After Burner on Famicom: Sunsoft’s Japan-Only Cartridge for Anyone Back in the Cockpit

If Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, which came out on PlayStation 5 on 2 October 2026, has put you back in a cockpit this month, here is a much older way to fly. After Burner was Sega’s 1987 arcade jet game, designed by Yu Suzuki, and its Japanese home versions run from the Mark III to the PlayStation 2. The most interesting of them is not a Sega cartridge at all.

It is the Famicom version, made and sold in Japan by Sunsoft on 30 March 1989. It never left Japan in that form: the American NES cartridge with the same name is a different port, by Tengen. This guide is about finding the Sunsoft cartridge, with the two Sega-side versions most people meet first — the Mark III cartridge and the Mega Drive After Burner II — alongside it.

• The cartridge: アフターバーナー, Famicom, Sunsoft, 30 March 1989, 6,200円 before tax
• Product code: SS13-6200, printed on the back of the box next to the barcode 4907940100264
• What is inside: despite the title, it is a port of After Burner II — the title screen says so
• Japan only: the NES After Burner (Tengen, 1989) is a separate, unlicensed port, mostly of the first game
• The Sega-side versions: Mark III G-1340 (12 December 1987) and Mega Drive After Burner II T-17013 (23 March 1990, Dempa)
• Buying it: search アフターバーナー ファミコン on Buyee and the product code on Suruga-ya

What was After Burner, and where did the home versions go?

English Wikipedia describes After Burner as Sega’s attempt at its first “true blockbuster”. Yu Suzuki began it in December 1986, right after Out Run, and steered it towards the look of the film Top Gun. You fly an F-14 — Japanese Wikipedia names it the F-14 Tomcat XX — through waves of enemy jets and missiles, firing a cannon and lock-on missiles. The deluxe cabinet tilted and rolled the seat with you.

Suzuki had wanted a throttle from the start, but deadlines cut it. About three months later Sega released After Burner II, which added the throttle and reworked the balance; Japanese Wikipedia notes that its title demo blows up the “I” with a missile to reveal the “II”. Almost every home version that followed is really II, whatever the box says.

In Japan the game went to the Mark III, the Famicom, the X68000 and the FM Towns, then the Mega Drive and PC Engine in 1990, the Mega-CD (After Burner III), the 32X, the Saturn and the PlayStation 2. Kataban lists ten entries for アフターバーナー.

Why is the Famicom version the one to look for?

Because it is the one you could only buy in Japan, and because it tries harder than an 8-bit cartridge should. Japanese Wikipedia’s notes on it:

• It is II: the title screen reads “AFTER BURNER II”. There is no throttle, but pressing Start lights the afterburner for a while and speeds you up
• A big cartridge: 3 megabits, used for pseudo-rotation, scaling patterns, some sampled voices and percussion in the music
• A small joke: the carrier you take off from is renamed from “SEGA Enterprise” to “SUN Enterprise”
• A second loop: clear the game and start again, and a much harder round begins in which the speed climbs stage by stage

The American NES After Burner, released by Tengen in 1989 without Nintendo’s licence, is not this game. Japanese Wikipedia says it was ported mainly from the first After Burner and differs in its stages, title demo, colours and lettering. Suruga-ya sells it too, labelled 北米版 AFTER BURNER [任天堂非ライセンス版] and marked as not working on a Japanese console — so read the listing title. And a Famicom cartridge needs a Famicom: it is a 60-pin board that does not fit an NES without an adapter.

How do you know it is the Sunsoft cartridge?

Look for SS13-6200. It is printed on the back of the box, to the left of the barcode 4907940100264, and FamiWiki gives the same code without the hyphen. The box spine says SERIES 13: Sunsoft numbered its early Famicom games this way, from SS1-4500 for Super Arabian to SS4-4900 for Atlantis no Nazo.

You may also see SUN-AFB-6200 in online lists. We could not find it printed anywhere on the box or the cartridge, so we use the code on the box. The Media Arts Database has the cartridge (M877973, 6200円 (税抜)) but no product code; we added SS13-6200 to the Kataban catalog on 14 October 2026.

What about the Mark III and Mega Drive versions?

Mark III, G-1340, 12 December 1987. Sega’s own port, and Japanese Wikipedia says it is the only Japanese home version based on the first game rather than II: no speed control, enemy missiles you can shoot down, a refuelling plane you dock with yourself, and added bosses. The same game sold well abroad as the Master System After Burner.

Mega Drive After Burner II, T-17013, 23 March 1990. Published in Japan by Dempa and converted from its X68000 version. It supports Dempa’s analogue XE-1AP controller — Japanese Wikipedia calls it the first Mega Drive game with analogue control — and it is often called one of the system’s good ports. The catch for buyers is that the same game was sold worldwide as After Burner II for the Genesis and Mega Drive, so English searches bring up many Western copies.

Where can you buy the Famicom cartridge today?

On 14 October 2026 we counted 39 listings of this cartridge on Buyee, 2 in stock at Suruga-ya and 24 on eBay.

After Burner · アフターバーナー · Famicom, 30 March 1989 (SS13-6200) · Sunsoft

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code (SS13-6200) · Buyee — title (アフターバーナー ファミコン) · eBay — After Burner famicom
See the cartridge on Kataban → · Search After Burner on Kataban →
Sega-side versions: Mark III (G-1340) on Kataban → · Mega Drive After Burner II (T-17013) on Kataban →

Holding a boxed copy? Scan the barcode on the back of the box with Kataban’s scanner, and it finds this cartridge.

Why search Kataban for this one?

Because one name covers ten entries on eight systems. Search アフターバーナー on Kataban and each version appears with its platform and code — the Famicom SS13-6200, the Mark III G-1340, the Mega Drive T-17013 — so you know which code to take to the shop.

Sega’s 1987 jet game is still easy to find in Japan, as long as you know which cartridge you want. If a new flight game has you back in the air, the Sunsoft version is the one that never left the country.