During our family’s holidays in the 1980s, most of which were spent at classic English seaside resorts, I spent all my time and pocket money trawling the arcades. From Shanklin to Blackpool, I played them all, attracted by those vast bulb-lit frontages, the enticing names (Fantasy Land! Treasure Island!), and of course by the bleeping, flashing video machines within. And while I spent many hours on the staple classics – Pac-Man, Galaxian, Kung Fu Master – there was one particular game I always looked out for. A weird, thrilling design classic. A total experience, operating somewhere between a traditional arcade game, a flight sim and a rollercoaster. At the time, it seemed impossibly futuristic. Now, it is 40 years old.
Released by Sega in 1985, Space Harrier is a 3D space shooter in which you control a jetpack super soldier named Harrier, who flies into the screen blasting surreal alien enemies above a psychedelic landscape. When designer Yu Suzuki was first tasked with overseeing its development, the game had been conceived as an authentic military flight shooter, but the graphical limitations of the day made that impossible – there was too much complex animation. So Suzuki, inspired by the flying sequences in the fantasy movie The NeverEnding Story, envisaged something different and more surreal, with a flying character rather than a fighter plane and aliens resembling stone giants and dragons. It was colourful and crazy, like a Roger Dean painting brought to life by the Memphis Group.
The real draw, though, was the game’s motion cabinet: you sat in a cockpit-style seat connected to two motors that provided jolting eight-directional movement. When the Harrier flew up, you went up with it, when he banked to the left or right, you did too. Enemies would fly at you constantly, coming from all angles, switching directions and altitude, so you were constantly swooping and rising, flinging yourself around, living every moment. All the while, a synth pop score composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi, who also worked on Suzuki’s games After Burner and OutRun, blasted out of speakers in the seat’s headrest. And groundbreaking speech synthesis allowed the machine to bark out encouragement and instruction. “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone, get ready!”
Space Harrier, then, was a complete sensory experience, which perfectly illustrated Suzuki’s expertise in immersion. It was just one of his projects of the era which he referred to as taikan, or body sensation games. OutRun, Space Harrier, After Burner and Power Drift all arrived in arcades with big motor- or hydraulic-driven cabinets designed to put you right inside the experience. Suzuki and his team also developed an animation technology known as Super Scaler, which allowed the manipulation and rotation of thousands of 2D animation frames to create the impression of 3D worlds. But what I most loved about Space Harrier was the way this motion was applied to a fantastical universe of chequerboard planets and surrealist aliens. It was like taking part in an interactive 1980s pop video. It is timeless in the same way as Pac-Man or Tetris, because it exists in a heightened, abstract world of its own.
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How can Space Harrier be 40? You could put that cabinet in any arcade in the world today (if you can find one) and it would still draw people in. But sadly, that’s becoming less and less likely to happen. The machines are old and worn, and the expert knowledge required to repair and maintain them is fading. Apart from the various home computer and console translations (of which the PC Engine and 32X ports are arguably the best), I haven’t played it in years. I don’t know how I’d feel now, sitting in that seat, putting two 10p coins in the slot, holding the joystick in anticipation. Would I be able to lose myself in the game again, or would I see me at 13, skulking around the arcades of the north of England? It doesn’t matter. Whatever you come for, Space Harrier delivers.
