YMMV / Space Harrier

• Awesome Music: Aw hell yeah! Sega AM2 games from the era almost always had awesome music. Amped up tenfold with the PlayStation 2 version’s rendition of the music.
• Catharsis Factor: The Bonus Stages give you a chance to just relax, ride a dragon, and destroy as much debris as possible without fear of getting hurt.
• First Installment Wins: The first installment is the most recognizable and popular one, with all subsequent installments having niche fanbases at best.
• Narm Charm: Your player character's "AAAAAUUUUUGGHH!!" death cry sounds completely ridiculous, almost like the guy's trying to be sarcastic about dying.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Mammoth is one of the most iconic enemies in the game, showing up on the title screen, despite appearing only in stage 7 and doing nothing at all.
• Polished Port:
  • The Sega Master System version, surprisingly enough. It manages to keep the feel of the arcade version and adds an actual Final Boss known as Haya Oh - twin flaming dragons who are as fast as incoming obstacles in the tunnel stages. Oh, and they also unintentionally cause Interface Screw because the background Turns Red and makes them damn near impossible to see. Their fireballs are also the same color as them, making the fight Nintendo Hard.
  • The Sharp X68000 port, however, is a mix and match of the Master System and Arcade versions, making it the most "complete" port. It keeps the Arcade version's sound quality and speed while adding in Haya Oh and the "story" from the Master System version. Too bad it, and the console it's for, never left Japan.
  • The 3D Classics Nintendo 3DS port by M2 is very faithful to the arcade original, and includes the option to use the 3DS's touchscreen for more granular movement. It also adds in Haya Oh from the Master System version, making the 3DS port one-up the X68000 version as the most "complete" and arcade faithful version of the game. Finally it has a 3D mode (as is conventional of 3DS games, and assuming you're playing on a 3DS and not a 2DS) similar to the Master System version, but you don't need special goggles for it.
  • The SEGA AGES Nintendo Switch port is another excellent port, having once again been done by M2. Aside from being a faithful recreation of the arcade original, it also adds a KOMAINU Attack mode, where two dogs fly with you to create a shield that protects you from environmental obstacles.
  • The Genesis Mini 2 contains brand-new versions of both the original game and II, on new technology called the "Sega Mark V" board. Both are intended as an answer to the long-standing question "What if the Genesis could exceed its limitations and actually handle what the arcade versions were capable of processing?" The port of Space Harrier is an exact replica of the original arcade version on heavily modified and upgraded Genesis-style hardware, with the added bonus of including the console-exclusive boss Haya-Oh by default instead of having to unlock him like in the Sega Ages port. The port of Space Harrier II, however, is a completely redone version of that game, recreated from the ground up to replicate the feel of the first game's arcade version. As a result, it is finally able to run with the same graphical fidelity and speed as the original, which was a common criticism of the original Genesis version. The music and sound effects are also completely remixed to use the original arcade game's sound board, making it feel like the true arcade sequel to the original that players always imagined. With that said, both versions suffer from flickering that were not in the original games.
• Porting Disaster: The version of the original in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection in Europe) is quite playable, but it has some sound emulation issues that are not present in the original.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The music used in the first two stages sounds oddly like the Blake's 7 theme.
  • It also sounds a lot like Space Road by Casiopea, likely intentional given the band's influence on Sega's musical stylings.
  • In an inverse example, the chorus to "Dreaming" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark sounds strikingly similar in melody to the Stage 1 and 2 theme.
• That One Boss: Reaching Haya Oh in certain releases of the game is already tough as it is, but if you manage to finally get to his fight, you have to battle two dragons at the same time - who fire so fast that their projectiles travel in less than a quarter of a second, meaning if you happen to need to move in a different direction just as they're firing, you've just lost a life, period. And this is just the 3DS version of the fight, as it originated on the more limited Master System version where the projectiles weren't as fast but the player controls were far more limiting by comparison and the dragons AND their projectiles blended in with the solid red backdrop. The SEGA AGES version straight up makes him the default Final Boss without the No-Damage Run prerequisite of the 3DS release, but without toning down his difficulty either. The Genesis Mini 2 version also makes him the default final boss, and actually makes him harder than all other previous versions because he blends in even more seamlessly with the blood red background color, especially when low on health and because of the additional flickering effects of the port. There are also oncoming pillars both before and after his boss fight just to screw you over.
• That One Level
  • All of the tunnel stages (Stages 4, 9, and 14, respectively). They are designed specifically to end your run and force you to endure hellish obstacle courses consisting of oncoming chess piece-shaped spires and rolling spheres that constantly alternate between coming from the top and bottom of the screen. The later stages add significantly more enemies to the mix, and by Stage 14 its final section is just a long endurance run of constantly-alternating rolling spheres of various patterns.
  • Stage 11, Parms, is where the game enters a Difficulty Spike, featuring lots of robots that fire very fast missiles and extra-wide indestructible barriers.
• Underused Game Mechanic: As interesting as the motion controls in the SEGA AGES version are, you can only use them with a single Joy-Con. You can't use a Pro Controller with them.

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