Space Harrier on the Speccy? You've got to be kidding! But Elite wasn't. Tommy Nash took the first train to Walsall and came back preaching the conversion to the unconverted.
    Impossible, they said. Can't be done, they said. Believe it when we see it, they said.
    Well, I've seen it and I believe it. And when they see it. Whoever they are, they're gonna believe it too.
    Space Harrier is the ultimate arcade shoot'em up. Quite simply you won't get a game with a simpler plot - it simply hasn't got one. You have a back pack that takes you up, down, left and right. And you have a gun. Start firing it and don't stop. All the time you manage to stay alive, the game hurtles you forward towards a set of cities or mountains on the horizon.
    Staying alive is the tricky bit though. The game throws everything it's got at you. And that includes huge boulders, trees, columns, large stone faces decapitated from the Easter Island statues, menacing exiles from the film Gremlins and most spectacular of all, a series of multi-coloured fire-breathing dragons like the ones you can see in Soho on Chinese New Year. As soon as you've sorted that lot out, it's onto the next level - the game just never lets up.
    Everything about Space Harrier is stunning - the speed, the style but most of all the graphics. If you've never played the game, it's well worth squandering 60p down the arcades to find out how good it is. The difficult bit is restricting yourself to a measly 60p. You could just as easily stuff in sixty quids worth and still not be satisfied, especially as this is one of those games that goes on giving out lives for as long as you keep feeding in cash. And for the full effect, look out for the machines that let you sit in front of them on a moving seat. Elite had one at the PCW Show but it was so swamped that I had to kick a few shins just to get close to it.
    Of course, no-one who'd seen, let alone played the original game believed that Elite could come close even to the spirit of the game on the Speccy. It's the equivalent of cramming the complete history of the world into a twenty minute documentary - a trifle over-ambitious. Considering the limitations, what's been done is nothing short of miraculous.
    Things have had to go, of course. And first to be junked was, not surprisingly, the colour. It's a loss but the graphics are still good, even if they are in mono. Sometimes it's a little tricky to tell just what's winging its way towards you but that happens tn the original too. You can put that down to the speed of the game. And it's. Here that the Speccy version matches up. It's fast. Very fast. The speed of the forward scroll effect is stunning. Once you start playing the game and get over your initial disbelief, you'll hardly notice the difference in gameplay between the Speccy version and the original. And at least this one doesn't keep asking you to cross its palm with silver!
    The version of the game I saw wasn't quite completed. Only three levels were in and there was some tweaking to do on the gameplay. But on what I've seen so far, if Space Harrier doesn't rate as a YS megagame then I'll eat my joystick. And I'll be equally surprised if it doesn't storm the number one spot this Christmas - even against the likes of Gauntlet.
    And if that's not telling "them" then I don't know what is!
    
Harry it up, Ar Kade!
Take your eyeballs out and polish them. Now you're ready to see the sort of screens a machine with 1.2 megabyte graphic capacity and 32,000 different colours can produce. I didn't know there were that many colours till I saw Space Harrier! Positively psychedelic. Hippy days are here again!
    And still a screen shot can never convey the incredible animation of the game. The dragon swoops and swirls, spitting out fireballs at Space Harry here. And it takes an awful lot of blasting before the beastie's bought it and you can progress to the next level. Well, they do say that two heads are better than one.
    Each section has a similar stunning display. There's even a friendly dragon called Uriah (What a heep! Ed) who picks you up and takes you for a ride on his back. Stuff Puff - this is what I call a magic dragon!
    The more astute amongst you will be aware that the Spercy doesn't have 1.2Mb. It doesn't even have 32 colours, let alone 32,000. Which is why Elite's conversion is all the more amazing. Okay, the dragon's a bit drab but he's a lovely mover. And he's frying tonight.
    It's the gameplay that carries the conversion. If you're colour blind with a tendency to jiggle about when you've got a joystick in your hand, you'll hardly notice you're not playing the original.

Arcade version screenshot...

Click here to view all 5 pics

Ratings given by other magazines

7/10      9/10

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database

YS Cross-references
		Space Harrier/Elite	YS15	9
		Space Harrier (in The Story So Far Volume II)	YS44	77
		Space Harrier/Encore	YS51	76