SEGA Ages: G-LOC Air Battle (Nintendo Switch) Review

Though the name does not suggest this fact, the style of the game and the overall theme makes it undeniable that this one is part of the After Burner series. This time however, the action is not viewed from a third person perspective, but rather from inside the cockpit of what looks like an F-14 Tomcat aircraft. Every now and then the camera will go back behind the fighter when it is being chased down by another, but, most of the time, the cockpit view prevails. G-Loc is structured as a succession of short missions, almost always consisting of destroying a set amount of enemy units. Depending on the mission, those could be other aircrafts or gunships on the water, or other types of enemy installations.

There is a constantly running countdown, akin to many racing games of the time, where completing a mission will extend the play-time remaining to the player. Should time run out, it's game over and a new credit must be inserted in the machine to keep playing. Conversely, players have infinite lives and a damage meter, so at least some attacks will not destroy the fighter on the spot. However the respawning time functions as a penalty anyway that may be just the difference between a game over and a time extension in the end. The control stick steers the air fighter, just like in the original arcade version, offering a great degree of fine control over the aim of the reticule on the plane's targeting system, as well as the vehicle's movement.

The F-14 has a Vulcan gun with infinite ammo, while missiles, requiring enemies to be locked onto with the aforementioned targeting computer, come in limited supply, which partially gets refilled between each short mission. Enemy units mostly just fly in front of the player, and must be taken down, when they're not just waiting on the water or sitting on the ground in the case of gunships and enemy factories and the like.

So players chain short missions that always consist of much of the same thing. The gameplay loop of G-LOC Air Battle does feel repetitive, as these things often did back in those days. Being an arcade game, it was never meant to be enjoyed for extended periods of time, but rather something unique to entice players passing by the machine in an arcade to drop a few coins into for a momentary thrill. Ported to Switch, this feels just the same, and is also best enjoyed in short bursts. With this design philosophy in mind then, it still succeeds completely at delivering a thrilling experience for the span of a single play-through, unless some players become so engrossed by the score-chasing nature of it that they keep going for a better score in order to reach the top of the online leaderboards, which have been, smartly indeed, once again been brought to this SEGA Ages release.

Visually speaking, by the standards of 1990, this one does appear slightly more impressive than its predecessor After Burner, but also somewhat slower paced. The scenery seen below the aircraft is more detailed and less chunky looking, but it also appears to be placed much further down, and so it does not appear to be zooming towards the camera in quite the same way. If After Burner had the player zoom across landscapes close to the ground, this one often takes place in the stratosphere by comparison.

There are some missions involving flying over a river, for example, taking down gunships, but those still feel slower than anything from After Burner. This does lend the action a less hectic feel overall, and the absent sense of speed is something that some people will definitely miss. This was true of the original arcade instalment, but that one had the advantage of being the first game to utilise the R360 cabinet, offering players a sense of thrill unlike anything at that point, surpassing the likes of After Burner and Space Harrier. Without the R360 however, this loses some of its spark.

As is always the case with SEGA Ages releases, M2 went the extra mile to include an alternate version to be enjoyed on the system, called Ages mode. In that the player has a faster lock-on than in the regular arcade mode, to fire missiles at enemy targets - plus a bigger supply of said missiles from the outset. Missions are played back to back as well, in the same way, but with only one credit to get as far as possible. Sadly, however, that's about it in terms of extra gameplay opportunities. Fans of the SEGA Ages line of products will find here the expected settings, like the possibility to play the Japanese version or the international release, which vary in some of the smaller details, and there are lots of options to tweak like an arcade cabinet view, scan-line effects to toggle, a music player, and difficulty options that can be fine-tuned to best suit the player's liking.

In the end, though, while the experience itself is very pleasant and devoid of any technical or control issues, it does feel like more could have been done with it to make it more fleshed out for modern tastes. Nevertheless, this is a more important release than it may seem, because this is one of the much too few examples of SEGA Ages re-releasers than fans should care about: a SEGA game which was for all intents and purposes lost to the ages and brought back to be experienced again with the convenience of being on a modern system.

…Daytona USA next please?