Here’s a fact that some of you may not know: the modern jet engine After Burner provides additional thrust to the aircraft by injecting aviation fuel directly into the hot exhaust and igniting it. Because it bypasses the turbine, it’s extremely ineffi cient and is only occasionally used in short bursts. Science lesson over – thank you Wikipedia.

Similarly, After Burner: Black Falcon is a game you’ll want to play for comparatively short periods of time. It’s not that developer Planet Moon hasn’t done a sterling job, quite the contrary in fact, it’s just that the After Burner series has always been the gaming equivalent of a bag of Haribo – great for a little while, but you can never have too much at once.

After Burner originated in the arcades of the Eighties, of course, and there’s absolutely no substitute for the joystick and tilting seat thrill that the original cabinet servo provided (at an extortionate 50 pence a pop!), but surprisingly little has been lost in this translation to the PSP. The control system hasn’t changed at all, with barrel rolls, an After Burner thrust that gradually regenerates once used and a choice of cannon/missile attacks. There’s also a choice of three different control styles, all of which use the nub for navigation and all are very intuitive – it took us less than two minutes to fi gure it out.

Where Planet Moon has excelled with Black Falcon is in recreating that authentic arcade feel. It was always going to be a challenge encapsulating the atmosphere of the coin-op on the PSP, but this is as close as you’re going to get to playing the cabinet version on a portable system. The game kicks off with a comic-strip introduction to a tongue-in-cheek storyline that involves hunting down rogue pilots that have stolen 13 top secret ‘Assassin’ jet aircraft, before giving you a choice of three pilots who specialise in specifi c areas of air combat expertise. These characters are Top Gun stereotypes that do nothing to convince us otherwise that the plot has been tossed in merely to tie Black Falcon together. To be honest, this had us worried at fi rst, as the original cut the fl uff out and thrust us straight into the action. But by the end of the fi rst level our faith had been restored: Black Falcon is every bit the evolved progeny of After Burner and the apple of its predecessor’s eye. The visuals alone are compelling enough to warrant further investigation: take the After Burner original third-person give it some PSP juice in the form of smoother 3D effects, a much broader colour palette and even more dramatic ways of crashing and burning, and you’ve got some idea of what it’s like. Add to that equation a range of panoramas, desert, jungle and ice environments, and obstacles such as tunnels and huge obelisks to navigate your way through, and the game begins to drip in authenticity. And we’ve hardly begun to describe the gameplay.

Black Falcon has all the basic elements of After Burner fl eshed out with some contemporary genre staples. Prior to fl ying one of the 24 missions, you’re given the choice of an assortment of jet fi ghter aircraft, ranging from the mundane to the hi-tech, which include the F1 vehicles of the skies, the F-22 Raptor and F15-Strike Eagle. Each fi ghter has speed, acceleration and manoeuvrability stats, and you’re only limited in your choice by their cost and the amount of cash you’ve earned from the previous missions – this is where the incentive system kicks in. Each mission comes with a critical objective as well as bonus objectives that will earn you extra cash: usually a case of destroying a minimum number of targets along the way to your critical objective. Despite being surplus to mission completion requirements, it becomes apparent early on in the game that the bounty gained from these ‘bonus’ objectives is crucial to your survival later on in the game, as not only does it allow you to buy more advanced aircraft, but it allows you to upgrade the weapons and fl ight systems adequately to cope with the diffi culty that ramps up early into the game.

And this could prove the chink in Black Falcon’s titanium armour plating, as it rapidly becomes very diffi cult within the fi rst few levels. So much so, that merely barrel-rolling your way through each mission to survive it, let alone attempting to fulfi l the bonus objectives, becomes a seriously intense game of fast-twitch reactions and perfect timing. Anyone who has a gaming endurance level that’s a fraction less than hardcore will fi nd themselves exhausted after playing for more than an hour or two in one go.

It’s still a hugely addictive game though, as you would expect from a classic arcade sequel, which means despite only being able to swallow it in small chunks, it’s a thoroughly appetising and hearty title. After Burner: Black Falcon doesn’t make it into our top ten PSP titles, but speed freaks, retro gamers and fl ight combat fans can consider this an absolutely essential purchase.

Ben Biggs