After Burner II: its lineage, descendants, and standing in Japan
01What this origin is
After Burner II is an arcade rail shooter developed and published by Sega's AM2 division, released in 1987 on the X Board arcade hardware as a refined follow-up to After Burner. Seen from behind the cockpit of a fighter jet, it is a pseudo-3D on-rails shooter in which you race through relentless waves of enemy aircraft at high speed, lock missiles onto them, and unleash homing fire while the world banks and rushes past. By building its thrill on speed and pouring offensive fire into the targets ahead rather than careful dodging, it defined the fast, aggressive lock-and-erase rail-shooter feel, and is the origin of the behind-the-cockpit rail-shooter lineage, a branch of the shooter family distinct from the vertical-scrolling bullet-hell line.
02Sources
03Buried gems that carry this root
Mirage Feathers Buried gem
An anime-styled pseudo-3D on-rails shooter of fast-tempo aerial combat, played from behind your craft. Its core is an advanced fire-control system: any target that crosses your crosshair is auto-locked, and then homing attacks pour into every locked enemy at once, so the loop is not about dodging but about sweeping your sights across a wave and erasing all of it in a single offensive burst. Variable weapon loadouts, an OVERDRIVE power-burst mode, wave-based enemy assaults, a Story Mode and an Endless Mode, adjustable difficulty, Steam leaderboards, achievements, and trading cards. The developer self-describes it as a very faster version of After Burner II, and players cite After Burner and Sky Target. Made by the Japanese solo/small indie self-publisher oyasumi Workshop (oyasumi seisakusho), released in 2024 for 600 yen, with full Japanese voice and story; the original language is Japanese, later localized into English, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. Overwhelmingly Positive at 2,504 reviews and 98 percent. It already plays in English (485 of those reviews are English, about 19 percent of the total), but the wider Western audience has barely found this 600-yen doujin rail shooter outside niche shmup circles.