Space Harrier, unlike a lot of Sega’s other arcade games in the mid-80s, was a little light on challenging play. Your little blonde dude and his huge gun flew across the seemingly endless surface of The Fantasy Zone, shooting all kinds of dragons and cycloptic wooly mammoths, but it never quite felt like anything you did had a physical impact on the world. Things exploded when you shot near them but it didn’t ever feel like you were actually causing it to happen. But Yu Suzuki’s debut game stands out in history because it was, and is, staggeringly beautiful. Its scaling sprite graphics were an important landmark on the road to making lush three-dimensional – not true 3D mind you, but close – game worlds. Harrier’s Fantasy Zone is as bizarre and unique a visual space as anything else that came out of Sega (arguably even stranger and more fully realized than Opa Opa’s Fantasy Zone.) It also had some of the most hilarious voiceovers in a game. One of my earliest gaming memories is of a Space Harrier machine repeatedly yelling, “You’re doing great!” in the corner of a Pizza-Hut. It made me laugh so hard, Pepsi came out my nose, and everyone knows that the true test of comedy is whether or not it can make you leak fluid.
It’s strange then, considering Sega’s recent penchant for resurrecting their iconic franchises, that Space Harrier has remained untouched for twenty years. The only sign of the series since 1988 was Sega’s arcade shooter Planet Harrier in 2001, an obvious spiritual successor but still not a proper Space Harrier 3. If Tez Okana has his way, Space Harrier won’t stay unloved for long. Okana recently released Thunder Force VI on PS2, another long dead Sega series given new life, and he told Edge Magazine that his ambition is to bring Space Harrier back to the masses. Discussing his thoughts on the shooter genre broadly and his plans, Okana said, "I need to demonstrate our approach is viable. But for my next step, I’d really like to work on Space Harrier. This is a unique game in Sega’s history that projected us into some incredible worlds and experiences. But the success of Thunder Force VI is the key to any future projects." This is particularly exciting considering Okana’s previous games, like the phenomenal Astroy Boy: Omega Factor on Game Boy Advance, has precisely the sort of tangible, weighty, and skillful play that Harrier was lacking so many years ago.
Sega, I’m loving you these days. Signing Platinum Games, making Sonic good again, making a grindhouse themed House of the Dead for Wii. Please let Ozaka make this game. That would, as the kids say, rock hard.
(Link: Edge Online)
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