Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 242: Strider

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, and Shane Bettenhausen paraglide into Kazakh S.S.R. to profess the glory of a game that remains indelibly cool even 30 years later: Capcom's Strider.

Hey folks, this is Bob interrupting your Retronauts podcast for a special announcement. Jeremy and I will be at this year's Pax West event for three separate panels, so if you've never seen us live before, now is your chance. So in chronological order, the first panel will be Saturday, August 31st, at 1230 p.m. in the Sasquatch Theater, and that will be the cromulent world of fictional Simpsons games. That will be a Talking Simpsons panel all about all of the fake video games within the world of The Simpsons. Then on Monday, Retronauts will be closing out the show with two back-to-back panels, both in the Raven Theater. The first one will be at 3 o'clock p.m., and that will be

Super Metroid versus Castlevania Symphony of the Night, which is pretty self-explanatory. The next one will be at 4.30 p.m., and it's titled the Dreamcast's 20th anniversary Necromancy Jam. We'll be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast on this panel, and it's also the 10th anniversary of the Retronauts Pax panel from 2009. Again, that is Saturday, August 31st at 1230 p.m. in the Sasquatch Theater that is the Talking Simpsons panel and then on Monday, September 2nd, there'll be two back-to-back panels in the Raven

Theater for Retronauts starting at 3 o'clock p.m. and we hope to see you there. This week in Retronauts, we'll never leave Eurasia alive. Hi, everyone, welcome to this exciting latest episode of Retronauts. I am Jeremy, son of old gods parish. And this week, we are doing a super A-rated class podcast about the super A-rated class Strider. strider hear you. And here in the podcast studio with us, there's Bob over there, of course.

Hey, it's Bob Mackey, and I love 45 degree angles. That's right. The NES game is mostly 45 degree angles. That's all the triangle jumps. And also special guest returning from the West Indies. I was just drinking rum in the West Indies. I'm back to talk about Strider hear you. And I thought you actually over, you know, kind of overacted that line. I just played it last night. And it's more like, hmm, strider hear you. You will never leave your age alive. No, that's not. What platform did you play on? I was playing the arcade version.

I swear, like, I... Wait, who are you? Oh, this is Shane Bettenhouse. Oh, okay, good, good, good, good. Sorry, but I remember it being better active when I played last night, I was like, oh, man, somebody's... No, he chews the scenery, he's like, he will never leave your age alive.

Maybe just the quality of the sample. I was a slight disappointed in the last night. Yeah, maybe the PlayStation version has better sampling, but the arcade version, there's like this kind of, like, distorted quality to it, and it sounds really, like, dramatic, or maybe they read did the voice acting. Well, we'll get your head of ourselves, but yeah, it's a classic. Yeah, okay, so we're talking about Strider, because Strider hear you is 30 years old this

year, and that's, yeah, I remember when I was in junior high playing it in the arcades, and now here we are old and dying. But that's okay, because that's all part of Grandmaster Mayo's plan. He wants to destroy all life on earth and replace it with piranhas, apparently. Pause, do you think in hindsight it was actually Mao? And not mayo? No, I think it's mayo, like, um... Like mayonnaise?

Meo, you know, the... I was, I was wondering that last night. It's Japanese. It's like, you know, in the jakeo in, uh... Well, an interesting thing is... A weird thing about this game is, you know, Japanese characters speak Japanese, Chinese characters speak Chinese. No, it's great. I love it.

Yeah. I don't know what language the Amazon's are speaking, but everyone speaks a different language. They speak English. Moon language. I think it's probably like Afrikaans or something. Um, and yeah, then Strider or, uh, Grandmaster Mayo is that. the evil guy, and solo also, they speak English. Right.

So you know they're bad. Anyway, so we kind of got ahead of ourselves, but that's just because Strider Hear You is so great and so cool. It's such, like 30 years later, the arcade game at least is just, it's so cool. It's, I don't use that word lightly. It's cool. And it's very strange, and it was strange when it arrived. It, like, arrived to the scene. And I remember, you know, I think you and I.

I didn't think it was strange. I was like, oh, yes, okay, this is a. video game. This is what it should be. You and I probably encountered it when it was brand new, out of nowhere, with no, you know, maybe I'd seen a screenshot in EGM, maybe, but I didn't really know what it was until there it was. I mean, it was

just, you know, this very cinematic kind of action game. It was very stylish. It was just cool. And I was totally on board for it. So I remember the first time I saw it, like it has a really great attract mode. And maybe we'll go into that a little more later. But like, you know, I knew what Capcom was. And I knew what the

kind of games they made. I was a big Ghost and Goblins fan. You know, I also, you know, I played some of their other arcade games and NES games. But suddenly this game, and we said cinematic, it's beyond cinematic. It's not just that, oh, there's cutscenes between levels. No, the actual set of levels. But the actual game itself from moment to moment, even in the very first level. It's uncharted 25 years or like crazy little mini bosses, crazy little things happening, the level is changing, giant set pieces. But beyond that, even more so, it felt and looked like a Sega game. At the time, I was like, this doesn't feel like a Capcom game. I think the Genesis version looks better than the arcade version.

And we'll get to that Genesis. I think it does. I kind of, I'm with you there. The sprites. Well, at least it's the same level of quality. But, like, you know, it has like a Shinobi-esque main character running around doing things. I will say the arcade version is better animated and that's what really sells. Yeah, you're right about that.

You're right about that. It's spectacular animation. But like the coolness of it, like the ninjiness of it, like the animaeness of it. It wasn't goofy. It wasn't kiddie like Namco games. It wasn't as funny as like Ghost and Gullabids, but it had some of that humor, but it was new and cool in a way that no other Capcom game. I even like Black Tiger and stuff, but like this was different. And it felt like a new thing that was better than things that had come before it.

Right. Bob, how about yourself? Where did you first encounter Strida, hear you? Actually, I didn't know about the arcade version until much later. I think when I had the Internet, when I looked up things about every game I knew. But I played the NES game and was kind of confused by it. But whenever, so I did eventually play the arcade game. But whenever I saw like a quote-unquote platformer in the arcade, I was just confused because by the time I was in the arcade and playing games like in the 80s, early 90s, those have sort of moved aside in terms of, you know, brawlers were the big thing and fighting games are the big thing around that time.

So I kind of felt like a weird experience to play a platformer in 1989 in the arcade. Like it's like I avoided those kind of games in the arcade because I like, oh, that's a home kind of game experience. Yeah, I mean, I feel like once Super Mario Brothers hit and kind of standardized. the D-pad style controls for platformers. Arcade platformers didn't make a lot of sense because the joystick just, for that style of game, it's not as precise, but it worked with Strider because it, I don't know, like the way he jumps and moves,

it just feels like he is really connected to that joystick. I guess I would disagree. Platformers were still my number one genre. And like they were the arcade? Yeah, they were getting rarer. But when there were dedicated 2D platformers in arcade, I was all about them. And especially that era when there were ones that didn't have,

home conversions, like, those are the ones that would go and play. And Strider was unique in that, like, not only was the way he swung his sword, cool and different, there had never been anything like that before that felt that way. But, like, you're right, his animation, he had tons of motion movement. He could, like, grapple around and, like, climb up things, climb upside down. Like, and as you go through the game, there's these interesting gravity things. And there's all these times you get to run really fast and make a leap of fate. And some of those are in the, in the attract mode.

So, like, you know, and it was hard to get through this game. It was a corner muncher. Like, some of those bosses were hard. there were tricks. So, like, as a kid, I would see things in the attractment of levels I hadn't gotten to yet. And I would, like, save up my quarters. And no one has ever defeated the stage. Right.

And, like, slowly I actually made it, I think, to level four in the arcade over the course of a few months. And that's when, like, when this game gets announced home console, you know, I will buy this at no matter what the price will be. Yeah, a friend and I beat this game. I think we must have tag teamed it or something to save, you know, our individual quarters. but I do remember watching the ending and Strider like sailing off on the back of dolphins into the ocean into the sunset. And I was like, huh, I've never seen like the end scroll of an arcade game before. That's interesting. It's just like a home game.

But, you know, Strider did not start out in the arcade. He did not start out in video games. Strider, in fact, began as what would later come to be termed by Square Inix as polymorphic content. Oh, did they create that term? They did. I think Square did, yes. I remember I heard Shane say it on a Bretonauts like a decade ago, and I used it ever since, but I've never seen it used. It was coined for the compilation of Final Fantasy 7.

Wow. I like it. I thought it was coined for something with Saken Densetsu. That was the second polymorphic content. Oh, damn, I got, I got all mixed up. Polymorphic contents are the best contents. They are. It's like that.

They are mini-morphs. So it was a manga first. Okay, so the games are not based on the manga. The games were developed in tandem with the manga. This was a grab for a, you know, a multimedia intellectual property by Capcom. And so what they did was they collaborated with a manga studio called Motokikaku, which was like two guys. I didn't write down their names. Sorry.

But they were basically, you know, a team kind of working in the, I would describe the Strider manga as being very reminiscent of Cyborg 009 or something like that. Like it's kind of serious and violent, but it's also. kind of goofy and the characters have that kind of like 70s manga look to them like you know if you stuck these guys on the cover of clash of demonhead you'd be like oh okay yeah sure like totally different than the arcade game the arcade game is very stylish and sleek whereas the the manga's a little bit you know kind of it's got that kind of like cheesy factor that that carried through from the 70s into a lot of stuff what was the name of the guy who did cyborg zero zero nine I totally blinked on his name he also did you know some Nintendo power comics he was a skull man guy

right? Maybe. I totally blinked on his name. Not Matsumoto. It was, um, anyway, it doesn't matter. Um, the point is, that's kind of what the style was for the manga. The manga was serialized in, let's see, I wrote it down, uh, by Kadokawa Shoten, uh, the publisher in monthly comic comp, comic comp, um, it is, it ran through from May

through October of 1988, the games launched in 1989. So this was kind of like where they laid down the basis for Strider. But they were developing the games at the same time. And the manga is totally different, a totally different story than the arcade game. Nothing whatsoever to do with the other. But, you know, kind of the overall arc, the concept is that Strider Hear You is one of the top-rated members of the Strider organization, which is a clandestine ninja assassin clan. This takes place in the future. So they're all very versed in technology.

