Your thoughts please: Space Harrier

[saturn-gamer]

The only Hikaru I've ever seen and played was Star Wars Racer. It was much, much better than the PC version (which Sega chose for the DC :/).

The point of Hikaru?

Well, its actually an easy story: Hikaru was made for one single game: Brave Fire Fighters. Hikaru was a somewhat more advanced Naomi 1 because of the fact that it could pull of additional realistic smoke and fire effects, those were needed for the firefighting game. Apperantly Sega decided to use the board for some other games too..

As I am a big fan of Oratorio Tangram, I always wanted to play Virtual On Force. Never came across it.

[Samurai Matt]

Damn, those screens of planet harriars are amazing. Damn shame it never got released

[Molloy]

Virtual On Force was meant to be dreadful. The whole of that team got laid off and replaced with students straight out of college after VOOT. Virtual On Marz was meant to be based on Virtual On Force and sucked. Of course it was the best selling version in the series so far so we probably won't see another installment with proper twin stick control.

Cool to hear the positive feedback on Planet Harriers. As yer man says I look forward to playing it through emulation one day.

[Nu-Eclipse]

At the risk of being controversial...

Space Harrier is a coin-op classic (and rightly so), but it did nothing for me personally. I honesty feel that Afterburner and OutRun were (and still are) superior.

Hell, I even played Hang-On more than Space Harrier.

[Rebelli0n]

At the risk of being controversial...

Space Harrier is a coin-op classic (and rightly so), but it did nothing for me personally. I honesty feel that Afterburner and OutRun were (and still are) superior.

Hell, I even played Hang-On more than Space Harrier.

I suppose they are later games. Personally I love them all. All those sega sprite scaling psuedo 3d titles were in a league of their own at the time.
I'm a big fan of galaxy force 2 in a way felt a bit like a mix of Afterburner and Space Harrier. It's certainly got some raelly great fantasy/space environments.

Going back to Harrier, I actually dreamt about playing planet harriers last night. Never seen the game in action, and my now my brain is creating crazy mock ups to tease me

[Yakumo]

Hikaru board most prob ruled out a DC port, Though I never forgive AV for a no DC port of Monkey Ball . Remember reading this was rummored to be coming to the CUBE, shame it never happend That would have been perfect.

I have a load of good quality shots of the Dreamcast version of Monkey Ball if you'd like them posted.

Oh and to stay on Topic, YEAH !! Space Harrier was one of my all time Favs ! Loved the hydraulic cabinet version of it. I remember they had Space harrier II on Tomorrows World demonstrating a moving chair for the home. not too sure what ever happened to that.

Yakumo

[DeathAdder]

I'm happy to play Space Harrier now that it's retro, and therefore cheap. I'm glad I never paid full price for it. I always got fed up after a quick play, and still do. It was quite a good idea spoiled by the fact that your character made it hard for the player to see all of what was going on IMO.

[jamielemon]

What is Space Harrier 2? Is it the last levels of the original, which were not included in the first conversions due to space requirements? I remember reading something about that when they first came out. I know it was never a dedicated arcade game.

[Rebelli0n]

Space Harrier II was originally developed for the megadrive. It's a new game, rather than a PC Engine R-type style last half of the original. It was one of the very first games to be developed on the MD, along with the port of altered beast.

[jamielemon]

Space Harrier II was originally developed for the megadrive. It's a new game, rather than a PC Engine R-type style last half of the original. It was one of the very first games to be developed on the MD, along with the port of altered beast.

I thought that was probably the case but the fact that it then went on to appear on the home computer formats made me wonder. Sega's Megadrive-exclusives didn't usually make that jump. I remember there was even a speccy version, and it must have come out at pretty much the same time. You didn't get that sort of thing with Sonic etc.

[Rebelli0n]

I thought that was probably the case but the fact that it then went on to appear on the home computer formats made me wonder. Sega's Megadrive-exclusives didn't usually make that jump. I remember there was even a speccy version, and it must have come out at pretty much the same time. You didn't get that sort of thing with Sonic etc.

Yeah, it was quite wierd that it was ported in the style of an arcade system. That did only happen occasionally. another similar oddity i remember was the Amiga got a port of the PC engines PC Kid , renamd BC kid. Actually a very good port too.

[Leon Retro]

Yeah, it was quite wierd that it was ported in the style of an arcade system. That did only happen occasionally. another similar oddity i remember was the Amiga got a port of the PC engines PC Kid , renamd BC kid. Actually a very good port too.

Yeah.. I'm always going about about the Amiga BC-Kid. It really showed how good Japanese games could be on the machine, and definitely deserves to be mentioned more than it does!

I also remember liking the Amiga Space Harrier. A friend gave me a boxed copy for free, and I couldn't stop playing it.



I haven't play the Amiga version for ages!

[Bomberman]

Yeah.. I'm always going about about the Amiga BC-Kid. It really showed how good Japanese games could be on the machine, and definitely deserves to be mentioned more than it does!

I also remember liking the Amiga Space Harrier. A friend gave me a boxed copy for free, and I couldn't stop playing it.



I haven't play the Amiga version for ages!

That looks like a bloody good port for the amiga, certainly better than the Master system version. My favourite home version is easily the PCE, it just feels natural.

[Leon Retro]

That looks like a bloody good port for the amiga, certainly better than the Master system version. My favourite home version is easily the PCE, it just feels natural.

I'm guessing the Amiga version is an ST port. It was an early title, so I reckon the machine could have produced an even better conversion.

Still, it is good, and worth a play!


Here is the Amiga version of SH2. Most people say it's a very poor title, and graphically much worse than the original.

[Rebelli0n]

I'm guessing the Amiga version is an ST port. It was an early title, so I reckon the machine could have produced an even better conversion.

Interestingly, the amiga has 3 Space harrier games,

The original, ported by Elite

SpaceHarrier 2 ported by Teque

and most interestingly,

Space Harrier: Return to the Fantasy Zone also by Elite

The amiga space harriers were really good ports, (possibly excluding SH2) i remember them running full screen and being nice and fast.

To it's credit, the ST got an amazing port too considering that systems limitations (I do think this was actually one of the early games where the Amiga got a better version rather than a straight ST port, i'd have to check them out again to be sure though)

At first i thought Return the fantasy zone might have been like the amigas 'better' port of after burner.

It got 2 ports of that, the crap Argonaut one,

And a better Sega one . It's not quite up there with the PCE and MD versions, but it's a lot better than the other port.