After Burner Climax

A flight simulation game released nearly 20 years after After Burner II, After Burner Climax offers brand new graphics, a "Climax Mode" that lets you slow down time to lock on to many enemies at once, two new fighters to choose from, and special "Emergency Order" missions. Later ported in 2010 to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, but delisted in 2014.

Tropes used in After Burner Climax include:

• Airstrike Impossible: Two or three times, you fly into a bunker.
• Always Close/Foregone Victory: In the last stage, if you don't destroy the missiles in time, the mission is still counted as complete because your carrier shoots the missiles and only sustains light damage. However, you don't get the best ending.
• Anti-Frustration Features: A good half of the EX Options of the Console version fall under this, running the gambit from additional lives to invulnerability to enemy fire.
• Combos: In Climax.
• Cool Plane: The F-14D, F/A-18E and F-15E, all based on actual planes.
• Deadly Walls: Depending on your speed and angle with the wall, damage will range from Scratch Damage to an instant life loss.
• Excuse Plot: Climax has you take on a terrorist organization attempting to go nuclear.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: You regenerate your 50 missiles over time.
• Life Meter: You still take heavy damage from a missile though (50% or 70%).
• Macross Missile Massacre: Considering the main method of attacking is missiles, inevitable. Climax's... erm... "Climax" mode causes you to go into Bullet Time while chain-firing missiles.
  • The twelfth stage Sleepless Sanctuary deploys a ton of these with much gusto. Be prepared to dodge a whole hell of a lot, and expect to see your ship go down a couple of times if you're not prepared for it.
• Nintendo Hard
• No Fair Cheating: Averted in the console ports with the EX Options. You can give yourself unlimited missiles and health, have your Climax gauge always maxed out, have a giant aiming reticule, and disable enemy fire, and STILL rank in on your Arcade Mode leaderboard. And there is no way to differentiate between scores obtained legitimately and scores obtained with options that make the game easier.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The "Armor: 1%" option reduces your armor to 1%, so even the tiniest gunfire or wall scrape = *PEWWWWWWWWWW* "JAGUAR LEADER'S HIT!" *BOOM*
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Stages 14 and 15, which can only be unlocked by clearing all of the Emergency Orders.
• Where It All Began: The final stages of After Burner II and Climax are set over the ocean to the tune of "Final Takeoff" (the first stage BGM of After Burner II). Heck, in Climax, the first and final stages are both called "Boundless Ocean".
• World of Ham: The voice acting in Climax.