Space Harrier

Space Harrier is a fast-paced rail shooter game played in a third-person perspective behind the protagonist, set in a surreal world composed of brightly colored landscapes adorned with checkerboard-style grounds and stationary objects such as trees or stone pillars. At the start of gameplay, players are greeted with a voice sample speaking "Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. ", in addition to "You're doing great!" with the successful completion of a stage.

The title player character, simply named Harrier, navigates a continuous series of eighteen distinct stages while utilizing an underarm jet-propelled laser cannon that enables Harrier to simultaneously fly and shoot. The objective is simply to destroy all enemies—who range from prehistoric animals and Chinese dragons to flying robots, airborne geometric objects and alien pods—all while remaining in constant motion in order to dodge projectiles and immovable ground obstacles.

The game was first conceived by a Sega designer named Ida, who wrote a 100-page document proposing the idea of a three-dimensional shooter that contained the word "Harrier" in the title. The game would feature a player-controlled fighter jet that shot missiles into realistic foregrounds, a concept that was soon rejected due to the extensive work required to project the aircraft realistically from varying angles as it moved around the screen, coupled with arcade machines' memory limitations. Sega developer Yu Suzuki therefore simplified the title character to a human, which required less memory and realism to depict onscreen. He then rewrote the entire original proposal, changing the style of the game to a science-fiction setting while keeping only the "Harrier" name.

His inspirations for the game's new design were the 1984 film The Neverending Story, the 1982 anime series Space Cobra, and the work of artist Roger Dean. Certain enemies were modelled on characters from the anime series Gundam. Suzuki included a nod to the original designer in the finished product with an enemy character called Ida, a large moai-like floating stone head, because the designer "had a really big head". Three different arcade cabinets were produced: an upright cabinet, a sit-down version with a fixed seat, and its best known incarnation: a deluxe cockpit-style rolling cabinet that was mounted on a motorised base and moved depending on the direction in which players pushed the joystick.

The game was commercially successful upon its initial arcade release. Sega unveiled Space Harrier at the 1985 Amusement Machine Show in Japan, where it was the most popular game. In January 1986, Game Machine listed Space Harrier as being the top-grossing title on the monthly upright/cockpit arcade cabinet charts in Japan. It remained at the top of the upright/cockpit arcade charts for much of 1986, through February, March and early April, then returning to the top in May, remaining at the top through June, July and August, and then topping the charts again in October.

Overall, the Space Harrier rolling type cabinet was Japan's second highest-grossing upright/cockpit arcade cabinet during the first half of 1986 (below only Hang-On), and the overall highest-grossing upright/cockpit arcade game during the latter half of 1986. It was later Japan's seventh highest upright/cockpit arcade game of 1987.

Space Harrier spawned two home-system sequels in 1988. The Master System exclusive Space Harrier 3-D utilized Sega's SegaScope 3-D glasses, and featured the same gameplay and visuals as the port of the original game while containing new stage, enemy, and boss designs. Space Harrier II was one of six launch titles for the Japanese debut of the Mega Drive (Sega Genesis), and released as such in the United States in August 1989. In December 2000, fifteen years after the original game's debut, Sega released the loose arcade sequel Planet Harriers, which again continued the gameplay style of the franchise but featured four new selectable characters each possessing distinct weapons, in addition to five fully realized stages and a new option of purchasing weapon power-ups.

However, Planet Harriers had only a minimal presence in the United States due to its faltering arcade scene, and it was never given a home release. In 2003, a remake of the original Space Harrier was developed by Tamsoft as part of the Japanese Sega Ages classic-game series (Sega Classics Collection in North America and Europe) for the PlayStation 2. The graphics are composed of polygons instead of sprites while several characters are redesigned, and a selectable option allows players to switch to a "fractal mode" that replaces the traditional checkerboard floors with texture-mapped playfields and includes two new underground stages. Power-ups such as bombs and lock-on targeting fly toward and are caught by the player during gameplay.