Was super excited to see the cabinet in person for once - I've never played a helicopter-control cabinet before, but Space Harrier was a fun one to learn the control with! It's a fairly common at the time space shooter, except that its from a totally different perspective. So actually, scratch that, it's a shooter (which is a common arcade genre) but controls so different it's like a whole new experience. With the seated helicopter controls, too? Woo- what a rush.

I didn't get to play the game for too long, because there was this 60+ year old business man that made the machine his homebase, eating and drinking there with his pile of coins, and holy shit, he was GOOD, completely had the enemy paths memorized and was eating away at his high score all at what seemed like a lazy Sunday afternoon to him. He was kind enough to let me play a round when he went to go buy a soda and uh, yeah this game is HARD - he made it look like a piece of cake, though. I'm really not used to the helicopter controls, but watching him play it, it was super satisfying once nailed.

Chill dude, which added to the chill experience. Space Harrier has crazy good graphics and unique gameplay for 1985 - I'm sure I would rate it higher if I eventually got the groove of it, but I honestly had a pretty good time playing it a bit and then watching some dude who was an absolute BEAST demolish the game.

3.5/5