After Burner
After Burner is a 1987 rail shooter video game developed by Studio 128 and published by Sega for arcades. The player controls an American F-14 Tomcat fighter jet and must clear each of the game's 18 stages by destroying enemies. The plane is equipped with a machine gun and a limited supply of heat-seeking missiles. The game uses a third-person perspective, as in Sega's earlier Space Harrier (1985) and Out Run (1986). It runs on the Sega X Board arcade system which is capable of surface and sprite rotation. It is the fourth Sega game to use a hydraulic "taikan" motion simulator arcade cabinet, one that is more elaborate than their earlier "taikan" simulator games. The cabinet simulates an aircraft cockpit, with flight stick controls, a chair with seatbelt, and hydraulic motion technology that moves, tilts, rolls and rotates the cockpit in sync with the on-screen action.
Summary from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA, read 5 September 2026.
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- Released
- 1987
- Developer
- Sega AM2
- Platforms
- 1 systems
- Critics
- Not scored
- Steam Deck
- Unknown
- Download
- Not stated
The record
| First released | 17 July 1987 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Sega AM2 |
| Publisher | Not recorded |
| Platforms | Arcade |
| Genres | First-Person Shooter |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q388929, seeded 30 August 2026.
How long is After Burner? How long to beat it
Total play time for After Burner is about 2.3 hours to do everything, and around 0.7 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 0.7h | 14 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 1.4h | 2 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 2.3h | 6 |
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Where After Burner sits on the grid
The grid places every game in the catalogue on measured axes rather than on an opinion. This is where After Burner lands on each map it has the data for, with the share of the catalogue it beats on each axis.
- Year
- 39ahead of 2% of the catalogue
- Reach
- 30ahead of 72% of the catalogue
Percentiles are against the games that carry a reading on that axis, not the whole catalogue: counting a game with no figure as a zero would flatter everything that has one. How the grid works.
What readers say about After Burner
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
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Where After Burner appears
The ranked lists and finder pages After Burner qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
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Common questions about After Burner
What platforms is After Burner on?
After Burner is available on Arcade. It first released in 1987.
Who made After Burner?
After Burner was developed by Sega AM2.
How long does it take to beat After Burner?
about 0.7 hours for the main story, 1.4 hours with the main extras, 2.3 hours to complete everything, from HowLongToBeat's player-submitted times. These are community medians, so your own run may be shorter or longer.