East vs. West: Space Harrier (PC Engine)

Some games don't need much at all in the way of translation -- NEC's PC Engine version of Sega's coin-op Space Harrier was released in both Japan and the US, but as far as I can tell the only differences occur on the title screen.  So this is going to be a brief East vs. West post.

The Japanese original has a clean and simple title display -- it's missing the arcade game's background and waving hero, reusing a couple of sprites for the sake of HuCard space:

The localized U.S. version is similarly straightforward -- a FROM NEC line has been added, presumably to distinguish this offering from Sega's own products, and the graphics are slightly spread out to accommodate a wider NEC AVENUE 1989 copyright line:

Beyond the title screen, the games look, sound and play exactly the same.  It's Space Harrier:

Both versions use the English voice samples from the original coin-op game, though they sound horrendously scratchy on the PC Engine, and all of the text is in English.

Nothing lost in translation, nothing gained.  But it's still a pretty good rendition of Space Harrier, and was arguably the most accurate console port until the Sega 32X version showed up several years later.

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Space Harrier is available in its original coin-op version on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console these days, and was released on just about every platform under the sun post-1985.  But if you're looking for some old school import gaming, you might check out the offerings at this affiliate link.