I actually had Strider on the mind for a while to play, because for a bit it felt like this thing was constantly showing up in my friend activity feed, it only took me a few weeks to finally join the conga line like the slow brainless lemming that I am.
People who hate this game will probably breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I have zero nostalgia for this thing, because I think I may have put a grand total of ten minutes into it on the old Capcom Classics Collection compilations that were released on PS2 and PSP as opposed to the hundreds I put into Mercs or getting my ass kicked in Varth. So why did I barely play this game? Well let's find out. For the purposes of this review I played both the Genesis port and the poorly emulated CCC version on PS2.
Right away, the control feels like Capcom went "hey that Ninja Gaiden game is pretty neat, let's slap some shitty Belmont movement onto it. I'm sure it'll age very well down the road." No doubt said right after putting on their clown shoes, and honking their big red noses at each other like they normally do when they make poor decisions. The stage design reeks of "lmao got ya bitch" and "where am I supposed to go?" style Famicom awfulness, with many setpiece-style explosions just suddenly ragdolling you right after killing easy bosses or getting instantly shot at offscreen by some shithead with a chaingun. It's not helped by the fact that the hitboxes on the Genesis version felt absolutely abominable, many times it felt I got smacked by the blunt corner of a box around an enemy as opposed to somewhere on their visible person. I dunno if it was because I was more familiar with the stage design before moving onto the arcade version, but it just felt a bit better there as opposed to the genesis port. Not that it super helped my enjoyment, though it was nice not having those little "loading" freezes, or have the game chug like a shitty IBM computer all throughout the jungle stage with those fucking amazon ladies who never shut the hell up.
Don't get me wrong, I can understand why people loved this game. No doubt it was impressive for it's time and probably looked even more jaw-dropping playing it on the Genesis. The art design is all absolutely exquisite and very charming, I lost my shit when I witnessed the entire Soviet counsel congregate into each other to form a robot centipede wielding a hammer and sickle. That's stuff's great. The stupid digitized voice acting in the arcade version is fantastically hilarious, and that laugh during the game over screen probably traumatized at least a few kids. The line where Hiryu goes "you're sending a toy into battle?" in response to a giant battleship is also fairly fucking badass.
I also got entertained during gameplay by the visual of Hiryu just facetanking a fucking battleship's cannon, then later getting thrown off the side by malevolent floor-sliding things straight out of Flying Battery Zone. That stuff was mean to me the player, but I got entertainment out of it since I can laugh that shit off very easily. Probably helped when I was playing with infinite continues in the arcade version, imagine being the sick fuck who set the dip switches to "no continues".
As always, it's a touchy subject for everyone over whether an older game has aged fairly well or if it is, to put it incredibly nicely, "a product of it's time". For me Strider was a nice product of it's time, but I don't think I'm going back to it anytime soon.
People who hate this game will probably breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I have zero nostalgia for this thing, because I think I may have put a grand total of ten minutes into it on the old Capcom Classics Collection compilations that were released on PS2 and PSP as opposed to the hundreds I put into Mercs or getting my ass kicked in Varth. So why did I barely play this game? Well let's find out. For the purposes of this review I played both the Genesis port and the poorly emulated CCC version on PS2.
Right away, the control feels like Capcom went "hey that Ninja Gaiden game is pretty neat, let's slap some shitty Belmont movement onto it. I'm sure it'll age very well down the road." No doubt said right after putting on their clown shoes, and honking their big red noses at each other like they normally do when they make poor decisions. The stage design reeks of "lmao got ya bitch" and "where am I supposed to go?" style Famicom awfulness, with many setpiece-style explosions just suddenly ragdolling you right after killing easy bosses or getting instantly shot at offscreen by some shithead with a chaingun. It's not helped by the fact that the hitboxes on the Genesis version felt absolutely abominable, many times it felt I got smacked by the blunt corner of a box around an enemy as opposed to somewhere on their visible person. I dunno if it was because I was more familiar with the stage design before moving onto the arcade version, but it just felt a bit better there as opposed to the genesis port. Not that it super helped my enjoyment, though it was nice not having those little "loading" freezes, or have the game chug like a shitty IBM computer all throughout the jungle stage with those fucking amazon ladies who never shut the hell up.
Don't get me wrong, I can understand why people loved this game. No doubt it was impressive for it's time and probably looked even more jaw-dropping playing it on the Genesis. The art design is all absolutely exquisite and very charming, I lost my shit when I witnessed the entire Soviet counsel congregate into each other to form a robot centipede wielding a hammer and sickle. That's stuff's great. The stupid digitized voice acting in the arcade version is fantastically hilarious, and that laugh during the game over screen probably traumatized at least a few kids. The line where Hiryu goes "you're sending a toy into battle?" in response to a giant battleship is also fairly fucking badass.
I also got entertained during gameplay by the visual of Hiryu just facetanking a fucking battleship's cannon, then later getting thrown off the side by malevolent floor-sliding things straight out of Flying Battery Zone. That stuff was mean to me the player, but I got entertainment out of it since I can laugh that shit off very easily. Probably helped when I was playing with infinite continues in the arcade version, imagine being the sick fuck who set the dip switches to "no continues".
As always, it's a touchy subject for everyone over whether an older game has aged fairly well or if it is, to put it incredibly nicely, "a product of it's time". For me Strider was a nice product of it's time, but I don't think I'm going back to it anytime soon.