System Played: Arcade
Year Released: 1989
Year Reviewed: 2017
Strider is a 1989 action game from Capcom, originally developed for arcades but seeing many home ports in its day, including a very well regarded Mega Drive release.
It’s 2048, and Emperor Palpatine-wannabe, Grandmaster Meio, has taken over Europe with his evil, apparently soviet, regime. The Striders are an organisation of goodie hi-tech ninja assassins who want to put a stop to him. You play as Hiryu, the young Strider given the job of taking him out.
Being developed in 1989, the Cold War was obviously very current. That and Star Wars seem to have been the very obvious inspirations for a lot of Striders characters and environments.
Arriving (via glider?!) at the edge of the futuristic Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic city, Strider is no nonsense arcade action from beginning to end, which barely slows down at any point.
A rapid-fire blade flashes out in unusually large arcs in front of you, covering a lot of the screen and slashing through enemies like butter, as you plough forward, doing these big, elaborate summersault jumps and quick slides.
Levels feature lots of verticality, with Hiryu adept at hanging from ledges, climbing up walls and along ceilings. There are even sections where gravity gets flipped, and you’re walking along the ceiling.
Most enemies are pretty stupid, just walking into your path to be sliced, but the odd stray bullet, seemingly appearing from nowhere, can still ruin things for you. It’s not always the fairest, but checkpoints are very frequent.
Assisting you are temp power-up’s like a larger sword (it’s pretty big to begin with!), invincibility, lifebar top-up’s and extensions.
A bit more interesting are the robot helpers you can get, who buzz around the screen wiping out enemies. These guys are linked to blocks of your health bar, so you can lose them by taking a hit.
After you manage to collect 2 robot helper power-up’s, the third has them combine into a big robot panther, which is cool.
I’ve never managed to get the panther beyond the first level though, or the robot eagle which flies around a bit, for some reason, all of one time. Like so many ideas in Strider, these mechanics aren’t explored in any kind of depth.
The downside of this driving pace is that, at only 5 stages, it does feel a bit short, even though they pack a lot in.
Level variety is decent, with futuristic cityscapes, airships, space stations, there are even dinosaurs in the future...
There are some cool bosses too, like the soviet centipede (made up of politicians) and a giant mechanical ape.
I’ve never been a fan of the Amazon level, with it’s too many annoying enemies and those bendy vines. The Boss is a bit of a prick, made worse by the vines and ditches in your way, and this is the point the game turns, having been uncharacteristically generous with the difficulty up to now for an arcade title.
As is often the case, it gets silly in the final level, deciding to throw every boss you again, one after the other. If you want to see the end, it’s going to cos you some credits.
Striders strongest points are it’s presentation and playability. It looks great, and the music changes multiple times throughout each level. It all contributes to the pace of the game, though in its haste, a lot of ideas aren’t explored as well as they could have been.
6/10
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