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Hey, it’s a Sega song that isn’t Sonic!

Even if you aren’t super familiar with After Burner, you’ve probably heard this theme before. Maybe you don’t know where. Perhaps it was Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Bayonetta, or even Smash 4. Maybe you heard it somewhere and mistook it for Corneria from Star Fox SNES, and thought to yourself ‘I don’t remember Corneria sounding like this’.

The song originates from the game series of the same name, After Burner, which was originally a pretty hard arcade combat flight simulator that took all your money. If you’re old enough to have played it in arcades, anyways. It’s since reappeared in later After Burner titles as well as making a few cameo appearance in other Sega games like the previously mentioned S&ASTR (Carrier Zone) and Bayonetta (Infinite Climax). Also, although I’ve never seen any official word, it’s pretty obvious this theme influenced Star Fox SNES’s Corneria theme.

This remix is mostly based on the After Burner II Album arrangement, with a tiny amount of influence from the Bayonetta version (mostly the intro stuff). The original itself clocks in at over 5 minutes, which is fairly long for VGM standards, so I had plenty to work with and didn’t feel the need to really change any of the song structure around.

I wasn’t sure if the solo was going to be possible on guitar note-for-note. It ALMOST is. I only had to make a slight change to the end to accommodate for the final high A note which is unreachable without like 27 frets, haha.

I really need to do more Sega stuff! I have some other songs in mind for the future so keep your eyes and ears out. 🙂