After Burner Soundtrack (C64 – Europe)

After Burner Soundtrack (C64 – Europe), Adam Gilmore / Hiroshi Kawaguchi, 1988

The immersive 3D action and visual fireworks of 1985’s Space Harrier were unparalleled for their era. Sega quickly recognised that it had found a winning formula and began producing a series of games that made ever more advanced use of the company’s Super Scaler technology. After motorbikes in Hang-On and racing cars in OutRun, Sega turned to fighter jets for 1987’s arcade spectacle After Burner. In many respects, After Burner is the arcade experience distilled to its essence: blinding speed, unbroken action, and a difficulty curve more concerned with prising coins from players than with anything resembling fairness. That final point mattered less on the many home computer and console conversions that followed. Some platforms even received two different ports of After Burner; C64 users, for example, ended up with both a European and a US version.

That unusual release strategy may well have reflected the disastrous quality of the European port. Translating a technological showpiece like After Burner from the arcades to a comparatively feeble machine such as the Commodore 64 was always going to be a formidable challenge. Even so, Dalali Software’s efforts were widely judged inadequate, resulting in a universally panned game. As so often, the one element that has endured in memory is the music, and for that Adam Gilmore deserves the credit.

A veteran of the late-1980s and early-1990s European computer-music scene, Gilmore was still at a relatively early stage of his career when he was asked to adapt Hiroshi Kawaguchi’s arcade compositions for the C64. Kawaguchi was coming off a career high with OutRun, and his After Burner score proved popular enough in its own right to be commemorated with a six-CD box set for the game’s twentieth anniversary. Gilmore, for his part, repeatedly cited the European C64 version of After Burner as one of his favourite works among the many dozens of projects he tackled across his career. He also noted that the task was made easier by the unusual fact that he was sent the arcade score in notated form, via fax, rather than having to transcribe it by ear as was more commonly the case at the time.

Truth be told, After Burner, for all the affection it has received over the years, is not one of Kawaguchi’s very finest works. It certainly delivers its Top Gun-style, hook-heavy synth rock with enough flair, but the melodies are nowhere near as strong as those in, say, the early Raiden games. And while the score is ambitious in the length of its cues, the arrangements are not as elaborate as those of another action-flight simulator soundtrack such as Lock On. In that sense, Gilmore’s C64 version of After Burner, like Matt Furniss’ Master System reworking of Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, is an instance of a technologically inferior port that leaves the underlying material intact yet makes enough astute adjustments to improve meaningfully on the source.

Take the first substantial cue, “Final Take Off”. Kawaguchi’s rhythmic writing is appealingly varied, thanks especially to an agile bass line, and the track’s extended form is more ambitious than that of much other game music from the period. Yet the melody, though steadily developing, never quite lifts off, which leaves the piece sounding oddly meandering. Gilmore’s version feels more urgent and more tense from the outset, largely through his skilful and extensive use of arpeggios and his sharper accenting of the opening melodic figure. Once the main tune enters, it is pushed slightly into the background, forced to compete with the arpeggios and rhythmic layer. The result is a significantly denser texture, full of busier counterpoint and friction than the comparatively laid-back arcade original. Even the extended melodic solo in the second half now feels more forceful and decisive, finally realising the cue’s dramatic potential.

Elsewhere, repetitive melodic writing becomes a more obvious weakness in the arcade score, particularly in “Red Out” and, even more so, “Super Stripe”, despite the latter’s effectively interlocking grooves. Gilmore manages to rescue “Red Out”, initially through the simple but highly effective decision to turn each note of the original melody into the start of an arpeggiated figure. Once again, this produces swirling textures that are far more exhilarating than Kawaguchi’s original. With so much tension now coiled beneath the surface, the sudden shift to the B section’s higher-pitched melody arrives as a genuinely striking surprise, without letting the cue’s intensity sag, thanks to the nervously oscillating, rising arpeggios in the background. Even the arcade cue’s sturdy opening pads and steely bass find an effective C64 counterpart in a bass line that almost feels proto-rave. Sadly, “Super Stripe” fares less well, its chromatic harmonisations of the already monotonous lead line becoming somewhat grating.

Gilmore does not merely port and embellish Kawaguchi’s material; he also cuts it where necessary, as in “After Burner” itself. In the arcade original, the rhythms proceed with more duty than excitement, while the melody feels as though it would make better sense as an electric-guitar solo. Gilmore’s version initially gives a similarly middling impression, but comes alive once the transition to the B section and the accompanying key change allow him to introduce more dramatic arpeggios. From that point onwards, the cue truly soars and dives, and Gilmore wisely gives more space to the fiery B-section material than the arcade version does. Crucially, he also reaches the note-shredding metal solo that crowns the piece m`uch sooner, cutting away some of the original’s redundant repetition. That degree of artistic liberty confirms Gilmore’s larger ambition: to turn After Burner from an arcade score that is just a little too relaxed into a rip-roaring action spectacle, technological limitations be damned.