Antarctic Cruise: After Burner / Penguin Land | Segaiden #054
745Sega jets into 1988 with a new distributor and a pair of games that do what Sega did best on Master System: Namely, convert arcade games and create strong follow-ups to SG-1000 releases. After Burner doesn't pull off the Super Scaler-to-Master System adaptation trick quite as effectively as OutRun did, which is largely down to the more powerful arcade hardware behind After Burner's coin-op edition, but it still looks and plays a lot more impressively than any other console flight combat game at the time. Not that there were a lot. But still. As for Penguin Land, it's a top-flight puzzler... well, I guess "flight" isn't quite the word to use for a game about penguins. But it's quite good and has an interesting trick up its sleeve. As a treat.
Production notes:
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Master System footage captured from U.S. carts running through a cart adapter on Sega Mark III hardware (with FM Sound Unit and RGB bypass modification by iFixRetro) and MiSTer (thanks to MiSTerAddOns). Video upscaled to 720 with xRGB Mini Framemeister. RGB cables courtesy of StoneAgeGamer.com and Allie Bellrose.