He carries a plasma-based sword called the cipher. And at age 19, he is over it. He is retired. He has seen some shit. He is done. He was forced to kill his sister who went crazy. Dark. Yeah.

And he was like, you know what? I'm just going to go live in a little village in Mongolia. But then the colonel calls him out of retirement for one last mission. Now, the leader of Strider, the Strider organization, Maddoch, tracks him down and says, basically, I'm going to kill everyone in your little village if you don't come and take care of this mission for us. There's a strider, top-rated strider, just like you, named Kane, and he was captured, and we have to kill him before he spills all of our secrets.

So that is the story of Strider, the manga, and that is the basis of the NES game as well, the story in the NES game. The Zine project, or Zane, and yeah, Strider Sheena, who goes crazy. and so on and so forth. As you mentioned this NES game, so at this time, you know, as you and I are playing Strider coin up arcade game and loving it and it's beautiful, then, oh, here comes a game called Strider from Capcom for the NES, which is totally different. It's more of a re-traversal action-adventure game, a proto-Metroredvania. But the thing is, at this time, Capcom was taking arcade games and saying, yeah, we can't do that on NES, so let's just do a different game. Buying a Commando, 1943, Gunsmoke.

Legendary Wings, like all of these games, Section Z, were just like totally reinvented for the NES. This one I felt was blown up to be something, you know, so different that as a kid, I was shocked. And at first I was like, wow, this is awesome. But then in post, I was like, not actually as awesome kind of. Yeah, it's a mess of a game. We can talk about that later. But we won. It's weird that didn't come out in Japan, right?

Yeah. How did that happen? That's the weird thing. It's like polymorphic content. They had this multimedia IP concept. So it was a manga. There was an arcade game. There was an NES game, and they didn't coordinate it very well.

The NES game only came out in America. The manga only came out in Japan. So these two things that were closely related to each other, they were linked. They were adaptations of the same story. They never released simultaneously in the same regions. It's a polymorphic fail. It's a huge flop. But the arcade game is cool.

They were like being pioneers, though, and saying, you know, instead of licensing a character, we'll make our own. But ultimately, it was kind of a failure, right? because I assume, like, I was surprised there wasn't some, like, OVA that was sold for 8,500 yen in 1990 or something like that. And I'll say in 1990, Arcade Strider had a cachet among hardcore gaming enthusiasts of which I was one and all of my friends. Strider was badass. It was cool as fuck. It really was. To the point where, like, when it was announced as an import, before it came out in America, people I knew spent $100 to import the mega-drivers and Strider. Well, I don't know about hardcore gamers, but I definitely thought it was awesome. And my friends and I played it a lot. lot. And we rented the NES game and we're like, this isn't the same thing. But I mean, it got a guy with like a cool swoopy sword. It's funny. I rented it to and eventually

I bought it when it was like 30 bucks. But like, and I beat it. I think I used Nintendo Power to beat it. But at the time, I was like, this is pretty good, but not as good as Arcade Strider. Well, there is, there is Cossack SSR in here and the sword and stuff. Well, are we going to go into that deeper later or should we go off on a tangent on it right now? We can, we can talk about that later. But it was just like, well, yeah, there's there's content here that's familiar from the arcade game, but this is definitely not the arcade game. And so I kind of was like, yeah, that's fine. I'll take it on its own merits. But I really, like the arcade game was what I really wanted to play. And when that came out on Sega Genesis,

and that's interesting because it was not developed for Genesis by Capcom. Yeah, it was done internally by Sega. And it was the first eight megabit cartridge, right? Exciting. Which meant they could charge more money for it and had more memory. And although it wasn't not arcade perfect, it was close. Closer than ghouls and ghosts had them. Goals and Ghosts. Yeah, much better. Yeah, like they messed up the hitboxes on ghouls

and ghosts. But with Strider, yeah, they really nailed it. It wasn't quite perfect, but it was definitely closer to the real thing than the NES version. And that was kind of a quest, I think, for like the perfect home version of Strider.

The super graphics later were to attempted. They added a really bad extra level. Oh, man. I was looking at videos of all the different home versions. lost one. It just sounds like there's a phone ringing in the background. Is there a Spectrum version? I think there is a Spectrum version. It's like every microprocomputer got one. And they were all developed in Europe by people who didn't have access to the code.

U.S. gold. Sure. Why not? Yeah. Well, because part of, you know, a huge part of what Strider, when we Xerries are great, are the visuals and the gameplay, the actual controls and the animation, but specifically the visuals. Like, playing it again, I was just replaying it last night on the, you know, the PS1 version on my PS3. And this game is gorgeous. Like, not just its color palette and its animation, but, like, the very structures, the inside, outside, you know, kind of aspects to the levels. There's, like, there's lots of, you know, going inside of structures and, like, penetrating structures, large facades. And then, you know, giant creatures, huge sprites.

Like, the sprites themselves aren't that animated, but they're, you know, at this time in, like, 1989. I mean, the giant monkey does a lot. He, like, beats his chest. He punches you. he like, yeah, there's all kinds of crazy stuff. He jumps up on the ceiling. The fact that the way the levels change as you go through with them, too, like just playing it again last night.

That was not something that happened in games back then. It was a very cinematic game. It was like you, this is a crazy movie, an action movie, seen through a side-scrolling perspective, and you are controlling it the whole way with your animal pals, your robot animal pals. It was very, very cool.

I'm going to use the word cool a lot in this episode and I apologize, but there's just no getting around it because this game is really cool. And the robots are so intangled to the game. And I kind of forgot like, yeah, back then, robots were intrinsically cool. People were spending $150 for a robot that would bring your drinks. Yeah, right?

Yeah, the Omnibot or whatever. Yeah. I mean, it was such a game of its time, but also ahead of its time. Like, it really does feel like just one long QTE, but instead of having QTE controls, you're controlling it like a standard platformer. And there is kind of like a rhythm to it. And some times where you kind of need to know what's coming in advance. Like, when you get trapped in the first level and suddenly the, like, fire drops from the ceiling, you have to know, stand under the platform or you'll take a lot of damage.

Right. Or there's lots of deterrence throughout the game to keep you moving. Either things are set on fire, things will collapse, or like... Mines explode behind you. I think at the third level, suddenly it's a poisonous mushroom just start growing behind you so you have to start running. It's ridiculous. It keeps a brisk pace, and it's very exciting, and it's always changing. And it's funny.

Like, I sat down and looked at the actual... Maps of the Levels on VG Maps.com. And yeah, there's not that much to them. Right. There's not that much to them, but they just feel huge. And they feel like there's so much happening. The Genesis long play is 12 minutes. Long play is 12 minutes.

Well, but like there are tough points. Like even in the first level last night and I was playing it, like it has this interesting use of slow, slow enemies and slow bullets. There'll be points where like these lumbering weird kind of like, you know, the little like walkers. There's like these slow walkers. There's like the little hopping robots with the Russian fur hats on. And then there's these guns that fire these waves of super slow bullets, which makes

it incredibly hard to dodge them. And like, it's just kind of, it's funny actually. Yeah, you're like, because Strider, here you is so fast and so nimble and can do so much. And then like there's these tiny little bullets just kind of poke across the screen. Also, I was really struck by, especially in the first and last stages, the Cold War aesthetic. It just like hits you over the... I mean, the last enemy is literally carrying a hammer and sickle. Right.

The first stage. You're fighting the Politburo. It's literally like fighting the American, the U.S. Senate. Evil robot, yeah, like, you know, like, Russian, you know. Well, Khazik. Khazik. Kossack. Kossack.

Yes, that guy. Anyway, yeah, it's very much a game of its time. Like I said, I mean, at this point, you know, basically the Soviet Union was breaking apart. So it was kind of, you know, like alternate future. where the Soviet Union kept going into the 22nd century or whatever. But that's fine. It's cool. It's wacky. It's zany. There's not really that much to say about the manga. I kind of gave the rundown of the whole thing already.

I don't know. Did you guys have a chance to read any of the scanzlation? I was looking at the art mainly because the scantilation was kind of hard to read. It felt like kind of like it was done a long time ago. But I like the art a lot. And by the way, the skull man guy you're thinking of is Ishinomori. Yes. Yeah, that's it.

Not Matsumoto. Yeah, I mean, it definitely has that kind of, like I said, that sort of 70s vibe. I don't dislike it. It's just so different from the arcade artwork, which is so stylish and cool. Yeah, it feels more 70s where the arcade is definitely like more of an 80. I mean, it is 80s, but it's more of the 80s anime look. So, yeah, I mean, the manga came out. It was published.

It was never released in the U.S. There's a collection that if you can find sells for a pretty good amount of money. But, yeah, the real sort of key to Strider's success is the arcade version. And that was designed by a guy named Koichi Yotsui, who he's kind of quirky. I've interviewed him once. Really? For what? It was a couple, was it last year?

Last year or the year before at BitSummit. He was, I can't remember what game he was promoting. but that was last year and I missed his presentation and asked for like a quick like so what were you showing and he basically gave me his presentation in this 15 minute interview slot so I had like two minutes to ask him questions so it kind of sucked I was looking at his resume and the last things he did were puzzles for zero time dilemma and he also his his last I guess full game was Tokyo crash mobs oh really okay yeah yeah which is a really weird match game where you throw people at other people in, uh, they're like in line for things in Tokyo.

I remember that. Yes. Okay. So he's one of those guys who makes made some really quirky and interesting games and kind of seems like he doesn't like video games all that much. He was very reclusive for a long time and it's only been in the past like, I don't know, 10 years or so that people have kind of figured out who he was and started interviewing him and kind of pulled him into the public. But he was kind of reclusive for a long time and there weren't any interviews with him. He went under the alias Isukei, and no one knew who Isukee was, and it took a while for that to come out. Wasn't he an artist before he was designer on Strider?

Something like that, yeah. But, you know, he, I think Strider was one of his very first game creations, and he took a very unconventional approach to the game. And it is just this sort of fully integrated content where it just feels like all the pieces fit together, the animation, the artwork, the style, the controls, the mechanics, the physics, the world design. It felt weird because it felt like just like a series of scenes, a series, like almost like someone had just taken a film and laid out like, oh, here's all the scenes that are going to happen and just lay them out and it almost never lets up. Because back then, stages inside scrolling action adventure games were more empty and just like a lot of basic enemies with very basic AI, whereas this was really set pieces. And you're right, like it's the uncharted of its time. And it kind of changed the way we have expectations for side scolding action adventure games.

