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Activision, ever the contradictionists, have gone and done what everybody else said they couldn't. They gone and converted the unconvertable. Ever since it hit the arcades, back in late 1987, people of all descriptions have raved on about its fabbo graphics, wonderful sound, and unbelievable sit down hydraulic cabinet. Activision produced the cheque book faster than Terry Venables and snatched the licence narrowly beating their closest rivals to cries of "It can't be done!" and "Remember Out Run?"

You fly an F-14 fighter plane through 23 levels of fast frantic aerial combat, with a little bit of ground strafing thrown in for good measure. All this is done from behind your aircraft, in a fixed vertical/horizontal position, with you watching the plane bob and weave around in front of you.

As you fly forward along the rapidly scrolling landscape, you are attacked from all directions by enemy fighters. Most of these come from the front, attacking you head-on kamikaze-style. Some of these (well, nearly all of them to be precise) launch missiles at you, which have to be avoided, naturally. Occasionally you'll get a fighter coming up behind you, or you'll find a missile on your trail slowly catching up on you. The only thing you can do about them is to do a quick barrel roll out of danger.

Attacking the enemy is no problem. Converting the two different ways to attack onto a single fire button isn't. Rather than try to emulate a second fire button on the keyboard, Mediagenic have put the plane's cannon on auto and used the fire button to launch missiles. This means that you automatically have an infinite supply of bullets. Sadly, as far as missiles are concerned, you don't. Launching missiles is based on the computerised 'lock-on and fire' system. The missiles you carry are radar guided, and using the crosshair that jumps around in front of your rapidly bobbing craft, you can lock the missile's targeting system on any of the planes that may be on screen. This is acknowledged by a gong sound and a 'lock-on' indicator lighting up at the bottom of the screen. The enemy you are locked onto is then surrounded by a square, just to help you. Press fire, and you launch a missile, which screams towards the chosen enemy, leaving a trail of smoke behind it. Of course, planes can also be shot down with the cannon.

The graphics are disappointing, but what can you expect? All the bonus graphical thrills are still there, like the plane taking off from the carrier at the start (and landing on it again at the end) and the aerial refuelling sequences, of which there are two types. One involves the carrier docking with a huge aircraft and the other involves the plane landing on a runway, being serviced by a crowd of people, and then taking off again. This only happens twice in the entire game, and both times the plane is accompanied along the runway by a different vehicle from another two popular Sega games (the Out Run Ferrari and Super Hang-On bike). That said, there's nothing here to take your breath away and sometimes you're left watching near naked character blocks.

The real problem with After Burner, once you strip away the amazing speed and the responsive controls, is that it is just far too easy. The secret to completing After Burner is to keep moving a little to the left and then a little to the right. The only real problem is the missiles that come up behind you, but a quick barrel roll soon sorts them out.

After Burner is a reasonable attempt at converting the unconvertable but then that frequently seems to be the case these days. Technically it's not serious opposition for Operation Wolf, but for the public it may still prove to be number one.