach that last level and claim victory in the sky. To this day it remains the one game I revisit over and over and never tire of.

The original console port of After Burner ended up on every gaming system under the sun, including the NES, Atari ST, PC, and even the 32X. However, no official sequel was ever released until 2006, 19 years after the original cabinet started showing up in arcades. This sequel, After Burner Climax, has now been ported as a downloadable title to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Does Climax capture the magic of the original game or does it fall short and fail to deliver? Let’s find out.

Games like this really don’t need a plot to be playable, but people want to know why they are flying around blowing up countless fighter planes, so a generic plotline is included. Tensions have been growing between the UN and a country known in the game only as “Z.” The UN and “Z” have been unable to come to any sort of peace agreements, so “Z” has taken nuclear action and is threatening the world. You become a member of an elite squadron of fighter pilots tasked with taking out the nukes before they are launched and thereby saving the world. Honestly, they could’ve said that there was a shortage of peanuts and “Z” was hoarding them all for themselves, and that therefore you had to blow the living daylights out of them so baseball games around the world could once again be graced by the salty presence of peanuts. It doesn’t matter. I suppose it’s a believable plot for a jet fighter game.

Atmospherically, the game nails it. There are high speed sections where you fly through canyons with rockin’ music jammin' in the background as you fire missile after missile at the oncoming enemies. There are also more dramatic sections in which you coast over frozen oceans with the aurora borealis in the distance and subtle music playing in the background. The developers really put a lot of time into polishing the level designs and adding a wide variety of locations to the game. Climax will take you over oceans, continents, volcanic wastelands, above the clouds, through narrow tunnels and through canyons all while you barrel roll and shoot down your foes. Graphically speaking, this is not your typical AAA shooter title – and it’s not supposed to be. Instead, the game achieves that classic arcade look, but with a modern quality only possible on today’s consoles. It’s a far cry from the days when console ports were always outshined by their arcade counterparts.

There are three jets that you can pilot, but all three honestly felt like the same plane. The only way that I was able to make them feel different was by opting to change their paint jobs. Each plane handles marvelously with both the 360 and PS3 controller (and I made sure to play both versions). Maneuvering around and executing barrel rolls comes with ease after playing one or two levels, since it is difficult to mess up controls on a game that is designed with so few necessary buttons. My favorite feature of the controls is “climax mode,” coming from the game’s title. The more enemies you kill, the more time that will be available for you to use this special mode. It is a very Matrix-esque feature that slows down time and gives you an aiming advantage over your enemies. During this short span of time, you can annihilate pretty much everything on the screen and rack up an insane amount of points in the process. Although After Burner Climax has such simplistic controls, it is no easier because of it. The game is so fast paced that you will inevitably be shot down by enemies that you either didn’t see or that you didn’t have time to avoid.

As is expected, the further you get into the game, the more difficult it becomes. To counter the difficulty you may experience from the speed of the game, you can unlock scads of upgrades and options simply by playing more. The more you play, the more powerful you can become (or not). This is really the mark of a development team that understands how to create replayability. The more you shoot down enemies, the further you get, even the more times you die, you're rewarded with new features that you can turn on or off. Depending on which you choose, you will either make the game easier by giving yourself more lives or more powerful weapons or you can make it harder on yourself by upping the difficulty for a new challenge. If you are a completionist, you can also complete optional tasks to finish your in-game medal collection. Each version of the game also comes with achievements or trophies to unlock for another layer of challenge. There are honestly so many things to unlock it's ridiculous, but some gamers will be so hooked that they'll try to explore every corner of the game.

In conclusion, After Burner Climax is a top-of-the-line addition to the After Burner collection. Its great game play will keep you coming back for more and its seemingly endless checklist of tasks will keep you busy for a good while. For only ten dollars, it’s a steal when compared to some of the other games for sale on the virtual marketplaces. Most importantly however, it is truly what we define as a “modern classic” and will give any modern gamer a feeling of nostalgia for the times when they were kids, alone in their bedrooms and playing their favorite games ‘til the wee hours of morning.

Screen shots courtersy of Sega-Press.com.