I've always had a strange fascination with this game.
The weird mix of red scare era communist imagery, the bizarre space wizard dictator laughing at you right at the beginning, the frankly undecipherable overabundance of robot animals and dinosaurs and cavewomen in a futuristic setting.
It feels very much like a melting pot of random aesthetics and imagery tailor made to catch a kid's eyes in the arcade, and by god did it work on me.
It is not an easy game, but it mostly manages to stay on the side of fairness. You at least have a health bar that can be upgraded with powerups so you can take a reasonable amount of hits before it's time to pop in another quarter. Other powerups are also massively helpful offensively, if you can keep them.
It generally seems like a lot of effort has gone into this game at the time, getting hit provokes elaborate reactions, with Strider Hiryu recoiling and rolling on the ground, your movement animations are plentiful and adapt to the steepness of the incline you're moving on, or clinging onto.
There are momentum mechanics that let you gather speed for big, cinematic jumps, long before a certain blue hedgehog made its debut.
There are altered gravity sections, bosses that constitute their very own gravitational pole, it's all extremely inventive for the time.
But these days, these days I still remember Strider for a different reason.
There is something I find very thematically appropriate about the gameplay of Strider.
The futuristic ninja protagonist is armed with the cypher blade, a sleek, razor sharp, disciplined weapon, only a slash rending metal in half in a glorious burst of energy no longer than a couple of frames.
It is the cypher I obsess over so much. Hiryu swings the thing with the greatest of ease, faster than any human would ever be able to catch, but in this also comes a lot of the challenge of the game.
Do you have what it takes to be like Hiryu? Can you swing your cypher as fast and precisely as a real ninja would?
Playing this game with a controller and using your thumb does not do it justice, you will inevitably be limited by your dexterity.
The cypher demands speed. It demands your index finger, maybe even the middle finger to piano that attack button.
The only limit is your humanity.
Tear those gravity orbs and steel gorillas and dinosaurs to shreds, lest they do the same to you.
So, get those fingertips primed and ready, and enjoy the absolute powertrip that this game lets you live out.
So long as you don't fall up into the sky in that darn final stage.
The weird mix of red scare era communist imagery, the bizarre space wizard dictator laughing at you right at the beginning, the frankly undecipherable overabundance of robot animals and dinosaurs and cavewomen in a futuristic setting.
It feels very much like a melting pot of random aesthetics and imagery tailor made to catch a kid's eyes in the arcade, and by god did it work on me.
It is not an easy game, but it mostly manages to stay on the side of fairness. You at least have a health bar that can be upgraded with powerups so you can take a reasonable amount of hits before it's time to pop in another quarter. Other powerups are also massively helpful offensively, if you can keep them.
It generally seems like a lot of effort has gone into this game at the time, getting hit provokes elaborate reactions, with Strider Hiryu recoiling and rolling on the ground, your movement animations are plentiful and adapt to the steepness of the incline you're moving on, or clinging onto.
There are momentum mechanics that let you gather speed for big, cinematic jumps, long before a certain blue hedgehog made its debut.
There are altered gravity sections, bosses that constitute their very own gravitational pole, it's all extremely inventive for the time.
But these days, these days I still remember Strider for a different reason.
There is something I find very thematically appropriate about the gameplay of Strider.
The futuristic ninja protagonist is armed with the cypher blade, a sleek, razor sharp, disciplined weapon, only a slash rending metal in half in a glorious burst of energy no longer than a couple of frames.
It is the cypher I obsess over so much. Hiryu swings the thing with the greatest of ease, faster than any human would ever be able to catch, but in this also comes a lot of the challenge of the game.
Do you have what it takes to be like Hiryu? Can you swing your cypher as fast and precisely as a real ninja would?
Playing this game with a controller and using your thumb does not do it justice, you will inevitably be limited by your dexterity.
The cypher demands speed. It demands your index finger, maybe even the middle finger to piano that attack button.
The only limit is your humanity.
Tear those gravity orbs and steel gorillas and dinosaurs to shreds, lest they do the same to you.
So, get those fingertips primed and ready, and enjoy the absolute powertrip that this game lets you live out.
So long as you don't fall up into the sky in that darn final stage.