Blue Lightning (1989). Play online

Summary

Blue Lightning landed as a launch title for the Atari Lynx, delivering an arcade‑style aerial combat that feels straight out of After Burner. From a behind‑the‑jet perspective I watch the world swoop past without ever worrying about stalling, though crashing into enemies is always an option.

The game offers nine missions that range from straight dogfights to ground assaults on tanks, ships and radar stations, even a courier run where you must land on a specific airfield. Every successful run hands you a password for the next sortie.

You pilot a prototype jet armed with an unlimited‑ammo cannon and up to forty guided missiles that lock on automatically, while an afterburner delivers a ten‑second burst of speed and then needs the same amount of time to recharge. A barrel roll can shake off incoming locks, and the roster of six planes serves as lives.

Thanks to sprite scaling, rotation and a custom animation engine, the title showcases what the Lynx could do, a fact reviewers praised alongside its high scores and the 1990 Handheld Game of the Year award. A Jaguar CD remake followed in 1995.

Storyline

In Blue Lightning you step into the shoes of a rookie United States Air Force pilot assigned to the Flight Command squadron. The Pentagon tasks you with flying the prototype fighter on a desperate push through enemy airspace to support allied forces. Across nine missions you fly over varied locations, each mission presenting a different objective and growing difficulty as the war escalates. The game was designed by Landrum with graphics by Arthur Koch as a pseudo‑3D combat flight experience, taking clear inspiration from Sega’s After Burner and the Blue Thunder film and TV series.