The original Space Harrier was a birrova massive hit down the arcades, and blow us down if it wasn't equally well received on the Speccy. Now Grandslam is converting the sequel, so Matt Bielby donned a handy jet pack and zoomed off for a look-see. What a 'ground breaker' of a game that Space Harrier was, eh? A real hellzapoppin' corkeroony and a birrova megahit all round! And how about Space Harrier ll? What a coin-op! Loads faster than the original, with more levels, more aliens and... Eh? It wasn't a coin-op? Erm... what was it then? A what drive?! Ahem. Erm, apparently Space Harrier ll is only available on the 16-bit Sega Megadrive (a snoot Japanese console that isn't even officially available in this country yet!), and has never been in the arcades at all.
    Not that that stopped those Grandslam chappies though who leapt straight in and snaffied up the licence anyway! And guess what they've done with it? They've only produced a game that's exactly the same as the last one, haven't they? Except it's faster. And smoother. And it's easier to tell what's going on. In fact, it's going to be quite a bit better all round. Hurrah!
    
Space Harrier: The Concept (Man)
What can I say? It's a game totally devoid of plot! Or, at least, I've never really been able to find one. What happens is that you play a little flying chap armed with a big gun, and you zoom across a rapidly scrolling chequerboard landscape (rather like an extra wide rolling road) at impossibly high speeds, shooting everything. And that's it.
    Oh, except for the dragons. And the three headed turtles. And the lions, robots and giant nuns! And the suits of armour, two legged frogs and batmen! Lumme! There are absolutely piles of these flying nasties in fact, all of which zoom the other way from you (ie out of the screen while you whizz into it) and sort of attack you. And that's not all, for there are also hundreds of boulders, trees, Roman-type columns, giant rock heads and so on that crop up too, forming stationary obstacles you have to fly around. It's a nightmare!
    If there was ever a game of truly mindless blasting this is it. If you can cope with the massive confusion (the big danger is that there's often too much on the screen to tell what's going on), the moments when you seem to be totally out of control (but aren't really) and the scrolling landscape which makes your eyes go all funny it could be the game for you.
    There's only one real relevant hint -- keep moving! (You're less likely to be hit that way!) Oh, actually I've thought of another one -- keep firing! And that's about it, really. Blimey O'Reilly O'Rourke!
    
Flashback -- The Original Space Harrier
    They said it just couldn't be done on the Speccy. I mean, it was just too fast and too colourful, wasn't it (32,000 tones at last count)? But then what happened but pesky Elite went ahead and did it anyway. What cheeky fellows! This was way back at the start of '87, before anyone had ever heard of Afterburner or Galaxy Force or those other 'Wham Bam, What On Earth Is Going On' arcade shoote'em-ups. At the time, Harrier was seen as probably the ultimate arcade game, faster and brighter than anything seen before, and quite obviously impossible to reproduce on an 8-bit home computer. Or was it?
    Well, no, said Elite. And blow us down if its finished conversion didn't get nine out of ten and a YS Megagame! We were impressed with the speed, the smoothness with which our hero moved and the colour. We were a bit less taken with the fact that half the time you couldn't see your little men properly, what with the hills on the horizon, the rush hour crush of attackers and the rather confusing chequerboard ground bit (but you can't have everything, can you?). The other thing that was missing was the continue mode, which meant you had to go back to the start all the time, unlike on the oflginal. Still, otherwise it was a bit of beezer conversion, so who's complaining? Hurrah!
    
Programmers Corner
    Space Harrier ll is being put together by Teque, which has done a lot of work with Grandslam over the years, including Terramex and the recent Thunderbirds game. Nick Kimberley, who worked most recently on Passing Shot for Image Works, has been doing the Speccy version.
    'Basically we're very happy with what we've done,' he said. 'There wasn't much problem with the speed. In fact, it's faster and the sprites are all larger than in the Elite conversion. One thing we did find impossible though was the bit in a few of the levels where the sky becomes a rolling chequerboard just like the ground. The effect is like being underwater (sort of) with the sea bed beneath you and the surface of the water above. The baddies in these sections are all jellyfish, giant clams and similar. We're keeping the watery bad guys, but unfortunately can't manage to reproduce the top chequerboard acceptably, so we're leaving it off.
    'There are 12 levels in the Sega Megadrive version of the game, and obviously we're hoping to reproduce all of those, though if that proves impossible with the loader we're using we may have to go with just eight instead. Though the levels are numbered, the idea is that you can start anywhere and progress through them from there, going around the whole lot again if you complete it (but with everything harder).
    'Another nice little touch is the animation on the side panel. There's a woman's face in there as well as the scores and so on, and it's animated so every so often she winks at you and stuff.'
    That's great, Nick, thanks very much.

Ratings given by other magazines

7/10      7/10

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database

YS Cross-references
		Space Harrier II/Grandslam	YS51	85