After Burner II

After Burner II is an arcade-style flight game released by Sega in 1987. It is the second game in the After Burner series. In the game, you fly a F-14 Tomcat jet fighter, gunning down enemies while avoiding incoming fire. Like Out Run, another Sega arcade game, After Burner II came in several versions, the most famous being a large, servo actuated, sit-down cabinet which resembled a cockpit and moved according to the motion of the plane onscreen. The cockpit would bank in the same direction the on-screen aircraft was banking. There was also a much less thrilling upright version.

The differences between After Burner and After Burner II are very small, and it is easy to confuse the two. The differences included:

• The waiting-for-start sequence (the screen/music after a player inserts credits but before starting the game) is different.

• After Burner II added a throttle to the controls, allowing players to vary their speed while flying.

• After Burner has 18 stages; After Burner II has those same stages but adds three additional stages that make 21 stages total.

• After Burner II added a few minor enemy changes to introduce new speed-based challenges (missiles/aircraft behind the player aircraft) to account for the use of the new throttle control.

• The player's missiles in After Burner II could be fired considerably more frequently.

• Musical compositions were the same for both games, though After Burner's instrumentation is different in spots.

Source: Wikipedia, "After Burner II", available under the CC-BY-SA License.