Game 450: Space Harrier

 

We’re jumping a bit ahead of schedule as this past weekend, I had an opportunity to play 1985’s Space Harrier on an original deluxe motion-cabinet at Funspot, NH, and wanted to do a writeup while it was still fresh in my mind.

Space Harrier was never my favorite Sega game, though my experience with it until now had only been through ports and emulation. It seemed quite repetitive, with little to distinguish the moment-to-moment gameplay of its 18 stages other than visual variety, the pseudo-3D shooting action clumsy, imprecise, and full of unfair deaths, and its much-praised Super Scaler technology just felt visually incoherent, providing nothing to look at but a vast, empty void with a large number of smoothly-scaling objects flying at you at warp speed. It's very colorful, sure, but the monochromatic wireframes of Star Wars and even Elite offered a far better sense of 3D space and perspective.

 

This deluxe sit-down cabinet, similarly to the deluxe cabinets of OutRun and After Burner (which also feature at Funspot and are placed right next to it), tilts and pivots as you push the flight stick to move your character around the screen. It's definitely an added dimension to the trippy experience that emulation can't replicate, but it's not quite as immersive in this early iteration. OutRun's moving seat bounces as you drive across bumpy terrain and physically leans into your turns, and After Burner's moving cockpit syncs with the chase-camera perspective, tilting and pitching as your F-14 Tomcat does, but here, the pseudo-3D perspective isn't tethered to your character's movements as he zips around the screenspace, and the cabinet motion doesn't feel as connected to the action as it might have. One suspects it might have made more sense in the first prototypes where you actually flew a harrier, instead of a guy with a jetpack and a space bazooka.

I played through Space Harrier's 18 stages for the first time at Funspot, and while the motion cabinet doesn't do anything to enhance the gameplay, it does enhance the experience. I'll note that I'm very grateful for the tertiary fire button located physically on the cabinet, as repeatedly squeezing the joystick trigger gets very, very tiring. I then played through for the second time at home, using a USB flight stick to steer and the left-ctrl button on my keyboard to shoot. The game has no limit on the number of times you're allowed to continue, and no penalty when you do. Therefore I had no incentive to replay and try to play more optimally or use fewer of them.

The game controls quite well with either setup, but is still very shallow and very repetitive. Each of the 18 worlds has a distinct color scheme and visuals, but it makes little difference whether you're shooting at giant Moai heads while dodging their fireballs and avoiding stone pillars on the ground or you're shooting at harriers while dodging their missiles and avoiding steel towers on the ground. Basically, never stop moving, never stop shooting, and try not to move into oncoming obstacles.

Space can be a tough place, and you will eat flaming laser death.

Bosses, at least, provide a bit of gameplay variety, but they're pretty brief and a lot of them are still samey. There are also two rounds where you ride a Luck Dragon and just try to smash through as many obstacles as possible for bonus points, and the final stage is a boss rush and considerably easier than the stages before it. There is, of course, no plot and no context at all for why you're here or what you're doing.

I will give some credit here, for lack of a better place to mention it. Space Harrier's audio design is quite excellent, with a psychedelic FM soundtrack, clear voice samples (AHHHHH!!! .... get ready!), lots of rumbly explosions, zippy cannonfire, a distinctive 'bloop' sound of enemies unloading clusters of fireballs in your general direction, and convincing stereo separation effects behind it all.

GAB rating: Average. Another cutting edge Sega game pushes their signature sprite-scaling technology even harder than Hang-On did, but colorfully trippy visuals and break-neck speed can't make up for overly simplistic and monotonous gameplay, and unfair quarter-munching design.