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Just beat Strider (Capcom arcade 1989) for the first time and it's better than most games today

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Great game, but you can tell it’s your first time playing it. You popped your cherry and want to scream from the rooftops about your discovery.

It was a very short and simple arcade game devoid of any challenge. That’s the reality of the classic arcade Strider, and that’s coming from someone who dropped $75 on the Genesis port when it realeased with its busted animation.

It didn’t even compare well to games back then in terms of gameplay. It just had a cool factor.
 
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radewagon

Member
Just amazing pixel art and gameplay. Some great scan lines too.
Bolding of text added by me. Are we all just going to ignore this comment? I don't even know what it means. Like, a game can't have great scanlines. Scanlines are the result of CRT displays skipping "lines" when displaying content.
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Games from that era have pressure on them because you’re forced to go forward left to right, since the last couple of years of open world games games from that era look bad.
 

Fuz

Banned
Man, I loved it as a kid. It looked awesome and I was very impressed with the way he jumped.
Hard as fuck toh, and really hard to find in arcades.
 

Futaleufu

Member
Ninja + plasma sword + crazy evil Russian cyborgs + mechanical gorillas + killer ballerinas

There's so much creativity in just one game it just blows my mind. Game designers from that era are just from a different plane of existence.
My favorites are the Kazakhstan politburo turning into a giant centipede and the anti-gravity device. And that enemies speak his/her native language.
 

GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
Bolding of text added by me. Are we all just going to ignore this comment? I don't even know what it means. Like, a game can't have great scanlines. Scanlines are the result of CRT displays skipping "lines" when displaying content.

What I meant to say is that the game looks amazing with scan lines (not seen in the OP video).

Man, I loved it as a kid. It looked awesome and I was very impressed with the way he jumped.
Hard as fuck toh, and really hard to find in arcades.
People complaining about the length don't get how hard the game is.

It took me a couple weeks playing often to beat it allowing myself only 3 continues.
 
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01011001

Banned
Capcom was great back then, but to say Konami was far behind is stretching it, if only because Konami had by far better NES sound engines than Capcom.

Konami was amazing, but Capcom had an output that was simply ridiculous at that time.
the amount if truly outstanding games is bigger on Capcom's side imo.
 

yurinka

Member
Yes, Capcom arcade classics feature some of the best games ever made. Today Strider is cool, but back then was really stunning and insanely cool.
 

GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
Hey GigaBowser GigaBowser how many years before you were born did this game release?
#19 needs to hold my beer


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PhaseJump

Banned
You can tell someone was wronged by something this gen when they bring up an old mediocre game and say it's better than "most" games today.

OP did you get upset paying $70 for TLOU part 1? Did you're Switch brick? Did you think Game Pass is illegal or Jim Ryan is a criminal? Did you buy Saints Row? Tell us what made up create this thread OP.

WkyoXwo.gif


That "old mediocre game" was EGM's Game of the Year in 1990.

Here you are begging questions about how sincere the OP is about grievances that apparently take up the space in your own fucked up headcanon.
 
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That "old mediocre game" was EGM's Game of the Year in 1990.

Here you are begging questions about how sincere the OP is about grievances that apparently take up the space in your own fucked up headcanon.

Bubsy won awards too, yet if you swapped that game in for Strider you wouldn't be making this post. it's called opinions.

It was a very short and simple arcade game devoid of any challenge. That’s the reality of the classic arcade Strider, and that’s coming from someone who dropped $75 on the Genesis port when it realeased with its busted animation.

It didn’t even compare well to games back then in terms of gameplay. It just had a cool factor.

Games with edge was a seller back then.
 
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MrA

Banned
Psn and Switch both have 5000 ish games, xbox like 3000, steam lol
So is strider better than most games , well yes it is, but thats just a numbers game
Is strider better than my favorite game x, well it doesn't matter, unique experiences do,strider is a great arcade action game it doesn’t fill the same roll as different games
 

PhaseJump

Banned
Bubsy won awards too, yet if you swapped that game in for Strider you wouldn't be making this post. it's called opinions.

