There’s no question that After Burner: Climax is one of the most visually stunning arcade games ever to come along. And while it certainly has gameplay to match, we can’t share the gameplay with you until release — what we can share though, are these great new screens for the game, featuring one of my favorite environments (the one with the Northern Lights!).

Enjoy, and click on the image to get full-sized versions on Flickr!

Get ready for some adrenaline pumping aerial arcade action with After Burner: Black Falcon, now available, once again, for purchase from the PlayStation Store.

Thank you for your support of After Burner: Black Falcon. Many of you experienced an issue with the digital copy of this game earlier this month. Well, good news! Both SEGA and Sony have worked to rectify the issues and are happy to announce that After Burner: Black Falcon is now back online and ready for download.

For those of you who had previously downloaded the game, please delete the old version from your system and re-download this new version. You will not be charged for re-downloading a purchased item.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

Also, I did write a blog about the game — click here to check it out!

And, last but not least, as a thank you to the great After Burner fans out there, we have an exclusive wallpaper for After Burner: Black Falcon (with more on the way!). Click the image to get to the full-sized version of the wallpaper!

Already available on the PlayStation Portable, After Burner: Black Falcon is now available as a download for the PSP Go!

Occasionally while writing these blogs I’m fortunate enough not just to review a classic game that I’ve always liked, but to actually discover something new to me. Since I didn’t play a lot of PlayStation Portable games until recently, I got to experience a lot of these games, in particular, for the first time. I am happy to report that After Burner: Black Falcon is now among these games.

After Burner: Black Falcon takes the basic formula of the arcade versions and adds a lot of features appropriate for playing at home (or, in this case, on the go — but you get the picture). There is a ton of customization in the game and I was actually quite surprised at how deep it is. Aside from the abilities to pick your own paint job and such, there’s 19 different aircraft available to fly, all with differently balanced stats and capabilities. Those aircraft, all officially licensed models, have a huge variety of weapons to pick from. Setting up the right aircraft (balancing raw speed, maneuverability, and payload capacity) is key to doing well in missions, and what’s more, it really feels tailored to developing a play style you like — for example, if you want to go crazy with fast guns, or be more precise with a carefully selected arsenal of air-to-surface or air-to-ground missiles, and you can always modify this payload based on the mission and your objectives.

As I mentioned in my post about the upcoming After Burner Climax, the original Master System version of After Burner was a core part of my formative video game years. It is, frankly, awesome to see some concentrated After Burner love. What’s also exceptionally nice is that Black Falcon retains the truly challenging difficulty of the arcade games, but gives you a lot of different options along the way. This is, actually, a really well-balanced game — you purchase upgraded weapons and buy new planes with cash you earn during missions, and different missions have main objectives and secondary objectives that earn you more cash to spend on upgrades; the secondary objectives are based on both skill (destroying additional targets) and speed (making it through a level in a certain amount of time), meaning you really can customize the way you play the game.

The game even has a story to it, which is sort of epic and awesome in its own right. You pick from three different pilots, including the suspiciously named Billy “Sonic” Blaze (how many SEGA references are in that name? Anyone care to guess?). The plot concerns stolen prototype planes, and while no one anywhere is playing an After Burner game for its plot twists, it is actually quite cool the way the story drives the missions forward, giving context to the amazing scenery and quite spectacular-looking levels. The plot lends a kind of tongue-in-cheek kookiness to the proceedings, too — this includes the fact that the ex-girlfriend of Billy Blaze (her name, unfortunately, is not “Amy Ecco”, which by the way, would be a fabulous name for a pilot) has defected to the bad guys. “I’m sorry,” your commanding officer tells you early in the game, “but you have to face the fact that your ex-girlfriend is now working for the enemy.” Doesn’t everyone hate it when their ex steals military technology for a foreign government? Additional plot detail: In one mission you have to rescue kidnapped scientists in mid-air as they eject from enemy planes. The “scientists” whoop with glee as you scoop them up at Mach 2. Aside from being painstakingly realistic (don’t believe me? Try it yourself, in real life!), this is very, very awesome.

Also — check out this exclusive gameplay video!

I have always admired PlayStation Portable graphics, but even considering that, After Burner: Black Falcon feels really impressive. One of the hallmarks of the series (aside from, you know, flying planes really fast and blowing up other planes) has been the impressively designed levels, and that is definitely true of this one. The levels, aside from looking terrific, are incorporated into the game, and there is a no-denying-it visceral thrill to punching the afterburner to accelerate through a thin mountain pass while pursuing a fleeing enemy fighter at the end of a level.

Lest I forget! The game even has multiplayer capability, with a variety of eight-player competitive (!) and two player co-op (!!) modes. I’ve really loved going through the game in single-player and I’m looking forward to trying it over Wi-Fi.

Give After Burner: Black Falcon a spin if you get the chance — and stay tuned for some awesome wallpaper giveaways and video trailer for this game!

There are arcade games and then there are arcade games: the former of these, you can ignore row after row of, while the later hold a kind of regal place in the arcade, with attention-grabbing cabinets, lines waiting to play, and graphics and sound that draw you in from halfway across the room. With a lineage dating back to SEGA’s golden age of arcade games, the 2006 game After Burner Climax can safely be called an arcade game, the sort of game that made going to the arcade an indelible experience, even as the arcade itself has become more and more of a scarce creature.

All of this is to say, you can start getting excited, because After Burner Climax is heading to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network this Spring! In After Burner Climax you take to the skies in one of three officially licensed fighter planes (the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, and FA-18 Hornet — all with customizable paint jobs) and do battle with hordes of enemies in a series of fast-moving stages; the player picks the course of the game on-the-fly, choosing which path to take at the end of missions, and depending on those selections and player performance the game will unfold differently.

With HD graphics this is a mind-bogglingly gorgeous game: the stages and aircraft look at once photo-realistic and stylized, with incredibly bright colors and, in particular, a stunning use of light: flying into the sun on some stages, it is almost painfully easy to be distracted by the nuanced way that light reflects off of a crisply detailed ocean. Likewise, the aurora borealis in one stage is mesmerizing, and flying through canyons has exactly the sort of exhilarating feel that a top-notch air combat game should have.

The game comes from SEGA’s AM-2 studios — the same arcade developers who crafted Out Run, Hang-On, Virtua Cop, and even the original Space Harrier. Actually, this jet-fighter game has a lot in common with games like Out Run — it isn’t just a fast-paced arcade action game, but a full immersion in beautiful settings and top-notch arcade graphics with sound & music to match; a tour of every conceivable vista in which you could do battle. Also like the recent Out Run arcade games released on Xbox Live Arcade, this is a game that may look great in stills, but the screen shots don’t really do justice to how good the game looks when playing.

I feel compelled to mention some more of After Burner’s lineage, too: even the Master System port of the original arcade game (with its tiny voice compelling you to “Get Ready!” as you rocketed off the aircraft carrier) was incredible, with amazing action and exceptional difficulty (I only beat the game a few times, which is saying something considering how often I played it). But the original arcade game itself was designed by SEGA legend Yu Suzuki, who’s creation Virtua Fighter has the distinction of being the first Japanese game ever to be housed in the Smithsonian.

Need more proof of the game’s pedigree? Among its biggest fans are Hideki Kamiya — creator of none other than Bayonetta — who lists After Burner Climax as one of his favorite games, with references to its titular (and titillating) subtitle scattered throughout Bayonetta.

Stay tuned for more on this terrific arcade game!