Grandslam/
£9.99 cass, £14.99 disk

Just as Elite are releasing the original Space Harrier on their Encore label (see Budget), Grandslam come up with the imaginatively titled sequel. Get your jet pack warmed up, push the safety catch off that laser blaster sail prepare for twelve (count 'em!) levels bristling with more enemies than you can shake a pointy stick at.

Whizz past futuristic cities, vast alien factory sites and Greek inspired landscapes and avoid too much sight seeing - the attackers are just as varied as the backdrops: batmen, knights in shining armour, lions and even giant nuns (I kid you not!) spew death at you. As in the original you can either run along the ground, or if the reception is too hot, try out your jet pack in the sky, which is just as packed with foes. And what with the end of level bad guys all this amounts to trigger finger exercise.

Hang on, have I got the wrong game? This is Space Harrier... no, it's definitely II (or Scramble Spirits?). You've guessed: this is basically the original game with a few graphical improvements, but that may not be such a bad thing because it was rather good.

Programmers Teque claim the sprites are bigger and more varied than before, which is true. The amount of opposing creatures has certainly increased, and only the difficulty level is just the same (ie damn hard).

Nothing new, not brilliant, but still very playable: my opinion is, buy this - and the original too.

MARK [80%]

All fans of Space Harrier cheer jolly loudly (hurrah!), because Space Harrier is... well… exactly the same! There is now a column up the right of the screen showing a flashy picture of a trendy woman and the Space Harrier II logo, but that aside. I can't tell the difference between the two. If you take a really close look I think you'll find the graphics have changed slightly. The same programming technique has been used to produce the 3-D effect which made the original such a hit, but that was in 1986. Basically, you dodge obstacles coming towards you and shoot nasty aliens. From level to level you do the same, the only changes being the look of the aliens and the colours used on the two monochrome halves of the screen. If you didn't buy the original Space Harrier this may be worth taking a look at. Otherwise you're really just buying the same game again!
NICK [69%]

Grandslam
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald

Sequels, eh? What would life be like without them? Actually, I'll tell you what life would be like without them... It would be totally crap. Absolutely and totally crap. It wouldn't really be worth living at all.

Right, you see a wonderfully brilliant film for instance, it ends, erm, and that's it. What can you do? Well, you can always watch it again (if it's on video). And then you can watch it again. And then again. And then again. (Yes, we get the idea. Ed) But eventually you'll have had enough, and you're going to want something 'new' (but just as good). And it's the same with arcade games. Someone brings out something really excellent, you play it a trillion times, finish it and, erm, have to look for something else to get into. How annoying - especially as you've 'learnt the rules', as it were. This happened with Sega's Space Harrier and its rather wonderful Speccy counterpart. There you were one minute, blasting dragons by the dozen, and then suddenly, er, they were all dead. What I'm leading up to is this - here, at last, is a sequel to Space Harrier. And it's every bit as funky as the original.

First of all the scenario, but don't worry - it's quite a short one. Space Harrier (which basically means a futuristic sort of geezer with a jetpack on his back) has a quest, which is to rid the fantasy land (which is where he is) of the cruel tyranny imposed by the Dark Harrier (who's the super-mega-nasty at the end of the game). And that's it. Right. I'm off then. (Oi, come back! Ed)

Space Harrier II, like its prequel, is a viewed-from-behind pseudo-3D move-into-the-screen jobbie. You control the hero of the piece, Space Harrier (let's call him 'Space' for short, shall we?). 'Space', basically, has to zoom around all over the shop, avoiding the eight hundred thousand squillion enemy sprites which come hacking out of the screen at him. This is where Space's jetpack comes in very handy - it means he doesn't have to stick to being a pedestrian, his little legs running for all they're worth. Indeed no. He can take off and fly as well. This is quite often a good thing to do, as a lot of the floor detail scrolls at you with such speed that death is never far away. Mind you, things aren't really any easier when you're in the air, given the numbers of the enemy. To add to the panic, on some of the 12 levels there're also tall pillars to avoid. These items have to be, er, sidestepped.

At the end of each level there's the obligatory mega-nasty, each of which, it has to be said, is very nasty indeed - from a giant 'Go-Bot' type stompy-footed robot thingy to an absolutely ginormous jellyfish, which hops about and spews fireballs at you. After (or more probably if) you complete all the 12 levels, there's a sort of Level '12A' in which you take on each of the mega-nasties you've already seen in quick succession. Complete this and it's on to the final battle - with old Dark Harrier himself. What a nasty geezer he is. And hard to hit, too. He hops about as if he's got three litres of molten Bovril scrunged inside his underpants.

Oh, I forgot about the bonus rounds. These don't happen very often, but they're rather crucial. 'Space' jumps onto a jet-board and finds himself in a lump of action much the same as the main game. Only here points aren't just points. No, siree. In these bonus sections points make prizes. And guess what the prizes are? I'll tell you - they're extra lives. Yippee!

So there you have it. Space Harrier II is actually much the same to look at as its prequel, but the going is tougher and the mega-nasties are more 'mega'. Addictiveness is the name of the game - no gasp-inducing new graphics routines or anything like that - but if the first Space Harrier was right up your alley then this will be too. Of course, if you never saw the first Space Harrier then you'll be in for even more of a treat. (Until you finish the game that is, after which life will lose all meaning - see the first paragraph again.)

