SPACE HARRIER
Game Cover
Game
スペースハリアー
©Sega 1986
©Takara 1988
Release: 1989-01-06 (¥5500)
Cartdridge TFC-SO
Shooter/3D

Space Harrier is a 3D/forward shooter by Takara and conversion of Sega's popular arcade game originally released in 1985. The game takes place in the fictional world of Dragon Land, where an evil force and his army have appeared and seek for the total annihilation of the land and its inhabitants. The player takes control of a warrior armed with a large laser-cannon, ready to take on the swarming invaders. The interesting device also doubles as a rocket-pack, giving the player the ability to float around the screen and to fly at blazing speeds through the different zones of the Dragon Land. Unlike most of the shooters released at the time, Space Harrier uses 3D effects based on sprite scaling, and the player constantly moves forward on a set track. Space Harrier features eighteen levels, all filled with all kind of flying enemies, from bug-like creatures to winged insects, robot-mechas, formations of flying jets and massive dragons. Finally, two bonus stages are also scattered throughout the game and give the player the ability to ride the dragon Uriah, and to destroy elements of the background for extra points.
Related
SpaceHarrier (Pce-Hu)
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As expected, this Famicom version of Space Harrier shows significant differences with the original arcade game. Space Harrier was a technical feat when it was released in 1985, and it must have been quite a challenge to port it to Nintendo's 8 bit console. Sprites are understandably smaller, the ground/checkerboard effect was drastically over simplified, and the audio/speech was obviously omitted. Finally, although all eighteen of the original levels made it to the final version, some bosses, such as the two headed dragon (third boss), were cut from the game.


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Space Harrier manual
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Wahooo, a port of Space Harrier for the Famicom system, what a brave and hazardous endeavour. In that respect, the game is a decent attempt - most of the enemies made it to the final cut as well as the eitheen levels. The graphics are also more than correct for a Famicom port, and the soundtrack is faithful to the source material. But in practice, this conversion is burdened with sprite flickering, graphical slowdowns and terrible controls. Boss encounters slow the game to a crawl and sprite-flickering makes enemy bullets/fireballs hard to read. But the picture is not all that bleak, and this conversion has its moments of fun. All in all, Space Harrier hardcore fans may find something rewarding out of this game (and I'm not ashamed to say that I somehow did), but the others should just fire up the original arcade version (which is now widely available).




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