Space Harrier for Dreamcast

A few years ago I came accross a message board where someone with a prototype of a Space Harrier game (which looked a little more advanced then Geist Force was) for Dreamcast posted a bunch of pictures of it in action. Unfortunatly, I didn't save any of the images (or if I did their long gone). Does anyone here have any screens or possibly video of the formentioned game?

 

Sure it wasn't Gun Valkyrie.

 

Yes, 100% sure.

 

maybe he was posting pictures of Planet Harriers and claiming it was Dreamcast when all along it was an arcade game. Space harrier original as we all know is on the Dreamcast as part of Shenmue 1 & 2 plus Yuu Suzuki's Game Works.

Yakumo

 

Yep, looks like it was 'Planet Harriers' that was being claimed as a DC title. Bummer, I thought it might have been an unanounced game or something (hence why no one ever talked obout it).

 

Did Planet Harriers actually make it out for the good ol'DC?

 

No. IGN announced that it was in planning for the Gamecube, but nothing came of it. There's a video of it on a GD-ROM I have from Dreamcast Magazine. I always toyed with posting it, but am a bit lazy these days.

 

Planet Harriers never made it to the Dreamcast, as Sega had already concluded that the system was not powerful enough to handle an earlier attempt at a Hikaru conversion - this was Brave Firefighters, originally supposed to have been part of the "Real Life Career Series" (along with the Model 3 title Emergency Call Ambulance and Jambo Safari for the NAOMI board). If I remember correctly, the Hikaru was essentially a NAOMI with a slightly faster main processor and more memory, designed specifically to produce the flame effects as seen in Brave Firefighters. As VF3 was one of the only games to use the original Model 3 specification, Brave Firefighters was also virtually the only title to appear on the Hikaru (apart from Air Trix, Star Wars Arcade Racer, Virtual On 4orce and Nascar Racing - not exactly the most exciting of games) before Sega adopted the NAOMI 2. I'm not entirely sure if getting Hikaru games to look decent enough on the DC was completely to blame for the non-appearance of either Planet Harriers or Brave Firefighers (as the Real Life Career Series had other problems that led to its demise), though AM2 cancelled work on a conversion of VF4 - yes, I know this was a NAOMI 2 game in its original form - because they couldn't get the results to look good enough during the preliminary development stages. Then again, how they could then justify the first attempt at a PS2 edition is beyond me - at least by Evolution they had managed to sort out most of the aliasing problems!

 

Sorry if I didn't get it right, but what was the problems with Real Life Series? I would like to know why it was canned. And are you saying that AM2 tried to port VF4 to DC?


PD

 

Fabrizo: as others have already said, Planet Harriers is the game you are thinking of, and as Anthaemia mentioned, Planet Harriers was made for Sega's HIKARU arcade board. Sega's Amusement Vision, formerly AM4 or AM11, who splintered away from AM2, made Planet Harriers.

Planet Harriers was rumored (maybe even announced) to be coming home to the Dreamcast, and later rumored to be coming to Gamecube. obviously neither ever happened.


arcade flyer


screenshots
















these are the HIKARU specifications from System16.com - but keep in mind, that System16.com often makes mistakes or serious omittions (they leave out stuff) from the specifications they write for arcade boards. they do sometimes edit in missing details though.

the HIKARU from what I understand, does NOT have the same PowerVR2DC aka CLX2 graphics chip that Dreamcast, NAOMI and NAOMI 2 (x2) have. but either a customised version of PowerVR2DC, or a totally different custom chip. I haven't found any hard info on this chip.

obviously the custom 3D chip in HIKARU is more powerful than a single PowerVR2DC / CLX2 used in Dreamcast and NAOMI (and Atomiswave) but less powerful than the graphics configuration of NAOMI 2 which employs a Videologic ELAN T&L geometry processor plus *twin* (standard) PowerVR2DC / CLX2 chips.


Planet Harriers could have been done nicely on Gamecube, I would have bought it no questions asked.


dispite my rather large post, there is alot about the HIKARU board and Planet Harriers that I do not know

 

May, 2001 - IGN reports Planet Harriers coming to Gamecube

http://cube.ign.com/articles/094/094566p1.html

many more screenshots - be sure to see all 3 pages
http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/094/094566/imgs_1.html

VIDEOS, w00t! 4 videos total, don't miss the 2 vids at the bottem
http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/094/094566/vids_1.html

of course, all the screenshots and videos are of the HIKARU-based arcade game

 

The shitty thing is that you'll almost never find any Hikaru hardware for sale. It's oversized for one, makes shipping around pricey, and two, they weren't exactly mass-produced. I think System16 talks about the prohibitive costs of making the ROM media... very pricey, which is why there are only a handful of games... Planet Harriers being the only one worth buying IMHO.

If I could find a Planet Harriers board with the proper harness and controll for a few hundred bucks, make no mistake... I would buy it in a heartbeat. It'sa great game, even though the theme of it is a bit queer compared to the original. It is crazy seeing the horizon line stretch for (what seemed at the time) infinity. Really wish they would've made this a Naomi 2 game.

 

well in an interview with one of the people at amuesment vision( who i belive was responsible for planet harries, which was suprsingly not done by am2) one of the members stated they were considering a gamecube port, but decided not to as many of the people who played the arcade found the game quite difficult, as for virtua fighter 4, yu himself said that the only reason virtua fighter 4 was on ps2, was due to the install base and sony asking them for it, even then its been stated before that a port of a naomi 2 game would not be impossible on dc, it would just require a little teweeqing to run on dc, thats all.

 

I'd love to have THAT on a console.

May be going OT a bit... but do you know any current game (PC, Dreamcast, PS2 or any other platform) that plays anything like that?
I've had a craving for a while.

 

Panzer Dragoon Orta is the only thing I can think of.

 

yep and its also pretty cheap now

 

One more SEGA game we will never play at home. SEGA really doesn't know how to milk its franchises...

 

For some reason, Planet Harrier's visual style reminds me of Phantasy Star Online in just about every respect. Did the same team work on both games or something?

 

it seem not

Phantasy Star Online = Sonic Team

Planet Harriers = Amusement Vision

 

wow this game is beautiful and colorfull, but i doubt a dreamcast could run this, at least smoothly.