Mirage Feathers is an anime-twist on a neglected Sega classic

In 1987, Sega released After Burner and After Burner 2, a pair of “rail shooters” designed to capitalize on the global fascination with fighter jets. Top Gun had been released the year prior. Both After Burner entries flew to international success. However, years later, after cultural lust for military planes had cooled, creator and video game icon Yu Suzuki explained how the series — if he’d had his way, originally — would have looked totally different. After Burner would have been an anime fantasy.

In 2024, indie developer Oyasumi Workshop has created that alternate reality with Mirage Feathers, an eye-meltingly fast, pixelated shooter that (if you can get past the loli character design) harnesses the thrill of the broadly abandoned “rail shooter” genre, and smooths the edges to be more pleasurable for modern gamers. Rather than deadly jet planes, you play as deadly anime girls who fly through the sky at breakneck speeds and demolish enemies with laser cannons.

But before I diver deeper into Mirage Feathers, did Yu Suzuki really want After Burner an anime aesthetic? According to translated interviews compiled at shmuplations.com, anime and airplanes were part of the formula from the drop. After Burner creator Yu Suzuki was inspired by the iconic 1986 Tom Cruise film Top Gun, of course, but also Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

Here’s Suzuki:

Mirage Feathers looks and feels like a collision of After Burner, Suzuki’s original concept, and a distinctly 2024 nostalgia for the anime of the ’80s and ’90s. In the opening sequence, the heroine shoots down a squad of jets that may as well have flown from Suzuki’s classic, her mechanical wings fluttering like a butterfly’s as she reloads a payload of heat-seeking rockets.

If you ever have desired to try the nearly-forgotten rail shooter genre, Mirage Feathers is a worthy entry point. Its pixel graphics are soft and colorful. The difficulty is neither ponderingly easy — like so many modern shooters — nor as punishingly difficult as its inspirations.

The game is playable in English, but appears to be developed in Japanese, and the localization (if that’s even the best descriptor here) feels as if it was machine-translated, with characters speaking in a syntax that feels either incomplete or overwrought. And as I said, the “young anime girl” look will undoubtedly turn off some, though in my time with the game (and a quick skim of a full playthrough) it never appeared to cross the “icky and awkward/disturbing and borderline criminal” rubicon.

It’s also $4.99. Which is to say, it’s cheaper than a coffee. So while Mirage Feathers has some bumps, it falls neatly in the “cheap time machine to a different era of gaming” category.

As for After Burner and Suzuki: After Burner is still available on digital storefronts, along with real arcades across the world and virtual arcades inside the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. Suzuki, meanwhile, has spent his life producing and directing other video games, including the Virtua Fighter and Shenmue series. In 2022, two months after the release of Top Gun Maverick, Suzuki’s game incubation studio YS Net released Air Twister — a modern twist on the genre that Suzuki’s Space Harrier and After Burner had defined. Finally, Suzuki had the chance to blend anime, fantasy, and deadly airborne assault.