Label: Grandslam
Author: In-house
Price: £9.99 £14.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Alison Skeat

What's going on? I don't understand? Can somebody please explain. Here am I reviewing Grandslam's Space Harrier II which costs £9.99, and I'd like to tell you all how good it is, and how much fun I had playing it.

The thing is, as you read through this issue you'll eventually get to page 82 where you'll see our Chris has reviewed Space Harrier I which only costs £2.99. Now, I've had a look at both games, and call me a div-ead if you like, but I can't see much difference between the two.

You are Space Harrier. You're stuck in a Fantasy Land made up of 12 levels. You must run across the chessboard patterned ground towards the mountains shooting trees, bushes, creatures, floating rings and end of level monsters with your laser gun until you have got rid of Dark Harrier, the nasty man who rules the land.

I have been told that the graphics on the full price version are much better than the budget. Also, there's some sampled speech, and the end of level monsters look slightly different. And, whereas in Space Harrier the monsters came at you from the bottom of the screen, the new version has them coming in from top AND bottom (wippee-wow!).

Apparently, another major difference is that Space Harrier II is a conversion of the Sega Megadrive game and not a conversion from the coin-op, like Space Harrier I. Oh yeah, so where did they originally get the material, if not from the coin-op?

Sorry, it still has the same feel to me. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like Space Harrier II, because I do. You can play it for ages as there are plenty of levels to get through and the action is very fast and furious.

The only problem is that I really don't want to encourage you to spend a tenner on something that is just as good for three quid because it makes me feel like a bit of a cheat. It all would have been perfectly fine had those sneaky sods at Elite not thoroughly stolen Grandslam's thunder by releasing a virtually identical game for a third of the price.

Grandslam
Spectrum £9.99, ST £19.99

Not to be confused with the 1986 coin-op (which Elite converted to home computers), Space Harrier II is in fact a conversion of the Sega Megadrive game which was released when the machine was launched at the beginning of last year.

It's basically very similar to the coin-op original, with the player taking control of a jet-packing, laser-toting hero on a mission to liberate the Fantasy Zone from alien occupation.

There are twelve different areas to fly through, each one swarming with aliens which must be dodged or blasted. At the end of each zone is a big mother alien - destroy it and you can move on to the next area. When all of them have been dispatched, the Fantasy Zone is free.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Atari £19.99
Amiga £19.99
C64 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
MSX £9.99

TAKE ME HIGHER...

He knew it was time. There could be no further delay. The Dark Harrier had reigned in the Fantasy Land for too, too long, bringing fear where once there had been happiness, night where there had been day. Death where there had been life...

The Space Harrier II, brother to the original hero who restored peace to the Dragon Land, knew what had to be done. He pulled on his strengthened flight suit and boots and put on his gloves, flexing his hands so they fitted snugly. He picked up his combined jetpack and laser cannon unit, testing its weight before pressing an orange octagonal button. Various lights and readouts flickered into life and the jet/cannon emanated a low buzz. Harrier II walked over to the transporter pad and surveyed the scene before him, a section of the dying Fantasy Land. Heaving the jet/cannon under his right arm, he sighed and activated the transporter. Kicking in the jet, he was suddenly speeding over a strangely coloured but overwhelmingly bleak land scape, his suit pressed against him and his hair forced flat against his head. Space Harrier II had just enough time to catch his breath before a squad of hawk-like spacecraft homed in on him, guns blazing...

The game needs little explanation. There are 12 levels, with strange names like, Zero Polis, Felcold, Hell Peak and Fallpyram, and the starting level can be chosen from any one of them. But to finish the game the mysterious 13th level, domain of the Dark Harrier, must be conquered and that can only be accessed when the preceding dozen levels have been completed.

Harrier has the freedom of most of the screen, flying or running when at ground level but always travelling at a constant speed (he's quite an athlete, this Harrier fella). Unless, that is, he's hit by an alien, obstacle or missile, in which case he stops rather quickly and loses one of his five lives, so it's best to avoid doing this. His cannon has unlimited energy to blast the aliens but most obstacles are indestructible. The vast and unusual end-of-level monsters sometimes seem similarly invulnerable but with persistence on the fire button they'll soon be pushing up the 15-foot daisies.

Well, S Harrier Esq gets around a bit, his adventures in Dragon Land converted to just about every format under the sun, and now his identical (apart from the colour scheme of his suit) twin brother is poised to sweep the board. At first I was doubtful that Space Harrier it would have the necessary power, having long since played, enthused over and forgotten the conversion to Sega Mega Drive. But, with an open (vacant) mind, I hooked up the trusty ultra-autofire joystick and launched myself into Fantasy Land.

Shoot-'em-ups are a computer game genre that will never die or even fade away, and even though Space Harrier's 3-D viewpoint and player control is not, in itself, sufficient to spawn a family, Space Harrier II is a worthy son. Fast, hectic blasting and dodging are all there is to it but it brings back happy memories of the old days when the original was around and is almost as refreshing and exciting a game as it was then.

Being able to select any of the 12 levels is a great, user-friendly option. It prevents boredom - you can tackle any level, with its own distinct array of obstacles and opponents, whenever the fancy takes you - and varies difficulty, although it's pretty damn challenging whatever level you play! In short, if you want a fast (vast?) blast, try the vertical take-off and landing of the Space Harrier II.