Back in the early 90's
magazines were calling this arcade perfect, then again the tended to use
that “Arcade Perfect” phrase quite a lot back then when it wasn't true.
However, Strider on the Mega Drive is as close to the arcade that you’ll
ever get on a home system outside of Japan. I say outside of Japan
because the Sharp X68000 home computer was home to many real arcade
perfect ports including Strider.
This Mega Drive version basically does look like the arcade at first
glance. It's only with closer inspection that you’ll notice differences
such as lower frames of animation or less colours. Still over all it's
very impressive. The audio is also very close to the arcade original
with some tracks sounding identical while the others use slightly
different instruments. There's something I noticed about playing the US
version of Strider and that was Strider doesn't have his speech when he
uses his katana plus there are only 35 sound effects unlike the Japanese
version that has 40 odd plus extra speech. As far as playability goes
it's a little buggy but then so was the arcade. I've noticed that 1 or 2
times you can jump in what you think is up but Strider will go to the
right or left. This doesn't happen all the time mind you so it's not
really a problem.
Over all Strider is a fantastic classic platform slash'em up that is
well worth tracking down. Just don’t buy Strider II by some French
company and released via US Gold what ever you do. That is bloody awful.
Good speech though.
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