A gamer discovers an old highly praised game, and is excited that it actually delivers compared to most modern games. You show up to take a shit on how sincere he is about it, implying that he's mad at Sony, Nintendo, Xbox, etc. with your silly bullshit. Heaven forbid somebody likes a popular oldschool arcade game enough to talk about it. 1990's Game of the Year... just because Bubsy existed.

It's much better to read on GAF than reading the inane horseshit threads that you consistently spam.

My opinion is that you should just fuck off.
 
A gamer discovers an old highly praised game, and is excited that it actually delivers compared to most modern games. You show up to take a shit on how sincere he is about it, i

I'd be able to take this post seriously, if you also went after other users who also didn't like the game or at least though it wasn't that good. Examples:

Great game, but you can tell it’s your first time playing it. You popped your cherry and want to scream from the rooftops about your discovery.

It was a very short and simple arcade game devoid of any challenge. That’s the reality of the classic arcade Strider, and that’s coming from someone who dropped $75 on the Genesis port when it realeased with its busted animation.

It didn’t even compare well to games back then in terms of gameplay. It just had a cool factor.
I mean, it's less than 10 minutes, but it's alright.

It's not better than even the most basic games these days.

Both of which are less obvious in them being sarcastic than mine were, in fact you could argue neither of these were having fun with the OP.

So unless you had your Switch Brick buying Saints Row, or think Jim Ryans actually a criminal (lol he's not of course), you're attack here is unwarranted, especially given these posts from others were also in the thread and weren't clearly jokes and you said nothing.
 
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GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
Terrific game. Mastered it on the Mega Drive and was able to reliably 1CC the arcade version forever as a result. Played it at the weekend, in fact.



That's some irony
Damn this game is the tits now, back then it must have been God Like.
 

Three

Member
Agreed and it gets way too much crap for the good game that it was. I think the price may have been part of the issue because by the time I bought it, it was on sale for 4.99 and that felt like incredible value for what I played.
It was 'free' on PS+ near PS4 launch. I remember I played it back then. Anybody with PS+ might have it in their library and has no excuses now.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Never played the arcade Strider. But I thought the Genesis game stunk. Big character graphics, but the gameplay was meh and it was a super short game. Lots of flickering too. But that part in level one or two with the lightning/shadow background was cool.

I liked NES Strider much more although it was a totally different game.
 
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OldBoyGamer

Banned
My first introduction to strider was the Amiga version as I didn’t really play coin ops back in the day.

I loved it and remember one night I clocked it completely. Like i was so good at it that I was no longer losing lives. I clocked it and it restarted. And after a while when I realised there was no challenge left I turned it off and never played it again.

I really couldn’t understand why reviews said it was a poor conversion. I thought it was great……. And then a few years later, I played the megadrive version.

Bloody hell. Is that version one of the best coin op conversions ever made or what? It was just amazing.

A few years after that I played the coin op through mame and yes it really is an almost perfect game. Capcom did incredibly well with that one.

Not sure if it’s been raised above but iirc us gold (who did the home computer conversions) released there own sequel. But it was a bit rubbish unfortunately (if you recall us gold towards the last few years were awful).

I’ve only played the true coin op sequel a bit but it didn’t stick tbh.

The PS4 version is a decent enough game but it didn’t feel like a strider game to me.

Anyway. Congrats on clocking it OP. 👍👍
 

wondermega

Member
Strider (in all of its incarnations) has always been a weird one, and I've never felt completely one way or the other about it. Way back in the day, EGM had us all super-hyped that it was gonna be Capcom's "next huge system seller" on Genesis following the crater that Ghouls 'n Ghosts left at the launch (which was pretty significant, at the time). I'm fairly certain I played through the NES one first, which likewise had some decent hype surrounding it (see the Nintendo Power images posted earlier) which itself felt like "mooooostly cool with some sticking issues" (glitchiness, annoying jumps, wonky design at parts) but was at least interesting/worth a rental and play-thru when that one released.