Yeah, there's a, there's a, you know, I feel like Strider is basically a 30-hour action game, like what you'd play now in 3D, condensed into about 15 minutes. Right. And you have like an upgrade system in this arcade game. But I'll say, there's no, there's no, there's no economy. As a kid, you're not collecting zenny. So as a, unlike in Strider, too. But in this one, as a kid, I was always baffled because the power ups, except for like, the one that makes your sword stronger are just a bunch of like kanji

and they're like, you just kind of figure out what they do. It was very vague. I mean, Strider himself, like he's referred to as Strider, hear you in the game in the audio, but the game is just called Strider in America. With a bunch of kanji behind the title screen, yeah.

Right, but you don't, you don't, that's not explained in any way. It has this kind of like opacity to it. You know, we were talking about how each of the characters speaks in a different language. And that is like the, the methodology that is applied to the entire game, it doesn't go out of its way to explain itself.

I think that's part of what I liked about it. It was opaque. It was mysterious. Like, you know, the bad guy was laughing at you over and over again in the attract mode. Like, it's like hideous laughter that echoing in my mind. You're like, who is this guy? Like, you know, part of me, I love things that are inscrutable,

things that don't explain themselves fully. Things were like, they invite you in. And then it's up to the user to really figure out what's going on. I think, as a young kid, this drew me to that. Every level is introduced with just like a little subtitle that says where you are. and each one is introduced with like a different typeface. So when you paraglide into Cossack SSR, it's in that font. Yeah, it's in like Cyrillic.

So you can, it's not proper Cyrillic, but it's Cyrillic. Whereas like the Amazonian jungle is all scrawled weird. Right. And then the third moon is written in like basically like Nordic ruins. Yeah, you know, there's just like an aesthetic completeness to this title at a time when that was rare. Yeah, it doesn't go out of its way to explain itself. But you get little hints, like when, you know, the interstitial little, not even cutscenes, but just like little surreal blurbs of text and images. They came from the third moon.

Yeah, like they don't explain what the third moon is. But, you know, Grandmaster Mayo says, he will never leave Eurasia alive. And you're like, wow. So is Eurasia a country? Is this like, is this like 1984? What's the name of your rival, like the escaped strider? Solo? Oh.

He's like, he's like, I got you. That's solo, but he's not a strider. He's like a bounty hunter who flies around in a gap back. He's like Boba Fett. Yeah, basically. The arcade game took none of the manga content? No, nothing whatsoever. Not even like characters or anything like that?

It's all original. Maddick is not in there. Sheena's not in there. Cain's not in there. Strider 2, the proper Strider 2, does incorporate, I think, Strider Cain. Is that right? It does. Yeah, so there's a little bit of that.

But yeah, like the manga content and the NES game content, those are almost like their own little pocket universe or something. They have nothing to do whatsoever with the arcade game. The arcade game, the premise is, apparently, if you do research on the strider wiki, that the grandmaster, the floating guy who kind of looks like Emperor Palpatine, has created a space station called the Third Moon that he hopes to use to basically re-engineer life on Earth. And his plan was to like take over the planet, but he didn't have any luck with that. So then he was like breeding dinosaurs to use as like his monstrous army. But he couldn't control the dinosaurs very well. So now his final plan is just like, I'm going to use the third moon to destroy all life on Earth.

And then I'm going to reseed the earth with new life that will be under my control. And so like in the end, when you're fighting Mayo, he's causing like monsters and stuff to materialize out of thin air. And that's like his life powers. But it doesn't explain any of this. Yeah, it's kind of just a boss rush at the end. But he has this giant nuclear reactors. you fight two of those. Clearly, some nuclear reactors,

anti-gravity reactors, which is much, much cooler because you fight them in anti-gravity. Yeah. I remember one of those was in the attract mode, too, I was like, I gotta get to that. But yeah, it was just weird, it was a weird, unique, crazy scenario,

globetrotting, strange places. Yeah, it was very evocative and it was not derivative. But there is kind of a But there is kind of like a structure to the way the game flows. You start out infiltrating Kazakh SSR, which is, you know, in the alternate reaction. the reality future is a Soviet part of the USSR. And so you go in and you fight and, you know, kill,

like you basically assassinate the entire government. And you're trying to find something. And then you have to escape. So you escape through Siberia and go through a nuclear power plant. And that, you know, you find your way up to an airship, the ballrog. I would say this was like one of the first times you, like where a whole level was basically on a giant floating fortress. That was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, it was kind of like our type, but instead of, you know, shooting down the fortress, you were infiltrating it and killing the guy at the end.

And then from there, you, like, find out that there's this whole plot and you go to the Amazon to figure out what's happening there because there's something's happening. So you fight through the Amazon, and then once you kill the dinosaurs, the Amazon... You're jumping between, like, Brachios' heads. It's great. Right, yeah. The Amazon's are like, oh, he's actually cool. By the way, there's, like, the space station you should go up there. So you go up to the space station and you kill the Grandmaster.

Well, in the final level, you know, unlike the rest of the game, it's kind of these weird, really difficult upside down platforming jumps. And it's just like, it's suddenly much more, you know, tense and structure than the previous levels, too. Right. So I was talking earlier about the, like, the upgrade system. And it's all very, like, fleeting. There's not, like, permanent upgrades, but you can get health upgrades and... Weapon upgrades, which makes your cipher longer or stronger for X number of attacks. but the health upgrades are like kind of temporary, like they'll be added on.

And you can also get these robot animals that we mentioned earlier. And these are the most important things, actually. And the robot animals are linked to a bar of your health. So like none of this is explained. But a bar of your health will change color. And if you lose that bar of health, then you lose the access to that robot helper. And some of the robot helpers are really obvious. And then like other ones, I remember as a kid, I was like, is that bird helping?

Oh, he is helping me. It's kind of vague. He's like, I guess, attacking enemies or something? In the distance, yeah. He'll, like, kill enemies. They, like, kind of circles around behind you. But you've got a hawk. You've got a panther.

You've got these little, like, you know, the little walking guys. But, yeah, like, laser beams. It gives you a sense as you're playing through that you do have these helpers, and it was unique and interesting and very 80s to have robots. But yeah, it just not, there's so much to this game.

It feels like a game that had a story Bible and, like, a lot written about it. Yeah. And then they didn't bother to explain any of that, which, you know, I'm a big fan of. I'm like, Give me a well-developed world and then don't sit down with a codex and explain everything. And, you know, I like having access to that after the fact through something like a fan wiki or a book, like an art book or something.

But this game, more so for me than many others were there, it left a lot of room to dream and think and, like, come up with stuff inside of this world. And then, like, the fact that the NES game was completely different and then there was only ever strided to, which we'll get to. But it was interesting that, like, this thing that Capcom made, which was ostensibly better than a lot of the other things, of the era that they remembered for, you know? And, like, it reminded me a little bit also of the Willow arcade game, which maybe there's been a retronauts about something. I don't think we've done it, yeah. But, like, that's of the same era.

You're talking about the arcade game, about the in the arcade game, right? That's another Capcom game. They're both cool. They're both cool. Yeah, nothing else like it. But, like, I felt like, again, like, more so than Mega Man, more so than Ghosts and Goblins, Strider was that unique thing that had that Capcom artistry that you expect

and, like, that charm. Because, like, there's not, you wouldn't think there's a lot of, of room for humor and strider, but there is. Like when he falls in the water with the piranha, like a billion piranha, like slowly glom on him as he slowly falls to the bottom. Or there's like one thing you ever mentioned, there's tons of secrets. Like as you're going through this game. Like the cow?

The cow, the Yasashi, like all these little things, all these barrels, like you're rewarded for making difficult jumps and just like slashing the air. Yeah, there's an entire mini boss in the first stage that you can bypass entirely if you make a pixel perfect jump. Yeah. If you're really good, you can leap right over this, this like pitfall trap. And you don't have to fight the strongman. You have to worry about the fire falling.

Yeah. So there's a lot of that throughout this game that rewards mastery. And, you know, I just always felt like this was this cool, interesting thing that you kind of had to play in the arcade until it came out on Sega Genesis. And even with that version, still like the arcade version is slightly better when you'll get to that Sega version. And also in the fight of Sega Genesis versus Super Nintendo, you know, this was out on Sega Genesis before the Super Nintendo existed. So it was kind of like a status symbol to have Arcade Strider at home. And I was really hoping that by the time this podcast was recorded that the X-68,000 that I'm trying to get up and running would be up and running because... I can't wait to play that version, dude.

That is the arcade version of Strider at home. Pause. I recently learned about this, like, you know, that weird Nemesis sequel that's only for that console. Do you have that game? Nemesis Kai? Yes. I do not. Because I will come to fucking North Carolina to play that game.

I will stay at your house. Okay. Well, I mean, my goal is to be able to load games from a Raspberry Pi lower. Because the real 68,000 games are very expensive. They are. The only games I have in package are Perodeus and Strider. Wait, back up, is that on a Japanese microcomputer? Yes.

The X68,000 is a... Sharp. This is kind of a sidebar, but it's worth mentioning because the X68,000 is a, you know, a Motorola 68,000-based computer. It was very powerful. It was pretty much like, you know, running on the same processor as an Amiga or a Macinty. or a Macintosh, but it was really kind of like an enthusiast, like a game enthusiast dream. Capcom used this architecture as the basis of their CPS1 arcade boards.

So they developed their games on X68,000, and games like Strider and I think maybe UN Squadron, Final Fight, all of these games are arcade perfect on X68,000, because it is the arcade game that they created on that platform. So if you have like the high-end version, the 30 model, I think the 14, is that what it's called, that runs on a 68030 or something like that, or 30 megahertz, 6800. I don't remember exactly what it is. But in any case, it's like super amazing. I really want to get this thing up and running. I need to get the disc drives working. But, yeah, like that's going to be, I've figured out how to get it streaming.

I'm going to stream some games from this system. It's going to be amazing. Is that a version of Shrider meant supposed to be better than Second Genesis, right? Yeah, I mean, it's arcade perfect. So, again, you know, you guys have made the case that the Genesis version had better graphics, but the arcade version had better animation. Yeah, it's better technology. And I've played the X68,000 version on someone else's system, and it's extraordinary. I think the arcade version has better color as well.

