Sega's Afterburner scrunched up into bite-sized pieces and fed to the Speccy? Surely not? Duncan MacDonald dons his aviators 'Chapeau' and flying goggles to check it out.
    If you've played Afterburner in the arcades then you'll know that the machine comes in a self-controlled 'cockpit environment', contained pneumatically so you get chucked about all over the place while flying (and especially while crashing). If you haven't played Afterburner in the arcades you'll know anyway, 'cos I've just told you. Anyroad, whichever 'camp' you come from, see if you can guess what's been left out of the Speccy conversion of the game? Yes, that's right, clever-clogs -- the pneumatic cabinet. Don't fret though, cos elsewhere on the page there are step-by- step instructions for constructing one of your very own.
    Every time a new coin-op is about to be squeezed from a squillion megabytes down into our old rubber chum's 48K there are always cries of 'Don't be so ridiculous -- it can't be done', and 'Ho ho ho'. But there's always something that people forget about the Speccy, and that's the speed it's capable of operating at -- and that's a darn sight faster than the C.......e and the A.....d. In a game of such frenetic rolling and zapping, it's action that counts, and Afterburner has got barrels-full of it.
    You take the controls of an F-14 fighter aircraft in this largely monochrome bash. The plane is viewed from behind, and the sky and ground scroll towards you in a realistic 3D fashion from the horizon. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) this scenery isn't the only thing to scroll towards you. No, by cracky -- almost before you can say 'Ray -- a drop of golden sun' the automatic start sequence of your jet taking off from an aircraft carrier is over and wave upon wave of enemy fighters are screaming towards you, launching the air to air missiles in your general direction. These, as you might have guessed, are best avoided if you don't want to lose any of your three lives. By way of counter attack, you have at your disposal cannon fire and your own heat-seeking missiles. There are 22 levels to get through, and on the way you will come across 'special' sequences such as mid-air refueling, landing on runways and refueling, and a 'flying through a canyon' sequence, which I never got to see cos the game is so darned hard I couldn't get that far.
    The graphics are bold, chunky and animated brilliantly, and the speed -- well -- as I've already said, the humble Speccy isn't really so humble after all. Just watch that horizon spinning around when you yank the joystick firmly to the left or right.
    Let's put it this way -- the code for Afterburner has been written by the same bloke (Keith Berkhill) who wrote the code for Space-Harrier, and it shows. Afterburner impresses me now just as much as Space-Harrier did when it first came out, which can only mean one thing: the Spectrum version of Afterburner is a bloomin' corker!!! Blimey.
    
MAKE YOUR OWN PNEUMATIC AFTERBURNER CABINET!

EQUIPMENT: a pair of scissors (round-ended), a car seat, 12 heavy-duty springs (you can rip these out of your bed or three-piece suite), two large 'fridge-freezer sized' empty cardboard boxes, ten large cans of Heinz curried-beans, a large industrial plastic funnel, a length of tubing (the garden hose will do) and a crash helmet.
    
METHOD: weld the car seat to the springs and then bolt the springs to the floor-boards of your favourite room. Take the cardboard boxes, sellotape them together to make one big box, place it carefully over the 'seat-unit'. Then staple it to the floor-boards, take your round-ended scissors and snip out a 4 by 3 foot hole in one of the sides. This is the 'entrance', and is quite important -- there's nothing more annoying than having a cabinet which can't be got into. Attach the funnel to the garden hose, and then sellotape or staple the whole lot inside the box (or 'cabinet', as it has now become). Try and make sure the end of the hose is roughly in the position of a seated person's mouth, because this is where the curried beans come in. Open the cans (or get a grown-up to help you) and pour the beans into the funnel. Set up your Speccy inside the cabinet, put Afterburner in your cassette, don the crash-helmet and you're ready to go.
    Sit in the seat unit, suck on the hose pipe, and very soon your bottom will begin to grumble. The springs under the chair will pick up any 'trouser thunder' and magnify it twelvefold. By the time the game has loaded the fun will really have started, and you will actually believe you are up there in the skies shooting and being shot at by Johnny Hun, or whoever.
    Don't forget to tidy away the empty bean-cans though, or you might be in for a spanking.

Arcade version screenshot...

Click here to view all 8 pics

Ratings given by other magazines

8/10      9/10

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database

YS Cross-references
		Afterburner/Activision	YS39	7
		Afterburner (in The YS Complete Guide To Shoot-'em-ups Part I)	YS55	67
		Afterburner/Hit Squad	YS65	78