4 out of 5

Label: Data Discs

Produced by: Shaun Crook (vinyl remaster)

Yeah.  Or, more accurately: YEAH.  We owned a Genesis in the early days, getting our version with a bundled-in Sonic the Hedgehog and Buster Douglas boxing (uh-huh), but I do recall that it was getting my butt chapped by the – at the time – blazingly fast and realistic graphics of AB II that made me run home screaming for 16-bit goodness as a necessity.  I’d experienced the AB cabinets in the arcade – sitdown machines, tilting cockpits – and though flight sims weren’t my jam (this being quite far away from a flight sim, admittedly), that the Sega seemed to bring home the arcade experience sans that moving seat made my eyes water with belief.

And Hiroshi Kawaguchi’s totes Top Gun soundtrack – looking forward to electric guitars of the soon-to-be-rockin’ 90s and bedecked with a sense of cool that set it apart from the blips and bloops of many of its neighbors – was a big part of that.  The soaring tune aligned perfectly with the game’s sense of momentum, while also serving as the laid-back kinda Outrun jam you want to turn up when you’re winking at bikini-clad babes in the jet when ‘plane-span over.  And represented here – via Data Discs’ reliable precision mastering – you experience that same exact awesomeness.  The longer tunes definitely take the cake over some of the shorter cuts, which feels more like bridges than full compositions, but as usual with these things, the sense of  completion is preferred over just giving us highlights.

The ‘arranged versions’ included on the second LP of this set are absolutely worthwhile expansions of the main themes, maybe a little more fully effecting 80s big hair bravado  but rockin’ and rollin’ nonetheless, capped by SEGA Sound Unit’s awesome ‘After Burner Medley.’

Now I just need to spend a million dollars to get one of the arcade machines in the house and I’ll undoubtedly transform into the COOLEST KID IN TOWN.