Yeah. I mean, the Genesis just didn't have as big color palette. But, yeah, like, that was the perfect home version. I can't wait to get it working, and I will let you know when I get Nemesis Kai. but yeah so where were we I mean I guess we're kind of leading up to the Sega Genesis and like it was a big deal like Sega promoted it Sega made a big deal a Sega of America as like this is a killer app this is and it was the first game to have these 6999 MSRP I was it because I already had a Sega Genesis at this point and like I was like oh man that's really

expensive so this was coming out around the same time as Fantasy Star 3 and like I couldn't afford them both, and I had to pick Fantasy Star 3 over a strider at first. That's very unbranded. What concessions did they make in the port? Because all I know about the Genesis version, like the time is like a very hard game, a very difficult game. Did they make, give you continues or like how did that work? I think they gave you a limited continues.

I think you could continue like five times maybe. Maybe there's a way to continue unlimited times actually. But it's known as being very, very difficult, right? Because it's like the arcade game, but you can't just keep feeding it money. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And like last night I was playing the arcade game on the Strider 2 version, which has

whole disc. And on that version, there's like, not, you know, with the mislabeled disc. Mislabel discs. And then, like, yeah, there's 10 different levels of difficulty on that arcade dip switch. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, which kind of surprised me. I was thinking it like four. I was thinking like, because sometimes I play Strider and I'm like, I just paste everything. And sometimes I get pasted. Well, and so knowing that there are 10 different difficulty dip switches, that explains a lot. And I would say the main gameplay complaint that I would levy against Strider is that like all of the bosses can be cheased by just hitting them a lot really fast. The actual strategy

The guy The commander on the ballrog You can actually kill him And stun lock him Before he actually attacks Yeah So like I don't even know what he can do Apparently he has attacks

But I don't know Like last night I got to the first boss With all of the robots And they literally killed it Before I could hit it You know It was kind of anti-climatic

I was like I wanted to hit it That's funny It Before we talk about ports and sequels, I want to talk about just the structure of the game. I want to go through each level because each level is an experience. It's not like, you know, it's not like your typical game where, you know, you're running through platforms and shooting enemies, and it's like, here's one enemy, now here's two of the enemy, now here's three of the enemy, now here's two of the enemy again, you know, it's nothing, it's nothing like that. It's like each screen is its own scenario, and each level has a completely different aesthetic from the other, aside from the final stage. I'd say one in five are kind of like set pieces.

Well, five is like, five is basically a compilation of everything you've done before. Right, but it actually brings back some of the visual components of the first stage. Right. That's what I mean. It, like, recompiles. I mean, it has stuff from the ball rock also. Yeah, it does. So the first stage we mentioned is Kazakh SSR.

And it's like a futuristic city with like laser beams, but you still got the onion domes and stuff. It's like cyber Russia basically. Basically like, you know, kind of a cyberpunk version of Red Square. Yeah. I wouldn't say punk. I would just say cyber. Just cyber. There's giant robots.

But you're basically like running along the rooftops in. in Russia. You hang glide in in like a robot glider. Or like a little lantern at the top of front of your glider kind of. Yeah, like you're a ninja. So, of course, you hang glide in. But you can do this like tumble in and there's robots with little bayonettas or bayonets, sorry. And they've got, you know, fuzzy Russian caps or furry hats, whatever you call those.

Well, and immediately, Strider's jump is very acrobatic and well animated. He's like really getting into it. Yeah, you can like jump straight out. But then you can do like this forward jump where he cartwheels in the air. You can also do a dash immediately, which is imperative, imperative later against Bosnia. You can do a slide attack. You can jump up and grab things and do like an overhand climb. You can stick to walls.

He's got like a dagger, not a dagger, like a knack. Yeah. Like a sickle. But not a Russian sickle, not a Soviet sickle. And you can stick into the wall and, you know, climb up the wall. He's just like incredibly acrobatic. You can do so much and it feels so fluid. And then, of course, you've got the cipher plasma blade where when you attack, you swing

with a sword. It's not just a boring sword stab. No, you create this, like, energy arc that fills up the screen. The satisfying sound effect. Shee. Yep. It's just really good. And you can kind of span that real fast.

Yes. Yeah, I mean, you just, like, immediately you feel like while you can do anything. More importantly, while you're jumping as well. Yep. Yeah, I mean, you really get the feeling like this guy is a ninja. He is like the 80s idea of a ninja. He's invincible. The idea that you can attack while jumping, you know, we take that for granted now.

But back then, it wasn't given. No. It wasn't. So anyway, yeah, it's a pretty great feeling of freedom. And you climb and you jump and you attack enemies and you go up to like this point where there's a, you know, a radio tower and the moons in the background. And that's the point where you can jump over a pit or go down into the pit and fight this like strong man who's basically like. Kind of Schwarzenegger, yeah. He like bust out of his clothes and then fire comes down.

Yeah, like you can fight him and he shoots electric attacks at you, I think. But you can also like spam your attack and kill him before he does. anything and then he explodes and if you're not standing in the right place you'll get damaged. And then finally you fight the Soviet Politburo that jumps out of their seats and creates this flying

it's an aeroboros. You miss a little mini-boss there's like a little defense system that shoots out reflecting lasers that will come back later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, once you get past, I mean that's just like an installation. It's not cool. Having like the entire Soviet government leap into

a robot centipede with a hammer and sickle flying around the air and you have to climb and jump along the body of the centipede. You can hang on right behind its head while attacking it. God, that's so cool. This game is so cool. I think one of the very minor tech things I mentioned earlier that's in the NES version, but in the arcade version definitely is like all the angles you walk on just to show up the

scaling of the sprite. So it's like his animations will change as he walks on different terrain, but he'll also like, you know, angle backwards or forward slowly. Yeah, there's lots of like 45 degree angles. Yeah, and it's not just like his sprite rotates 45 degrees. he kind of balances himself by leaning backward into the angle. It's really, really thoughtful. Like, yeah, Yotsui put so much thought into the design of this game.

I love it. So then you end up in Siberia, and this is probably the most cinematic of all the stages. There's so much traversal. Like, it feels like two stages. Yeah, I mean, you fight your way into a base, pass some wolves. Okay, that's neat. But then inside the base, there is a giant, like, King Kong robot that punches you and beats its chest

and when you destroy it then again fire drops from the ceiling and you have to like climb up a shaft to get to the top and once you get to the top you have to go down a hill

that is laced with mines that you can't see because they're under snow but as you're running the hillside is exploding behind you so there's no stopping there's no turning back you've got to run run

run and then there's like a little lip over a pit and you have to jump just right over the pit you do your spinning cartwheel in the air and this man And then you get to a power station where suddenly it's a blackout.

Like the screen turns black and you can see like your silhouette against the background. But then there's these bursts of electricity that illuminate everything and bring the color back for a split second. And I remember the first time I saw that. Just like I hadn't really seen that in a game before. You know, like where it takes something and creates a stark silhouette to like change your perception of what you're looking at in this very artful way. I mean, this was like, you know, the 2010 era. like 2D platformer in silhouette, Donkey Kong Country Returns kind of thing

in 1989. It was just like, you know, a filmic, cinematic approach to storytelling in the middle of the second stage of this game. At this point, I remember, you know, Walmart, age 10 playing this,

being like, wow, this shit's amazing, right? Like, yeah. Right, and you get up to the top and all of a sudden this guy on a jetpack like flies down and starts attacking you. He's the guy who's like, I got you. You've seen him briefly in the first stage.

Yeah. Did you see him in the first stage? You do. where is he briefly he in the first stage he that guy flies down for like a hot second and you hit him once I just played the last night what I swear dude maybe it's the beginning of stage two I think it's in stage too you had seen him before him once and then he comes back later in the stage yeah maybe that's it's it once before that time right yeah like he shows up and then he comes back again to harass you and he's like a he's not explained but he's a bounty hunter that's been hired by the grandmaster to kill you but you kill him because that's what you do because you're strider hear you um but then Like, this is all one stage. You get up to the top and you have to climb up to an airship across platforms. Yeah, there's four flying... You know, the missile stage in Supercontra.

It's kind of like that except two years before Supercontra. Yeah, there's a little flying helicopter crash. You have to make you way through like five of them up to this flying fortress. Yeah. And you get up there and then all of a sudden there's these three Chinese acrobat sisters who just go after you and start like leaping around the screen. They have like plasma with their kicks. Well, and I'll say that that encounter at first.

is really overwhelming and then you kind of realize you just have to really be aggressive and overwhelm them because there's guns coming at you and then you have to go and kill the guy who's flying the airship after killing those three acromats. Yeah. I thought he was, oh yeah, yeah. He's just like this guy who's just like standing there. He doesn't attack or anything. He's literally piloting the air. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like the saddest little thing. But you're your strider here. You're an assassin. You've got to kill people. But all that is one stage. It's crazy how much variety they put into there. And something I didn't mention is the fact that the music is paired to the individual sections of each stage. Like, the music is very dynamic and shifts, and it has, like, movements. It's kind of like, you know, a John Williams score in that it adjusts to the current scene.

And I don't mean, like, you know, the Monkey Island style, like, dynamic music where it adds new instruments. Like, the actual music changes. And there's probably like five or six different melodies for each stage that change according to the segment of the stage you're in. Yeah, and I'll say some of the music incorporates kind of, like, found sound effects and voices and stuff, too. It's not your traditional video game score also. I mean, it's, I don't know, I had it on CD for a while, and it's pretty traditional,

but it uses a lot of interesting percussion and changes styles. Well, and like, there are voice of events in the game through, especially, like, you know, like in the jungle and stuff, but, like, some weird sound effects and weird sirens and weird piston sounds and stuff that really add to it, yeah. So, anyway, that's not even halfway through the game. So anyway, that's not even halfway through the game. Stage three is a bigger airship. I see that someone's made some notes.

John Harris dropped into the notes after helping out with a roguelike episode and put in a bunch of quotes, such as, you idiot, we control the world as long as there is the flying battleship ballrog. You must be joking. You are sending a toy into battle. So this is kind of like the platformer version of R-type. You know, the big battleship, stage three of R-type, here's the big battleship, the stage three of R-type. Here's the big battleship, the stage three of Strider. But you go inside the battleship by just smashing the hell out of the main artillery cannon, like the super weapon on top. And then you sneak into it.

