Space Harrier.  The epitaph of awesome arcade in full fake 3D.  It’s a 3rd-person-behind-the-back shooter where the enemies are coming at you from a distance.  Shoot them or let them go by… either way don’t get killed. You have just a handful of lives and a massive amount of enemies to shoot down.  There are several stages, each changing colour and style to indicate “you are on a different level” as most older games do.

One thing I can take away from this game is multiple sprite sets.  It was the first game I realized that my player had a flying animation when in the air and a running animation when on the ground.  The programmer could have easily just made the whole thing flying but instead took the initiative to discern ground from air.

And there was this creature that looked like Falcor.  I remember that thing too.

Wikipedia has refreshed my knowledge about this game in such a way that I can tell you that it was made in 1985 by Sega and released on a few different platforms.  I never had the luxury of playing this game in an arcade (apparently the best place to play it) but I did play it on Sega Master System.  I have heard the SMS version of the game doesn’t eat your quarters to death mostly because its a bit easier.  I am also assuming it’ll be easer to find SMS or Game Gear versions of the game if you are looking to play it yourself.  If you have the chance, check it out!