Strider

NOTE: THIS WILL ONLY COVER THE ARCADE GAME AND ITS PORTS; THE NES GAME IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT GAME AND WILL NOT BE INCLUDED IN THIS REVIEW.

Strider, known as Strider Hiryū (ストライダー飛竜 Sutoraidā Hiryū), is a platform-action game and the very first one of the Strider series made and published by Capcom, originally made for the arcades in 1989, it was then ported to various home consoles and computer systems, the most famous one being the Sega Mega Drive one.

Story
Set in a post-dystopian future, a evil wizard named Grandmaster Meio wants to destroy the world's creatures and replace them with his creations. Starting by conquering Kazakhstan; Meio formed a neo-communist regime that would lead him to rule the rest of the world.

A organization of ninja-like warriors named "Striders" took action to put a end to Meio's actions, by sending off the youngest class "A" assassin, Hiryu, to infiltrate Kazakhstan and murder Meio and his henchmen, being equipped with a hook and a tonfa-like sword, the "Cypher".

Why Strider Hiryu Did Leave Eurasia Alive

 * 1) A great story for its era and for a arcade game.
 * 2) Great graphics, as expected for a arcade machine.
 * 3) Thrilling, catchy and exciting music, composed by Junko Tamiya.
 * 4) Hiryu is a likeable, competent and intelligent protagonist.
 * 5) Speaking of characters, as minor they are, they are still pretty unique.
 * 6) Fast-paced and engaging gameplay, the stages are big enough to use Hiryu's abilities, like climbing on walls or the ceiling.
 * 7) Speaking of which, the stages are very colorful and varied, like Kazakhstan, Tibet and Amazon.
 * 8) Tight and solid controls.
 * 9) Brutal, but rewarding difficulty.
 * 10) Hiryu has various robot allies that help him in his way: a bird that slices towards down from where it flies, a small mushroom-like bot that shoots enemies, and a tiger that also attacks enemies.
 * 11) Various enemy types, all fun to fight against.
 * 12) Solo, the bounty hunter, works as a good nemesis.
 * 13) Great boss fights.
 * 14) Decent voice acting and surprisingly good pronunciation of various languages, including: Japanese, Russian, Chinese, English and Spanish.
 * 15) Grandmaster Meio is a mysterious, menacing antagonist, his fight is also very climatic.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The Master System port is not a very good one, so to say, In fact, none of the converisions made by Tiertex are.
 * 2) * Tiertex even made their own sequel, mh:crappygames:Strider II, which was known as Strider Returns in North America on British home computers and the Sega Genesis, Sega Master System and Game Gear. Fortunately, that game was made non-canon by Capcom's own Strider 2.
 * 3) The song of the first level repeats on the third and fifth stage of the arcade first revision, even in the final boss. In later revisions they made original songs for those levels, however.
 * 4) The voices are decent, but the problem is that they keep overlapping each other, and the audio quality isn't that great.
 * 5) In the last level you have a boss rush, and in one particular part you confront Lago (Amazon's stage boss) without any platforms. While it does not sound as bad, it can be frustrating for players dealing with it for first time.

Reception
Strider has a total of 3.58 of score and a 4.38 of average reader score in GameFAQs, it also got a 8, 1 by IMDB, and it's largely considered a cult classic.

Videos
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Trivia

 * This game is based on a manga of the same name, making it a licenced game. However, the licence of the series is shared by both Capcom and Kadokawa Shôten, thus Hiryu has no problem to appear on the Marvel vs. Capcom series, Namco X Capcom or Project X Zone 2.