But the highlight of the stage is definitely the anti-gravity core. Talk about it. I've been going on for so long. Please talk someone else. You see this, you know, you come into this area and there's this giant thing and there's like, you know, giant atoms like flying around it. And, like, Strider immediately gets, like, sucked into its orbit. And you're kind of flying around, being, you know, being whipped around by it, attacking it, trying not to be thrown off the screen.

Because it can actually, like, kind of throw you out of the play field and kill you in one hit. I don't think it kills you, but it damages you. No, it kills you one hit. I was playing it last night. Yeah, you like go, you go faster as you spin around it. Yeah, you have to kind of, like, control yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

It's really, like, it's like nothing else I'd ever seen in any video game. And, you know, in the years after this, you would start seeing, like, reverse gravity, like in Mega Man 5, Gravity Man, and then Metal Storm for Enes. Right. But this is the first time. But this was, this wasn't even that. This was not like, oh, you're going, you're facing up or you're facing down. This is like, you are spinning 360 degrees. Your sprite is constantly twisting.

Your orientation and how you use your weapon is shifting. So you're trying to attack this gravity core with your sword. But the thing is your orientation, like the direction you're facing. keeps shifting and it's really challenging. If you don't get there with good health and some robot buddies and a strong sword, you probably will die the first time. You know, because it's kind of a nerveing

and disorienting. Yeah, I mean, just having like, you really want to have the cypher length upgrade so that it's easier to hit this thing as you're like spinning around in the air. But you're right. At the time it was a new feeling. Like a game had never, like, thrown my character around and played with gravity that way and taken

control away from me and maybe fight against this force. It was like, you know, very fresh feeling. Yeah. It's a really, really cool kind of set piece and it's definitely the highlight of that stage. They bring it back. They're like, oh, remember this cool thing we did? They put a lot of work into the programming on the design, so I'm not going to blame them. Also, it's really cool, so that's fine.

Anyone else would just build a whole game around that idea, but that's just two things in stride area. They've got so many other things to do in this game. They can't waste their time doing that. In the early 80s, that idea would have been the whole concept for like a single screen game. Yeah, totally. It would have been called like Air Reactor or something. thing. But no, no, that's not the end of the stage. You blow that up and you still got to go beat

the boss. And this is the guy that I was talking about who like has some attacks, but you know, you stun lock him every time you attack him. So you just like, wait, is this the guy who we did the end? He's like, he's trying to escape and he's attacking other people to get off his escape. Yeah, yeah. He's like a cowardly air pirate. Yeah. By the time you get this whole thing is crashed. The whole ship is crashing. And he is getting the last escape boat. And he's like throwing his own guys off of it. My robots killed him before I even attacked him. Right.

This game has so much personality thrown into something so incidental. Yeah, that point actually I thought was funny because it's very anime. It's very like, oh, wait, this bad guy is a douchebag. You know, like... You know what it is. It's cool. It is cool. So, yeah, like, then there's a total 180.

You go from this high-tech flying fortress to the Amazon, the jungle. But, you know, even there, it's, there's like weird tech and stuff happening because the boss at the end is a robotic Tyrannosaurus rex. A totally weird, cool-looking robot Yeah, it's like, it's kind of like man, how would I even describe it?

It kind of reminds me of those It looks like a Star Wars battle droid 10 years before Phantom Anna. You know in the Star Wars special editions where they added like the power lifter droids to Tatooine? It reminds me of that guy. It's kind of like angular and flat

and kind of beige-ish. Yeah, very strange, cool design. Not a very hard boss, but like at the time where we're seeing it and being like, wow, that's really badass looking.

Yeah. I see John added a note about the Amazon women in this section originally had pixel graphics for a breast exposed, but that is covered up

in-game with a leaf sprite. I'll say when you... It's probably just as well. Throughout this entire level, those Amazonian women are like saying crazy weird voice events and when you kill them, they're like a pretty intense scream

every time. Yeah, so like your, your platform forming through these like springy vines and tree branches while poisonous mushrooms are popping up behind you and pressing you along. And then you have to like jump across brachiosaurus, I guess, while avoiding piranhas that are leaping out of water. Some smaller biped dinosaurs too. Right. And then the Amazons are attacking you because, you know, you're invading their territory and they're basically under the Grandmaster's Thrall, apparently.

Then once you kill the robot, they're like, oh, okay, thanks, buddy. and so they lead you on to the third moon. But, you know, there's dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs are, like, huge, and they seem cool. But then the T-Rex robot shows up and, like, burns a dinosaur into ash. And that's when you're like, oh, this is serious. I always like this level because it's kind of lighthearted. It's a nice kind of, you know, departure from the rest of the game. It's a little easier than the rest of the game, too?

Sort of. I mean, you have to kind of get into the right rhythm. It's, like, if you can't. If you jump between the Brachosaurus, it's easy. But if you get off the Brackosaurus. Yeah, like, if you try to, try to, navigate the trees on those springy vines, it's tough. It's really tough. But yeah, it's just, it's interesting. And then the, the Amazons have different attacks. Like they have boomerangs and they have

Axes or something. Yeah. Yeah. There's like three or four different kinds. Yeah. So there's a lot of variety within this one type of character. And they have dinosaurs, by the way. Also very big in the 80s, robots and dinosaurs. They really were. Huge. And then finally, you end up at the third moon, which is a space station, which seems to be comprised basically of chunks of Kazakh SSR and the ballrog, and there's a, you know, like all the bosses show up again. You know, playing this again last night, my only complaint is the stage is short. I always, like, it always felt a little anticlimactic. You know, the last boss is cool.

The boss rush is rewarding, but the stage is a little brief. It is, but it doesn't need to be long. And the Grandmaster is really, really difficult. Yeah. Because he flies around and there's like electricity zapping through the chamber. High damage. And also he causes. He causes, like, piranhas to materialize out of thin air and fly at you.

It's like, what the hell is happening here? It's so weird. And he's actually not that tough. No. Just actually landing a blow on him is really hard. Like all other bosses, you basically just, like, spam him with the attacks really, really, really, really fast. Yeah. You defeat him and you ride off on a whale, and it's great.

Makes sense. You know, we mentioned, you know, the interstitials, but we didn't really explain them. But basically between every stage, There's just like this, this, like, three quick images with a little bit of dialogue. They go really fast. They go really fast. I actually wanted to take pictures of them last night and they were all gone. Yeah.

And there's, like, voiceover that overlaps and it's all in different languages. And none of it necessarily makes any sense. Like, when you sit down and actually have the story explained to you, you're like, oh, okay. But it's just enough to kind of make you intrigued like something's happening here. Again, it's that whole, you know, this game does not explain itself for you. There's stuff happening. and you are pulled in and you're just along for the ride

but you don't really know what it's all about. It's true. It leads a lot to interpretation. It's like a crazy movie where crazy shit's happening, nothing really ever gets explained, and it's just cool? That's exactly the word I was looking for. Thank you, Shane. It's cool. I really love this game.

What do you guys think? I mean, obviously, you're a fan. So I kind of rediscover, I mean, I've always been a fan, but I really did rediscover it last night and kind of put it in its place in history and realize, at the time that it came out it was very influential and like

it is more of a Sega game I kind of brought it back to that. It's like I felt like it was this dude of Capcom tried like out Sega Sega and kind of doing something better in a way than Sega Capcom Damco or Konami had done at that time. Like I would

challenge you to come up with an arcade game action adventure game that did these things better. I mean in the U.S. it was released contemporaneously with Altered Beast for Genesis Right. I like Alter Beast. Compare those two games.

So I'm a huge fan, actually, of Alter Beast and Golden Axe in the arcade. I would liken this more to Revenge of Shinobi. I think Revenge of Shinobi is one of the best action-adventure games of this era. It's not an arcade game. It's a home game only, right? Super Shinobo. But it just did not have this level of presentation. In some ways, it does.

No, it doesn't. Well, it has 10 times the content. I mean, I could argue, but there are a few games in this era that, like, did presentation, gameplay, animation, you know, and a unique point of view. like Strider. Like Strider is really pretty, pretty unique. Yeah, definitely. I was never, I mean, I was playing arcade games at this time and playing video games,

but I never encountered this arcade machine ever. I don't think I have yet. I don't think I've seen it. Really? It was in my Walmart's lobby. That's weird. It's the one arcade game, one of the popular ones I didn't see. So I knew it as an ES game until Strider 2 came out for the PlayStation.

That was your first blushed at Strider. Yeah, the first time I played the arcade game. and I understand why, but I don't have the same nostalgia for it that you guys have. I wish I was around for it because similar Capcom and Konami games did give me the same effect, but I just never encountered this one at the time. Yeah, around the time that this came out, it was at an arcade in my local mall, and it was at the front. Like when you walked past the arcade, this was for at least like three months.

This was the game that was facing out. The other games that kind of enjoyed that honor were Ninja Gaiden, you know, I'm trying to think final fight. Later, it would be Street Fighter 2. But I would say Strider was not as popular as the brawlers of the era. It wasn't as popular as like TMNT, X-Man. I mean, it was right there at the front of the arcade. I'm telling you, like, it was where I lived, like Texas was totally into Strider. Well, by me in Kentucky, it was fronted, and there were, you know, a crowd of people who liked it, but it wasn't the number one hottest game.

on the block, but it was like all the cool kids were in Destrider. Yeah, I don't even think I knew it was an arcade game until I got the internet because on the NES box, it doesn't say based on the arcade hit or whatever, like it would normally say. I mean, they could still lie. I mean, even with games that didn't have arcade games that they were based on, it would say arcade action. It's funny, you know, we're going to segue to the NES version here in a bit, but like, I don't know

anybody who, like, that's their favorite game. At the time, me and my friends, we enjoyed it. It was like an 8 out of 10, but it was not the game that we liked in the arcade. And it wasn't as good as other protometric baby is on end, yes. Thank you. All right, so we talked a lot about the arcade game, which was, dare I say, cool. But then there was the NES game, which came out basically at the same time as the arcade game.

That was the crazy thing to me. I was like, wow, this game is, I've just been playing into the arcade, and here it is on NES. That was kind of an era where, like, two simultaneous teams working on Ninja Guide and NES and Arcade. That happened, like, you know. Occasionally. It was pretty rare. It was pretty rare. But it was confusing, too, because we all thought, oh, maybe this is the strider that we saw in the arcade.

