Space Harrier Turns 40

Sega in 1985 was on fire at the arcade with two very important arcade game series. The first is Hang-On, which we will talk about next week, but this week we will talk about another game and that game is Space Harrier. 

Space Harrier was developed and published by Sega in 1985. It was created by Yu Suzuki, who was the director, game designer, and programmer. Satoshi Mifune also helped with the programming, and Hiroshi Kawaguchi helped with the now iconic music. The game was a rail shooter, and you played as Harrier, a blond-haired man who must fight throughout 18 stages in the “Fantasy Zone” to save his world.

The arcade machine game is like a spaceship, and you move Harrier around in the game like he was a ship. The game ran on an arcade board called the Super Scaler, better known as the “Sega Hang-On hardware” because it was first used on Hang-On and later on with Space Harrier.

Space Harrier was part of the “Fantasy Zone” universe because in 1986 Sega released Fantasy Zone and soon after that there was going to be a game that would bring both games together and the game was going to be called Space Fantasy Zone but sadly it was canceled.

Space Harrier had two other games in the series with Space Harrier 2 being released exclusively on the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1988 and the last game in the series Planet Harriers in 2000 and was an arcade only game with no ports or releases to home consoles.

Go give Space Harrier a go and you will see how much fun and how well it held up to this day.