Developed by a team led by Yu Suzuki at Sega in 1985, Space Harrier is a super-fast third-person, flying-into-the-screen fantasy blasting game, originally housed inside a hydraulic cabinet in arcades. This would jerk around as you moved the control stick, giving you a feeling of movement as you played the game.
Graphically, the game is a mix of pseudo 3D effects (the chequerboard floor), and high speed 2D sprite scaling and rotating (for objects and enemies). The arcade machine utilised advanced graphics hardware to move big sprites around the screen quickly.
Space Harrier was a hit in arcades back in the Eighties, and is still popular now, having been re-released numerous times on various online services.
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