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Master Burner is more than just an After Burner clone - in some ways, it's almost a little bit better. It was released in a packaging spoofing the Sega Ages 2500 line (dubbed "Touhou Ages" here), and replaces the generic F-14 Fighting Falcon with Marisa Kirisame, the yellow haired witch from a variety of Touhou shooters. Many of the landscapes are similar, although some take place in unique locales like libraries. All of the enemies have been replaced with fairies and little comets that have that goofy little grimacing face you see on Japanese message boards. And all of the smoke trails have been replaced with colorful streams of transparent stars. And it's almost a perfect replication. Things seem to control just a little bit differently - the controls are a bit faster, and the landscape seems to zoom by a bit faster than it did in After Burner. It gets even hairier when you hit the Turbo button, although it doesn't seem like you can barrell roll. And while you'll still rely heavily on missiles, your standard vulcan cannon is actually far more useful than it ever was before. Your missile supply is still limited, although it partially recharges after each stage, and gets fully replenished every few levels by Reimu Hakurei, one of the stars of many Touhou games. Once again there are bonus stages where you need to fly between different obstacles while shooting static objects on the ground. However, there are now boss battles with various other Touhou characters, that play out similarly to the end-of-level encounters found in Space Harrier. |
