Reviews

A brave and ambitious attempt to convert the classic '3d' jet-fighter coin-op to the Speccy. And they just about get away with it.
Graphics are monochrome, but smart and fast. Sound is a choice of decent sound effects or music on the 128k machines. They have retained an impressive amount from the original arcade game. Unfortunately, that includes the shallow, and at times confusing, gameplay, which often leaves you wondering what unseen peril just caused you to lose a life.
Good for a quick blast, and in some ways quite impressive to see on the Speccy, but it won't keep you coming back.

A monochrome so-called classic ...

Fun , but not much !

2,5 out of 5 .

Afterburner is a game I'm always on the fence about. It's great fun where you fly around on your plane blasting enemies in sight and being able to barrel roll, that's great fun...what isn't fun is I'm usually rubbish at this game and can't seem to hit as much as I want to. I'm blasting away having so much fun just shooting at the enemies and at level's end I've tallied...three hits...all that for three hits? You gotta be kidding me?

Also the graphics, while nice, make it awkward to see what is actually happening and eventually your fun is ended by enemy fire...wherever they came from...WHAT HIT ME?? Man I don't feel like playing anymore.

I always felt Afterburner was a tad over-rated, only seemingly being popular for its flying and scrolling and cabinet setup rather than the actual gameplay. Still a fun game for one go, after that you may end up with that boredom feeling.

Afterburner is a great game, this port however is a little off. It's not the worst by any means, Activision done worse conversions than this, it's just not a lot of fun and it's more fun playing the arcade version, by a long way.

Average conversion of a brilliant arcade game. It’s not bad but certainly not one of the highlights of coin-op conversions on the Speccy.

1988 Activision (UK)
by Keith Burkhill, Jon Eldridge & Mark Jones

This conversion left me cold. It's a good game, even impressive sometimes, but doesn't provide me the same fun as other games do, not even as much as old school shoot 'em ups Buck Rogers and the like do.
Sure it's way better, both technically and in play complexity but misses the addictive factor. Maybe the monochrome setting and the mess it generates visually plays a part in it.