Developer: AM2 Publisher: Takara Release: 01/06/89 Genre: Rail Shooter
I found it strange growing up to see black cartridges of Sega arcade games for the NES. I will admit there was something pretty cool about playing the “other” guys games on your platform of choice. Alien Syndrome is pretty good and Fantasy Zone was decent. It was not all gravy however; the less said about Shinobi the better. Of all of Sega’s arcade games from the 80s I certainly never thought they would even try to port Space Harrier but they did! At least in Japan. The even bigger shock is that it is actually pretty good all things considered. Why did we get that awful, awful version of Shinobi and not this?
The most important question is how does it look? The scaling tech in the arcade cabinet was pretty advanced for its time. There is no reasonable way the NES/Famicom could reproduce that faithfully. However the developers do an admirable job of simulating the game’s look. The checkerboard pattern of the floor is simpler and all of the sprites are dramatically smaller. Otherwise the scrolling is some of the smoothest on the system and far better than something like 3D World Runner. It also beats the pants off the choppy mess that is the Sega Master System version which comes as quite a surprise. It also has backgrounds which that version lacks on top of a higher framerate.
There are some drawbacks to the presentation however. The game is prone to some truly awful slowdown and flicker which can be game breaking at times. The Harrier moves noticeably slower than the arcade which has an impact on playability. None of the voice samples have made it intact and the music is not the greatest either. In the grand scheme of things some of these problems are unavoidable while others are reasonable sacrifices to even get the game on the system.
Space Harrier was famous for its blazing speed in the arcade and that element has been significantly toned down here. This is downright leisurely next to the coin op and that is both a blessing and a curse. Since the game is slower you can actually react to bullets and avoid the random pieces of the environment that come speeding by. Unfortunately you also move a lot slower and I can almost guarantee will die to some not so random bullet far too often.
This was already a pretty difficult game due to the viewpoint and lack of any power-ups but this Famicom version takes it a step further. The slowdown and flicker really are pretty terrible and has a significant impact on the game. Although the game is less populated (be it enemies, bushes and stone columns) it still manages to be pretty intense which is a testament to its design; even when the elements that practically define it have been compromised it still turns out good. While I can appreciate the diversity in the game’s environments it does start to repeat itself by the halfway point. There are only a few bosses and standard enemies and the game simply shuffles them around the deeper you progress. Sometimes less is more.
For a rail shooter Spacer Harrier is pretty long. I doubt most will see the end of this version of the game for myriad reasons. Aside from the reasons outlined above you only have three lives to complete the game and that is it. There are no continues, passwords, or battery back-up. The chance of getting any extra lives throughout the course of the game is practically non-existent. On my best run I maybe got one extra life. One. Considering they manage to cram all eighteen levels into the game every stray bullet is terrifying. Imagine reaching the 15th level only to die because a random bullet blends into the background. I don’t have to because that’s exactly what happened to me. It is soul crushing on a level only old 8-bit video games can achieve but also makes this slightly less attractive as a package.
In Closing
Considering the gap in technology Space Harrier on the NES should not exist. The fact the game is even playable is a minor miracle. Yet it does and for what it is it is actually pretty good. I would have certainly played it had it left Japan.