108, it's completely different. Ninja Guy then got OVA. Yeah, yeah, how come this didn't? We missed out. Yeah. Anyway, so the NES game is based heavily on the manga. And it's, you know, he said like a proto-Metroivania, and it totally is. And I'll say at this point, you know, us American NES fans in the 88 through 91 era,

there were a lot of these going around from Zelda 2, you know, Guardian legend to Castlevania to, to Goonies 2. I would say this more resembles Clash at Demonhead, where it's like a lot of sort of self-contained areas. Bionicamando. I mean, this is what they would do for, yeah, Bionicamando is a good one, like Order of Ecclesia, where you've got like sort of discrete sections of the world. That's true. They don't all actually connect on one 2D map.

You're going in and out of various 2D maps. Yeah, there's a hub, which is a very cool dragon spaceship that you warp up to and then warp down from. and basically the world is unlocked as you find data disks, which basically gives your teleportation machine a new destination. And so you do some backtracking. You go back to places you've already been. But for the most part, you're kind of like unlocking new areas, going and finding new data disks,

destroying the Zane machine in that area, and getting little nuggets of story. But as cool as it all was, at the same time, it was weirdly disappointing because Strider was small, he didn't animate very well. It didn't really feel like Strider in the Arcangor. Yeah, it definitely didn't. But a bigger problem is just this game feels unfinished.

It's really unpolished. Yeah. Which is surprising because it is an internal Capcom game. It's a little janky. From 1989. By this point, what else did they release in 1989? Oh, that's right. Mega Man 2, which was polished to a spit sheet.

Right. And I remember at the time, it was so good. Mega Man 2 was so much better than Mega Man 1. And I love Megamintu so much. This did feel unpolished and unfinished to my young self even. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was like 13, 14 at this point. So, you know, I was almost to be like, huh, this feels janky.

But going back to it, I'm like, why does this cartridge have load times? That's weird. I walk into a room and the system like goes blank for five seconds. I was like, did this crash? Oh, no. It's just low times. And it was weird because at this point, like we kind of, you know, associated Capcom with like triple A status third party. There's no such thing as...

No, but the time, it had already become a thing where, like, you know, they had... Don't rewrite history in a bad way. I would disagree. At this time, both, like, you know, Konami and Capcom had adopted their unique box art formats. And, like, as a consumer, you kind of expected a certain level of quality from these titles. And I felt like Strider didn't quite meet that level for me as a kid, which was weird, because, like, at that age, you kind of like everything. I was wondering if it was, like, a budget or a scheduling issue with how efficient the game is, because I was looking at the credits. And the director is also the director of Mega Man.

three. Yeah, I mean, it's like a really talented team. Maybe they were working on that at the same time. It could have been like splitting their time between two projects. Yeah, I don't know. It just feels, I kind of feel like they just like said, we just got to ship this thing and get it out the door. Capcom of NES, you know, for every dark ducktails, there's a California grazes grape escape. I mean, that was at least canceled.

They didn't have decency to do that with Strider for NES. Congratulations. Not the Strider NES is that bad, but it just, it feels really janky in a way that is uncharacteristic of Capcom at this time. Well, oddly, I don't really have a desire to revisit it either so much. No, it doesn't play that well. Like, one of the big complaints I have is that it relies on controls and mechanics that are really unpolished and inconsistent.

Like, the combat feels really weird. Like, sometimes you'll attack enemies and it won't register and the enemy will hit you and you'll, like, be kind of knocked into the air and you'll just kind of float up there. Again, like, I think it's missing the fundamental thing that was really great about Strider, which was fun to control and fun to fight. You were strider in the arcade. You were here you. You had such perfect control over him.

Whereas in this, it's like... Some guy. Why is this man floating around? I can't control him. I like his high-stepping run animation. Oh, yeah. It's like his two-frame or so. Yeah.

I mean, do you think at Calcom that kind of knew this didn't quite hit the market? Let's not even bother putting this out for Famicom? I don't know. It's, I mean, it must have been like, let's not put this out in Japan. This would ruinous. It really did get like eights and sevens at the time. But I think it was kind of a gift because we all wanted to like it so much. Maybe it's more of a six, really.

The real complaint I have is that the game really depends on the triangle jump, leaping off walls, bouncing. You know, like Batman for NES, Ninja Guyden was doing this at around the same time. Strider did it too, and it sucks. Whereas the, like the... Yeah, it's hard to perform. It's really hard to perform. It's like, you know, the wall jump in Super Metroid takes some practice. But once you get it, you've got it.

This you never get. It's always a crap shoot And you will always like Make three jumps But you needed to make four And you fall And you have to try it all over again I'm curious

Is Strider for Nios like valuable? No It's not really No Like even in Japan Where it was never released To complete in bucks copy is like 30 bucks

Oh yeah I don't really I've never met anybody who stands for it Who's like oh man It's actually better Like no that doesn't exist Like nobody Nobody out there is gonna

ride or die For Strider Enios Yeah I mean I think they really Tried hard with this game Like coming up with the concept, and then it just didn't come together for whatever reason. I don't understand.

It's disappointing. It's not bad, but it's also not what it should have been. It really is kind of there with like Street Fighter 2010 in the analysis of who cares. Yeah. But on the other hand, well, at least Street Fighter 2010 is a really polished game. It's like really... Would you venture to say it's better? It's better, yeah.

Damn. Yeah. No, Street Fighter... You went there? Street Fighter 2010 has a strong, like, good frame rate. It feels solid. Whereas this feels like a Macronix game. It's less janky.

This feels like a Macronix game. I was surprised Capcom develop this. Yeah, it's not great. Street Fighter 2010 has really cool graphics. It has an interesting premise. It's janky in a way, but it's good. Okay, you've been defecating all over Strider NES for a while. But I don't hate it.

It's better than Strider 2, the U.S. goal thing. Journey into darkness exists to make Strider NES look better. I don't really want to talk about this game that much. No, and again, again, like in 1990, what? two, three, when is this? What year is this? What year are we in? You know, I didn't even bother to write it down.

But when it happened, when this game got announced, everyone I know, including myself, was like, bull shit U.S. Gold. Yeah, I mean, this was a game that basically started out as something else entirely, and they used, there was a company who had... How? How?

They had developed the, I want to say, Amiga port of Strider, US Gold, Tier Techs, and they used Strider Placeholder graphics. And at some point, like, someone of the company was just like, oh, let's just use the Strider license that we have. Capcom's like, please write the checkout to Capcom.

Yeah, Capcom was like, well, hey, it's still better than, you know, high-tech expressions, Mega Man, so whatever. I want to quote Ray Barnholt by saying more like UK Brown. I mean, it is kind of weird because Strider was a big deal among enthusiasts, as I said. It was like two-page, you know, magazine spreads from Sega of America, a reason to buy a console. And like, Capcom's like, let's just make a quick buck. I was super envious of this game for, you know, like, I. I had a Super Nias, not a Genesis, so I couldn't play it.

But then I finally played it and said, hey, I didn't miss out on anything. Wait, so you played Strider 2 before you played Strider? No, no, no, no. No, I, no, when Strider... When the original Strider came out in the arcades, I was playing it constantly. But you didn't have a Sega Genesis. Right, so years later... So you played Strider 2 for Super Nintendo before you played Strider on Genesis.

What? We're talking about Strider 2. For Super Nintendo? It came out for Shriver 2. No, it didn't. It was only Sega Genesis. It was only Sega Genesis. Oh, I thought maybe...

It was on Amiga 2 on. Sega and Sega Genesis. Well, because I'll say, when Strider 2 came out, Super NES had Run Sabre. Which was a cool two-player version of Strider that's better than Strider 2. So when Strider 2 came out from U.S. Gold on the Sega Genesis, I knew better. Like, I knew this was a charlatan. This was, like, a lie waiting to make me sad. And I was not going to even waste my money renting it.

And, like, I think I made them put it into, like, the display unit at my EB so I could try it. and I played it for five minutes, and, like, it was garbage. And I remember being perplexed and confused and betrayed. It's like Blastermaster 2 or something like that. Right. What, Black Master 2 is better. Like, I feel like I've still owed an apology, an apology for Shrider 2. The apology is that it will never be compiled on any release ever, and it's forgotten by history. I mean, have you actually tried to play this game?

Not lately. Like I said, when I finally got to play it on emulation, I was like, whoa, dodged a bullet. Thank goodness. Is there a Game Gear and a Master System version? I would think so in Europe. I guarantee I guarantee there's a master system version come on

yeah there probably is there's a master's version of like you know Sonic triple trouble sure why not but anyway that was not the real strider 2 the real strider 2 happened about five years later

and it was released by Capcom but apparently you didn't know that it started out as an arcade game so last night I busted out of Strider 2 for PS1 which I had not played since you know a few years after it came out Mr. PlayStation does not know the true secret of

So how, what was the gulf between the arcade version and the PS1 version? So the arcade version of Strider 2, true strider true, true strider 2. Wow, say that three times fast. The original version was released in the arcade on whatever the name of the arcade board was, that was basically a PlayStation but with more RAM. I can't remember what it was called. You know, Saturn had the Titan, but I can't remember what the PlayStation board was called. There were like five games released on that system, but this was one.

So it basically had double RAM from the actual PlayStation hardware. So it ran smoother. There was less load time. Everything looked a little better. I've never played that version and I want to. But it did come to PlayStation in a dual pack with the original Strider. They got the silk screening on the discs wrong. So the Strider 2 disc is Strider.

And the strider disc is Strider 2. It's great. I'm actually holding Strider 2. And I love the main line on the back is the world's most heroic character returns. Like, who decided that? Well, you know, he came back, too. He came back because... I hate you.

I think that two is amazing because the two in these Stryger 2 logo is like the sword swipe. Kind of, yeah. It's a little corny. I don't know. I also want to let you know that the master system version of the Bad Strider 2 is just one of eight different versions of that game. Holy shit. There was a game gear one, right? So Super Nies is like the only system that didn't get a version and we lucked out.

Yes, yes. Awesome. I chose right. I chose well. Strider 2 at the time, I think you and I were both in the games journalism industry. at that point, right? At the time this came out? No.

