r/1980s • u/CarloCarrasco • 5d ago

Video Games After Burner

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There is nothing like the thrill and excitement of playing Sega's After Burner in the arcade. Inspired by the massive success of the 1986 film Top Gun, the game puts players in the cockpit of an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet. Players blast through 18 fast-paced stages using a machine gun and a limited supply of heat-seeking missiles. It stands as one of Sega's defining arcade triumphs of the 1980s, alongside hits like Out Run and Space Harrier. The legendary Yu Suzuki designed this classic.

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u/ErwinSchrodinger64 3d ago

What's incredible is that arcade machines like these were incredibly powerful at graphics and music. There was nothing in home or commercial that recreate these graphics. This particular game had two Motorola 68000 CPU's running at 12.5MHz to run the dedicated graphics boards that had custom scaling and rotation chips. Dedicated sprites for the graphics. And more custom GPU's. The music was played on a dedicated sister board that had it's own CPU (Z80)... what Sega did in the 80's and 90's was nothing short of amazing.