Space Harrier/Versions

Amstrad CPC
Developed by Elite and published in Europe in 1986. Achieves a high frame rate and good degree of playability by sacrificing the use of sprites in favor of line drawn graphics reminiscent of vector games common in arcades in the early 80s. Only the Harrier himself is fully drawn as a sprite. All other enemies and obstacles are presented as wireframes.

Atari XL/XE
The 8-bit Atari version of Space Harrier was not developed in the 80s when the game was popular, but rather in 2011, taken on as a challenge by coder and graphics artist Chris Hutt, along with musician Sal Esquivel. The result is nothing short of amazing, an achievement thought virtually impossible. Naturally the graphics take a bit of a hit when converting a 16-bit game to an 8-bit system, but Hutt achieves a wider range of colors than typically available by rapidly switching between palettes each frame, making it difficult to capture the beauty of the image in a single snapshot. Even makes remarkable use of digitized voices.

Atari ST
Developed by Elite and published in Europe in 1988. Also published by Sega in North America in 1988. A visually faithful, but ultimately sluggish conversion of the game. For some reason, features an image of Barbarian along the right side of the screen throughout the game. Visually similar to the DOS release.

Commodore Amiga
Developed by Elite and published in Europe in 1989. Also published by Sega in North America in 1989. In an unusual move, this version is not really a carbon copy of the Atari ST version, which was a common practice at the time. Rather, this version is faithful to the arcade in both look and feel, as it appears to achieve a more consistent frame rate during play. It also makes use of the entire screen, unlike the Atari ST version.

Commodore 64
Developed by Elite and published in Europe in 1987. Also published by Sega in North America in 1987. There are two different versions of this game, which very by region. The European version of the game is a bit more stripped down than the North American release. The European version features a flat, unchanging terrain which does not give any impression of movement. The title screen is also a bit different, as are many scoring aspects of the game. The American version replaces the title screen and adds raster bars to the ground to heighten the sense of motion. Both versions only feature 12 stages, with no bonus stages present.

DOS
Developed by David Mattern and Brian Rice, and published only in North America by Sega in 1989. This version is nearly identical in look and frame rate as the Atari ST version, down to the incorporation of Barbarian artwork ever present on the right side of the screen. Features far less faithful sound, making use of only one channel.

Famicom
Developed by Whiteboard, and published in Japan by Takara in 1989. Makes a lot of sacrifices, both to the visuals and the gameplay, to enable the game to run, but what is present is done with a good amount of quality. Sound is simplistic, and the game limits the number of moving enemies on the screen. However, even with this limitation in place, the game still suffers from slowdown occasionally. Enemy arrangements are based off the Sega Master System version.

Fujitsu FM-7
Developed by Dempa and published in Japan in 1987. Makes a few visual sacrifices to accommodate what the hardware is capable of, but plays very faithfully to the arcade original.

Game Gear
Developed and published by Sega around the world in 1991. This version of the game is primarily based upon the Sega Master System version, due to the similarity in hardware. As a result, it uses similar tricks by drawing enemy sprites into the background without transparency. However, it changes the look of the enemies quite a bit by making many of them appear more organic.

NEC PC-8801
Developed by Dempa and published in Japan in 1987. This version makes a few odd choices in order to make the game playable on this system. The Space Harrier is rendered in full high resolution. Enemies are single color bitmaps that scale fairly well, but only appear in white. Terrain obstacles, shots (both yours and the enemies) and explosions are rendered as nondescript rectangles of pixels that don't blend well into the scene. The music is very close to the arcade.