I feel like I saw arcade Strider (momentarily) somewhere in-between, and then grabbed the Genesis port fairly eagerly when it appeared. I DEFINITELY enjoyed it - but like it's (almost completely unrelated NES cousin), it certainly had it's share of funky glitchiness, wonky design, etc - but the game was weird, man. You never knew what was coming next. There was a feeling that "this character might actually be able to do anything!" he really handled very differently from the usual one-note mechanics of a lot of similarly-styled games of the era. The game just felt very ambitious, very haphazard (but in a fun way), against these crazy backdrops with wild weirdo characters that kept being thrown at you moment-to-moment in a way not really seen before (fight some wolves, then a giant mecha gorilla, then run down the steepest snowy incline ever, then a tower with ED-209s against a lightning storm, then a flying airship with sexy ballerinas who are trying to murder you). Yeah the whole game was like this. It was all insane and just kinda kept you guessing "WTF indeed, what could possibly be coming next?"

On a side note, Ghouls 'n Ghosts felt like a somewhat more-contained version of such insanity (crazy gameplay and character changes moment-to-moment), Strider just really ratcheted it up. No one else ever really made games like that. Still don't I think.

Anyway, at the end of the day it never really all came together (the end of the game is sort of "huh? Well I guess that was the end, then" but even so it was pretty satisfying to be part of such a spectacle. No other game in the series has really touched on such weirdness as that original arcade (and Genesis) game, although to be honest I do really wanna spend more time with the PS1 game (it's got it's own thing going on, and is very sleek and stylish). It doesn't surprise me too hard that even in 2022 people are still discovering and being affected by the awesome, if flawed weirdness that is Strider. As a designer I've periodically thought about how super-cool it would be to make a modern 3D take on such a game, maybe someday. Anyway, enjoy! Now check out Bionic Commando on NES!
 

OldBoyGamer

Banned
Strider (in all of its incarnations) has always been a weird one, and I've never felt completely one way or the other about it. Way back in the day, EGM had us all super-hyped that it was gonna be Capcom's "next huge system seller" on Genesis following the crater that Ghouls 'n Ghosts left at the launch (which was pretty significant, at the time). I'm fairly certain I played through the NES one first, which likewise had some decent hype surrounding it (see the Nintendo Power images posted earlier) which itself felt like "mooooostly cool with some sticking issues" (glitchiness, annoying jumps, wonky design at parts) but was at least interesting/worth a rental and play-thru when that one released.

I feel like I saw arcade Strider (momentarily) somewhere in-between, and then grabbed the Genesis port fairly eagerly when it appeared. I DEFINITELY enjoyed it - but like it's (almost completely unrelated NES cousin), it certainly had it's share of funky glitchiness, wonky design, etc - but the game was weird, man. You never knew what was coming next. There was a feeling that "this character might actually be able to do anything!" he really handled very differently from the usual one-note mechanics of a lot of similarly-styled games of the era. The game just felt very ambitious, very haphazard (but in a fun way), against these crazy backdrops with wild weirdo characters that kept being thrown at you moment-to-moment in a way not really seen before (fight some wolves, then a giant mecha gorilla, then run down the steepest snowy incline ever, then a tower with ED-209s against a lightning storm, then a flying airship with sexy ballerinas who are trying to murder you). Yeah the whole game was like this. It was all insane and just kinda kept you guessing "WTF indeed, what could possibly be coming next?"

On a side note, Ghouls 'n Ghosts felt like a somewhat more-contained version of such insanity (crazy gameplay and character changes moment-to-moment), Strider just really ratcheted it up. No one else ever really made games like that. Still don't I think.

Anyway, at the end of the day it never really all came together (the end of the game is sort of "huh? Well I guess that was the end, then" but even so it was pretty satisfying to be part of such a spectacle. No other game in the series has really touched on such weirdness as that original arcade (and Genesis) game, although to be honest I do really wanna spend more time with the PS1 game (it's got it's own thing going on, and is very sleek and stylish). It doesn't surprise me too hard that even in 2022 people are still discovering and being affected by the awesome, if flawed weirdness that is Strider. As a designer I've periodically thought about how super-cool it would be to make a modern 3D take on such a game, maybe someday. Anyway, enjoy! Now check out Bionic Commando on NES!
You’ve just reminded me. Didn’t That robot gorilla cause a massive storm back in the day? As in it was one of the most impressive things we’d seen in a game? And people went nuts seeing it.