No. Okay, well, some of us were. And, like, I think that, you know, we wanted it to be what Strider 1 was to us. And, like, it isn't quite that. But it does try very, very hard to hit those touchstones and make you remember what you liked about Strider. I mean, I did have a website where I reviewed Strider 2 and ECM from diehard game fan, rest in peace. wrote me a very, very angry email about my review. Just out of nowhere one day was like, you don't get this game at all.

You're totally missing the point. It's stupid. But, hey, have fun with your life. I think, well, I think I took a little poke at game fan in the, in the review. Not like super mean-spirited, but just like kind of making fun of it, the magazine a little bit. So it was fine. Like, he, he was within his bounds to poke at me back. Well, I mean, it's funny because...

But it's like the one interaction I ever had with ECM, so... After all this time had gone from Strider 1, it's like, what does one really won from a strider 2? And I guess I just want more Strider. And you do kind of get that. But what's strange about Strider 2 is the visual presentation. It is 2.5D to a fault in that, like, you are moving on a completely 2D plane. No, no, no. Oh, you're moving in a 2D plane, but it's polygonal...

But the backgrounds are completely polygonal. Like straight up on. All the characters, all the interactive elements are Sprites. Yes. And they're kind of like low-resolution, chunky PlayStation. Well, actually, they scale and it's awkward. Specifically, Strider, Sprite is like his Marvel versus Capcom sprite, but chunkier? Right.

So this is something I was, I was trying to say earlier, is that Strider 2 happened because of Marvel versus Capcom. Marvel versus Capcom stuck Strider in there with, you know, like Ryu. Well, he's a perfect fit. And Cyclops. And yeah, he totally fit. Like it was, you know, wow, perfect, awesome. Yeah, I can see Strider. fighting Hulk.

Why not? Some of his new moves from that are in this. Like at the very outset of this, you can do these crazy dashes. You can, like, you can double jump. Your weight, like, all the activity you could do this writer, it's like that times five. Like, you're very, very agile. This was the 90s version of Smash Brothers rehabilitating a character. Basically, like, you know, someone like...

Mr. Game and Watch of his time. Like, like, like, Mega Man, you know. Like, no one cared about Mega Man until he showed up in, well, not no one. But, like, he was a dead character until he showed up. in Smash Bros. Ultimate and or Smash Brothers 4. And all of a sudden, the kids were like, who's this cool guy, he's a robot who changes color and can do all kinds of stuff.

And so they made Mega Man 11. And so Strider 2 gives you at the beginning a little more cutscene, a little more like framing than you got in Strider 1. It also gives you a stage select screen. That's right. Yeah, you have like Rockman S. Four stages that you can choose from.

Three, okay, then there's a fourth. And then like each stage is kind of what you would expect from the strider lineage, a hodgepodge of crazy set pieces kind of all over the place. For example, in the first stage, which has like five set pieces, which are all over the place. There's like an Eindhunter futuristic city where you're like jumping across flying cars. Yeah, that's kind of the best part. You fight the three Chinese acrobat girls across like a blade runner-esque flying cars.

And then you fight the Eroboros again, right? Right. He's different. He's a dragon. There's kind of a reprise of the final fight of the first stage of Strider. That's the cover art of the Japanese version, which is so good. I really regret giving my copy away to Sam Kennedy. I was like, you love this game here.

You have this Japanese version. And I'll say, playing it again last night, like, it does have the things Strider fans want. It has the amazing gameplay. Even, like, you know, you have so many moves at your disposal at any time. And it rewards mastery even more so. There's like a million hidden things throughout the levels. And at the end of each level, it grades you on like seven different things and gives you an actual score. But you know what sucks gigantic ass about this game?

How small Strider is on screen. The low times. Also, I say two things. The low times are really really long. And Strider is very small. on screen. I don't care about strider being small. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. I don't care about that. But what I do care about is the fact that the original strider was so great because it's just like each stage is this seamless crazy cinematic experience. Strider 2 is like you play a chunk of the cinematic experience and then the screen does a wipe and then it comes back with this like spinning effect and then you're in the next stage and there's it loses that sense of continuity. There's a lot of scaling of the Stride 2 logo between as low. Yeah. There's there's there's it just loses that sense of continuity. and it feels much more like a segmented, broken experience. I would love for them to revisit this and smooth that over

and just give us like a strider 2 that flows like the original strider. And I would like this game probably 50% more. My least favorite thing about Strider 2 is the Zenny. It is completely bizarre. All this gigantic point. So, like, as you're fighting everything, as you're fighting everything, small, medium, large, extra large, giant crazy, ugly-looking, weird Sprite coins. Sprite coin Zeni from forgotten worlds.

Like, giant blue Zeni are popping out of everyone. Every Capcom game has to have Zini. It's very incongruous and, like, kind of hurt my brain. Bob, what is your least favorite thing about Strader 2? The fact that EGM slandered it. Oh, God. Didn't EGM give it all eight? I thought they were, everyone was complaining, I think, about the fact that you have

unlimited continues. It is easy. So if you don't have any self-control, you could easily go through the game really fast. Okay, old man Shane says, that's great. I like that. No, I like that too. I like that too. I would, I actually complained about the unlimited continues and I would like the game more if there were

like a throttle. You know, the email that ECM wrote to me was like saying, you just need to have some self-control, man. Like, don't hit continue and the game is harder. I'm like, well, I want some ability to continue, but maybe if they gave me like three continues

and said, challenge yourself. That would be interesting, but like the all-or-nothing approach, I don't really like that. I'll say last night after booting up Strider 2 for the first time in 15 years, I was like, I need to finish this game. I'm actually, it was weirdly like playing through Starter 1 and playing Strider 2 again last night. It was really wonderful and I actually kind of advise anybody who is listening to this podcast to actually play these games. Like, I think in this crazy perilous age we live in, it's hard to like bust out the PS3 and put it in a PS1 disc and watch that boot up.

But like when you do, you'll actually be happy that you did. Yeah. And Strider 2 is like there's some crazy. crazy shit in this game, just like in the original arcade game. Sorry, Bobby, you were about to say. Was the arcade game localized? Because I've never seen that either. Strider 2 arcade game.

I don't think so. Okay, I've never seen that. I know of the Strider 1 arcade game, but Strider 2 I've never seen. I do not snow strider, but I know of Strider. No, I've never seen it in person, but I would love to play it. I assume that there are no low times in this, in that arcade version. Now that I think about it, I think I might have actually played the arcade version at Super Potato potato back when the top floor was an arcade. I've seen some weird shit in Super Potato. Yeah.

Like the top floor used to be an arcade with the like the cartridge thrown and then the earthquake happened and they shut that down. Dude, what was that weird game? It was like a family and you're like playing different characters in the family and they talk and they had that for a while. It was like, oh, I don't know that way. It's like a navigation. Okay. Never came anywhere. Yeah, I don't know that one. But yeah, like I feel like this is almost a really good, great game because like you go and you battle your way into this like, you know, fortress. castle in Scotland, and then there's like an Arctic base where you have to fight a

robot woolly man. Those are the three levels you can choose in the beginning. And I imagine, I don't remember. I think I finished those stages and it'll unlocks three more, but I never finished this game. I think there's just one more, isn't there? Maybe it's only four stages. But it's definitely a unique relic of an era at the end it was kind of like the tail end of a certain

type of development in Japan, the kind of lost in time. I think a lot of people, you know, Melendos might not have ever seen this game. I think it's one worth tracking down. Yeah, I think the PS1 version is very expensive now. And I'm very sad that I don't own anymore. Also, I was going to say as I was booting up the PS1 version of Strider 1 that's on the second disc, I had never noticed before that you had to go into the options to turn on a newly arranged soundtrack. So I played through it last night with the newly arranged soundtrack, which is kind of like Red Book Audio.

It's really interesting and different and cool. Hmm. Interesting. I'll check that out. Yeah. So, anyway, Strider kind of vanished for a while aside from being a fighting game character. He was in Marvel versus Capcom, Marvel versus Capcom 2, where he's got to take you for a ride. He was in Capcom versus SMK, Cardfighters Clash. Was he?

Okay, well, who wasn't? He was in Marvel versus Capcom 3, Infinite. He was also in the PS2 Japan-only strategy game, Namco versus Capcom, which was the predecessor to Project X-Zone. He was not in the first Project X-Zone, but he is in Project X-Zone 2. And finally, most recently, Street Fighter 5 has an illusion to Strider in the form of Zeku, who apparently says, like, I'm going to start up a clan of assassins, and he's like Mongolian or something, which is where the Strider organization is founded.

Did not know that. Although, supposedly, the Strider organization goes back actually to the 19th century, so I think Capcom's doing some retconning there. Not that anyone really cares or should care. So there is one other thing we haven't talked about, and that is the Strider reboot in 2014. Yeah. Oh, God, that was five years ago.

That's almost retro. No, it was in the first year of PS4. I remember it. It was one of the first PS4 games. And that one's another one that's almost really good. I feel like they went back to the NES game and we're like, what if we made this work? And they almost pulled it off.

Was it double helix? Yeah, I feel bad for double helix because I feel like they just get all the IP no one wants anymore, like Silent Hill and Front Mission. Battleship. Yeah. Oh, they did that too? Didn't they do, was it Dead Space 3? Not Dead Space.

Lost Planet 3, didn't they? No, it was not. but I remember so like I also feel bad for them because they were acquired by Amazon and when I was that game got canceled but now they're on by Microsoft so they're by Microsoft now okay yeah well I guess they made Killer Instinct right yeah the game they made for Amazon breakaway it broke away without ever coming out yeah I went to three preview events for that including the grand opening of Amazon Game Studios which I guess never did anything no they have other things coming okay they're going to come into your home and just leave the game

in Amazon Game Studios released a game earlier this year on PS4 based on on that British racing show with the funny people. They did, okay. Weird. The Grand Tour. The Great British race off. The Grand Tour.

To get it for it. Anyway, so the reboot. Did you guys play this one? Briefly. No. I hate to say this, but it looks kind of cheap to me in a way that a lot of these...

It's a downloadable game. Yeah. It plays better than it looks. Yeah, yeah. It seemed like, you know, it got the job done in a way, but I played it briefly. It didn't quite take from me.

