http://www.sega-am2.co.jp/ under Games, use babelfish.altavista.com to translate...

Okay so it is the official AM2 site (in Japanese)! It has a timeline of many of the AM2 arcade and home games and details the difference between Afterburner 2 and Afterburner 1 as follows:

1987.07 (ARCADE) - Afterburner - SEGA 1987

The 3d shooting game which reproduces the dogfight by the fighter plane to real. You board to the frame which makes the cockpit think, encounter to a considerable degree can taste the speed impression and the refreshing impression.

1987.10 (ARCADE) - Afterburner II - SEGA 1987

3 months, ' II ' " throttle lever " was added from the previous production, speed adjustment of the our machine became possible. The numerous enemy plane where you freely use the technique of rolling and the afterburner, et cetera the sweat the speed impression of grasping and, you attack in the hand and comes. The animal of speed of sound of the name, fighter plane, the dog fighting spirit which is unfolded in the skies!

so the difference is basically the throttle control.

Ice

Thanks for the info, I needed official confirmation.

It seems my guess was about right, so I won't have to change my old emustatus description of the game:

"It seems that, unlike After Burner II, this is some kind of rare title. Probably only released in Japan, After Burner looks more like an experimental game, than a prequel to After Burner II, it has no throttle control, no digitized speech, the ROM is half the size of it's "sequel", and features less graphics and different levels. Boths games have a 1987 copyright year.

Maybe After Burner was an unfinished version of After Burner II, released only to meet some deadline, unfortunatelly not much is known about the japanese classics, so I can only speculate."

> Thanks for the info, I needed official confirmation.
>
I refer you to my comment on the afterburner hardware page :

http://www.system16.com/sega/hrdw_afterburner.html#ab

This has been there for well over a year (at least), I always knew it didn't have a throttle, and was proved correct when it was emulated and there wasnt one ;)

I found that page ages ago, its a good reference, but it is wrong in a few places beleive it or not, and has recently been corrected to bring it into line, there are still a few small errors, but nothing important.

Six...

System16 - The Arcade Museum

Hello Folks:

Here is something I noticed on my After Burner II I own. There is also a DIP switch setting to enable and disable the throttle and the shaker motor control for the flight stick. Were AB2 pcb's offered as an upgrage for the AB1's that did slip out? One other thing I saw a few years ago and I will never forget it was an After Burner 2 that (I think was a conversion) It was in a SEGA mini cabinet. It looked like a swap out from a thunderblade mini upright. The only reason why it seemed to be an official conversion kit was: 1) SEGA hologram seal 2)An After Burner plexi marquee to replace the Thunder Blade 3) Game instructions affixed to the game 4) Big After Burner logo side art decals. I am wondering if this cabinets prior life was a thunderblade or an AB1. The controls were clearly thunderblade, but this game was a good clean little conversion, looked like a kit that was made by SEGA.



Chris Wertman - After Burner