Remember this was just coming out of the mid 16 home computer era and to see a character of that size on the screen drawn with so many colours and animated! Might have been just me but I remember now, that single screen shot of that gorilla meant I was going to play strider no matter what.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Now check out Bionic Commando on NES!
One of my fav games on NES. Awesome graphics, sound, and it was a pretty long game. The ending scene of Hitler's face blowing up was crazy.

I never saw the game in the arcade and never knew what it was like until the internet. Turns out the arcade game is a super short shallow game.
 
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wondermega

Member
You’ve just reminded me. Didn’t That robot gorilla cause a massive storm back in the day? As in it was one of the most impressive things we’d seen in a game? And people went nuts seeing it.

Remember this was just coming out of the mid 16 home computer era and to see a character of that size on the screen drawn with so many colours and animated! Might have been just me but I remember now, that single screen shot of that gorilla meant I was going to play strider no matter what.

I don't remember the gorilla getting much more notoriety than other big things in the game (like, say, the centipede thing) but I think it showed up in plenty of promo screenshots. I remember it being one of the standout issues I had with the game - here was this big crazy character, but turned out to be mostly a statue who you could just run up to and slice to shreds really quickly without much resistance.

One of my fav games on NES. Awesome graphics, sound, and it was a pretty long game. The ending scene of Hitler's face blowing up was crazy.

I never saw the game in the arcade and never knew what it was like until the internet. Turns out the arcade game is a super short shallow game.
I saw the game in the arcade some time before the NES version appeared - as a Commando fan (Commando being one of the earliest third-party NES games, which I had eagerly snatched up) I was definitely interested to see whatever was continuing in that lineage. The arcade was interesting and the mechanic definitely felt unique, but when they showed the NES port in that first or second issue of Nintendo Power, I remember actually being disappointed that the game looked so different (and that the hero was a green looking weirdo with sunglasses, haha). I actually passed on it for several years and finally grabbed it awhile later..
 

lucius

Member
It’s really good one of Genesis best but something like The Witcher 3 takes a big dump all over this game. Yes it’s better than most game releases but we get so many average games each month now on many systems. I kind of hated the remake at first but it’s pretty good now that I played it again a few times.
 
I remember liking it at the time though I was very young. I played both the Mega Drive and Arcade releases and I'm not a fan anymore. They're so stiff. Good atmosphere and music but the control is awful. For a character that is portayed as being so agile, it feels anything but. It's a product of it's time though so I'll give it a pass.
 
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Never played the arcade Strider. But I thought the Genesis game stunk. Big character graphics, but the gameplay was meh and it was a super short game. Lots of flickering too. But that part in level one or two with the lightning/shadow background was cool.

I liked NES Strider much more although it was a totally different game.

I always thought that the Genesis port was mediocre at best, that's why i haven't even included it in my top 50 Mega Drive games.
 

Neff

Member
People complaining about the length don't get how hard the game is.

Strider's a funny one. It's not really hard per se, in fact when you know what to do it's pretty easy. Everyone who is good at the game plays it much the same way- the safe spots are the same, the enemies are defeated the same, there's very little variance or adaptation required. If you don't know what to do, certain sections can seem impossible. But once you've memorised it, it basically plays itself, and that journey of memorising it is very enjoyable. It's like a really fun puzzle which you never forget the solution to, since RNG isn't a major factor. By contrast, something like Ghouls 'n' Ghosts from the previous year also benefits heavily from memorisation, but also requires awareness and spontaneous skill since RNG is very much a factor.

Damn this game is the tits now, back then it must have been God Like.

It was really special. Incredibly novel in so many ways- artistically, mechanically, and structurally. You couldn't walk past it in an arcade and not notice it.

Didn’t That robot gorilla cause a massive storm back in the day?

It's the first time I can ever remember of a 'boss' being at the start of the level, even though he's an absolute pushover. But still, it was a striking confrontation, and one of many instances of Strider doing things a bit differently.
 
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