Space Harrier

Space Harrier (スペースハリアー, Supēsu Hariā) is a third-person rail shooter video game released by Sega in 1985. It spawned several sequels like Space Harrier 3-D (1988), Space Harrier II (1988), or the spin-off Planet Harriers (2000). It was originally made for the arcades, and later saw ports to many home game systems.

It was one of the first arcade games to use 16-bit graphics and Sega's "Super Scaler" technology that allowed pseudo-3D sprite-scaling at high frame rates, with the ability to scale as many as 32,000 sprites and fill a moving landscape with them, along with 6144 colors on screen out of a 98,304 color palette. It also introduced a true analog flight stick for movement, with the ability to register movement in any direction as well as measure the degree of push, which could move the player character at different speeds depending on how far the stick is pushed in a certain direction. The game was also an early example of a third-person shooter; it was influenced by the earlier 1982 Sega game Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, and Space Harrier in turn influenced later 3D shooters such as Nintendo's Star Fox/Starwing in 1993.

Space Harrier II

Space Harrier II (スペースハリアーII, Supēsu Hariā Tsū) is the sequel to Space Harrier, developed and published by Sega. It was one of the original launch titles released for the Mega Drive in Japan and one of the six Sega Genesis launch titles in the U.S. It was also later released on Nintendo's Virtual Console. Like Altered Beast, another launch title for the Mega Drive, Space Harrier II features digitized human voice recordings during the game play, and is also an example of some of the Sega Mega Drive's early sound, composed by Tokuhiko Uwabo (credited as "Bo").

Story

In the year 6236, Harrier once again receives a call for help, this time from the 214th sector, light-years from his cruiser. Harrier travels there quickly with his "cosmic gate", and finds that Fantasy Land is in overrun by hostile forces. He resolves to once again save a world by fighting off the entire force himself.

Gameplay

Like the original, the game involves a super human hero who runs and flies towards a forever distant background on a checkerboard-styled ground. The player can hit any of the controller's buttons to cause the Space Harrier character to fire his large laser cannon (four shots at a time). There is also an option to turn on auto-fire in the game menu. As the playing field moves forward, enemies come from behind and from the far distance to attack the character, by either firing a projectile or trying to crash into him. The player must also dodge large objects in his path, some of which can be destroyed, such as trees, and others that can not be, such as ionic columns and pylons. One hit from an enemy or a crash into these large objects will cause the player to lose a life. Smaller objects, such as foliage, will only cause the character to trip; however, this leaves him vulnerable to attack for two seconds.