Strider is one of my all-time favorite games and has been since I was a child.The colorful graphics, the fast addicting gameplay, the exciting heroic music. Hey wait, what is Strider anyway? Well, I'll tell you. Strider is the saga of Hiryu, a C Class Strider. He first appeared in a manga published by Hiroshi Motomiya's studio Moto Kikaku, and Capcom is the co-copyright holder of this manga. Because of this, Capcom was able to make an arcade game with Hiryu in it, and that arcade game was called Strider! The story is different than that of the manga, as it takes place years before it. The evil Grand Master Meio has invaded planet earth with his minions and plans to eliminate all beings and fill the planet with a new species! Who can stop this lunatic? Strider Hiryu! This game is so much fun. I never get tired of playing it no matter how many times. It's that good. And that sword he has (known as Falchion) is too awesome. I can get to the last level without continuing. Several months after the arcade game came out, another Strider game was released for the NES. This was a different game than the arcade game. It followed the story of the manga, and it also had RPG elements. Even though it was a different game, it was still really great. Meanwhile, the Strider arcade game had been ported to various home computers such as the Atari ST, the ZX Spectrum, the CPC Amstrad and other ones that were probably only popular in Europe. In 1990, Sega acquired the rights to develop a home version of Strider for their 16-bit power house, the Genesis (MegaDrive to those of you who don't live in the US). This was the most arcade perfect version of Strider you could get during that time. EGM named this version Game of the Year in 1991. Around the same time, an unofficial sequel to Strider called Journey From Darkness:Strider Returns was developed by a company called Tiertex and published by U.S. Gold (now known as Eidos Interactive). Capcom had NOTHING to do with the development of this game, and I and several other fans of the original Strider think it sucks. This game was so bad, that in 1999, Capcom had to make a true sequel to the original Strider. It was better than Journey From Darkness, but I don't think it was better than the original arcade game or the NES game. The arcade version of Strider is available on Capcom Classics Collection for the PS2 and Xbox, and Capcom Classics Collection Remixed for the PSP.
Here's some gameplay videos along with who did the music for each game/version:
Arcade Game (music by Junko Tamiya):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJkCfNAIiOg
NES Game (music by Harumi Fujita):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYifwkUX70g
Journey From Darkness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppAA16He8XQ
Strider 2 (the REAL Strider 2, music by Setsuo Yamamoto):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLM5QEwNUQg
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Banned
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