It didn't quite gel. Like, it starts out, I think, pretty strong. But the problem I have is that toward the end, they just make some fundamental mistakes. Like, they want you to do a lot of backtracking through the world. And they don't have any kind of fast travel system or, like, a teleportation. You know, Symphony of the Night got this right in 1997. They said, hey, what if we gave you some teleported rooms? Just like five or six around the castle.

But it'll cut the time and you won't have to spend as much time. traversing. Strider does not do that, and some of the pathways through the game are really vague. I remember the final hours of the game were basically just me running back and forth through places I'd already been, trying to figure out, like, I'd have to go over there, but how the hell do I get there? Because the pathfinding is not obvious. It was very frustrating, and it kind of a really bad way for the game to end.

I'm kind of impressed you made it all the way through, because this was, you know, I reviewed it. This was the post-spound of Commando Rearmed era, and I felt like this kind of took that template. And, you know, I think a lot of remakes happened around this era that were good, good enough, you know, but not necessarily, you know, spirited or, you know, full of inspiration. I mean, rearmed was excellent, whereas this was

just kind of like, perfunctory. And I wouldn't say perfunctory. It just kind of, it just needed more time in the oven. But, you know, it could have been a dollar downloadable game. But it could have been a lot worse. That's the kind of feeling I had. It was like, oh, this is, you know, it does the thing, it is a strider game. It doesn't bad. It just, you know, it doesn't bring anything new

to the equation. Right. Did, did, uh, did anybody care is my question because I think people were there for the Bion of Commander Rearmed, reboot, but I don't know what the state of Strider nostalgia is. And it doesn't, I mean, for us, it doesn't matter if people care. We like these games, but I wonder, like,

was there a market for it at all? I think, unfortunately, not really. I think it, you know, benefited from being one of the first games on Next Gen at that point with Xbox 1 and PS4, but I think that ultimately, like, if you think of it with the arc of what we talked about here for the last two hours, it's like, Strider was cool with a very small click of cool,

people who were paying attention, but it never really broke out of that in the way that like a Castlevania, Mega Man, Metal Gear did. Yeah, I mean, it was always kind of niche, kind of its own little thing. People liked them in Marvel versus Capcom, but maybe not enough to hunt down the game. And the Strider reboot happened kind of in between Marvel versus Capcom games. And I say once Capcom had Devil May Cry, they don't really need another action adventure hero like Strider. I think also because it's owned by another entity, it's not as probably.

profitable to pursue games of that character. Wait, does the manga artist still have some ownership on it? Yeah, Motu Kikaku. Oh, right, his name is always on it. Well, that's probably part. It's not a person that's like studio. Still, that's probably part of why we don't see more games. No, I'm sure.

Every time you see Strider, you see like copyright, Motokikaku. So that doesn't help. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, I feel like if the game had come along sooner, if they had struck sooner, it would have had more cachet, like when the retro revival craze was first happening. It's funny, like I wonder, had there been like a really good Super Famicom version of Arcade Strider, maybe things could have gone differently? I don't know. I remember, you know, kind of suggesting to KG. Inafune a long time ago when I was at One Up and interviewed him about something that he brings Strider back.

I remember there was some anecdote about how there was like a property that he revived because he saw someone had a business card with like that character on it. He was like, oh, there's still interest in this. So he started looking into reviving it. So when I interviewed him, I, like, drew on my one-up business card, I drew Strider. And then at the end of the interview, I was like, here you go, here's my business card. And he had to laugh about that, but it didn't bring back the series. I mean, it's fine, though, I earlier mentioned Shinobi because, like, of that same era, to me, like, you know, Super Shinobi and Strider were similar quality. And, like, Sega did successfully bring Shinobi back in PS2 era.

And it didn't really matter. Like, even though there were two good games back then, like, ultimately, like, here we are 10 years later, no one cares. Yeah, I mean, Shinobi, then Kunuichi, and then what happened? Right. It's like, you know, I feel like, never say never. I feel like Strider will come back, but I worry that there aren't the groundswell of Strider fans to make him break out into, like, the mainstream. I mean, I'd be happy with a Strider 2 remake that just like perfects it and that's all I want. If Strider 2 came back on all the relevant platforms, I think that would be rad. Anyway, I think we're pretty much out of time. So it's time to wrap it up. But I think we've said all that needs to be said about Strider. And there were a bunch of letters written in for this episode, but we don't have time to read them, so we won't.

But we will read them in a different podcast, a letter roundup. So you did not waste your time sending me emails. Thanks for sending those in. I'm glad other people love Strider as much as we do. And I hope Capcom realizes that people do love Strider and brings us the series back some time. Because it's really, yes, that's right. It's really cool. And I'm a big fan.

But at the moment, we're all falling asleep. Probably the sake that Shane brought in is not helping. And the cheese. The cheese. Well, I didn't have a lot of the cheese and bread. They were baguettes and cheese as well. I restrained myself. It was a very classy retronauts with wine and cheese.

Yeah, we were, we're, I mean, Strider's classy, so we had to be classy. So, anyway, Shane, thanks for coming in. And thanks everyone for listening. This has been Retronuts with a trill, as you can see. I think it's time to call that night. It's been a long day. Anyway, yes, this was a Strider episode. Everyone, please find a copy of Strider somewhere.

Are there any ways to download a Strider game at the moment? I don't think Strider 2 is on PS1 classics for PS3 in North America. Maybe it is in Japan. I think it's that copyright. I never saw it on a virtual console either for like an ES version. Is that PS1 version worth money that I brought in here? I believe so. Grab it.

Please give it to me. Is it worth more? than a hundred dollars? Probably give it to me please. Strider, let's see, PS. Because I thought, I think maybe I have a Japanese copy too. You keep the Japanese copy and give me the American one. That's great. Oh, actually, it looks

like a PS1 Classic, Strider 2 is available. PS3, PSVita. For $5.99. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah, get your Vita out. Yeah, Vita means live, people. Can you guys, you can buy, what's that? Can you play Strider 1 on that too? You just have to, like, there's, when you play a PS1 classic with two discs in the actual

OS, you have to switch between the discs. You have to go into the menu. And they're probably mislabeled. I don't know if this contains both. It does. It does. Okay, cool. So, yeah, Strider 2 is, and Strider 1 are available on PS1 classics for who knows how much

longer for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PSP. As of recording, there are no plans to de-list the PS1. Oh, good. Wait, can you actually, I want to ask Shane this, Jeremy said PSP, can you still download things with your PSP? Yeah, you can access the PSI-E-I-N or whatever. So if you actually have a PSP, I believe. you'll have to side load through

PS3. Through your PS3 or your PC. Oh, like, yeah. Yeah. Move the executable files to the PSP from your PS3 or PC. Yeah, there's a piece of software to do that. But to a PlayStation 3 or a PlayStation Vita, you can directly download

that from the store. Interesting. Anyway, I played on Vita because Vita means life. Yeah, Vita. Or the Vita TV. Strader is life. Vita TV, perfect for playing your PS1. Oh, yeah. If you can still find one of those. If you still have one. You know, they were clearancing for a while. I wish I would have bought more. I know. They're really valuable now. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Anyway, so Strider is out there. There's also the reboot. So you can play it. You can enjoy it. It's a really cool series. You don't need to play the NES game. You don't need to play Strider 2, Journey into Darkness. But, you know, Strider 1, Strider 2, and Strider reboot are all available in some capacities. So this series hasn't been totally forgotten. It's not inaccessible. So check it out. It's really, really cool. Anyway, this has been Retronauts, and I am Jeremy Parrish.

I'm very sleepy. I'm very jet-lagged, but I do love me some Strider. So if you want to hear more about games that I love, such a strider, you should keep listening to Retronauts, which you can find on all kinds of podcatchers. And at Retronauts.com. You can also subscribe to us on Patreon, which supports this podcast and makes it possible. But it allows you to listen to each episode a week early at a higher bit rate with no advertisements, which I think is a fine deal, three bucks a month.

We're not asking a lot, and it keeps us alive, which is generous of you. The Patreon is at patreon.com slash retronauts. And there's always Retronauts.com where you can find the link at the top of the page. Anyway, I, Jeremy Parrish, am on Twitter as GameSpite and other places, including YouTube, where I do retrospectives on lots of old games, on lots of old systems, on a weekly basis every Wednesday. You can check that out at YouTube, Jeremy Parrish, look me up. It's fine. there. You can support that through Patreon too, patreon.com slash gamesbite. That'd be cool, but

I'm not going to demand all your money. One or the other. It's fine. I'm not greedy. What's your latest book? My latest book. Most recent books I've published were Game Boy Works one and two, which are the first hundred and five Game Boy Games? Not yet. I'm not done with it. But by the end of the year, there will be a Super NES works for 1991. I want Virtual Boy Works. And Virtual Boy Works created in collaboration with Chris Kohler, which will also hopefully, fingers crossed, have like 3D, like a gallery of 3D images.

Whoa. Yeah, it should be really cool if we can get it to work. The plan with Fan Gamer is to publish it with 3D glasses. Yes. I can't promise that'll happen, but my God, I hope it does. It'd be so cool. Pretty choice. Anyway, that's the stuff that I do. Shane, what the hell do you do?

I work at PlayStation. I don't know when this will come out. As of taping, the most recent, cool, old thing that came out for my accounts was Crossed Swords from ADK came out for the Arcade Archives NeoGeo from Hamster. Please download that. It's pretty

rad. I've never heard of that game. You've never played crossed swords? I've never heard of that game. You've played crossed swords. No, sir. 1991's Cross Swords. It's like a two-player co-op first person. I didn't do a lot of NeoGeo hack and slash game. You're like a wireframe like punchout. Yeah, I know the system. I definitely have not played that game. I know

what it is. The sequel, Cross Swords 2 is one of the only Neo Geo CD-only games. Anyway, you should try it cross-swords. It's like punch-out, but like 80K developed RPG punch-out. Crazy. Anyway, you can follow me on Twitter at Shane Watch, all one word. It's mainly

like animated gifts of Aliphon Evangelian and political discourse. Yeah, and also... Alfo is inherently per- Earlier, you said pod catcher. Is it like a dream catcher? Yes. You're hanging up over your bed. And catch pods. It downloads all your pods while you sleep. Yep.

Hey, it's Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter. As Bob Servo, I have other podcasts going on and they're on the Talking Simpsons Network. None of them about Alf. We haven't done an Alf one yet, but I guess Alph had a cartoon, so that's always possible. He did. He did. He was on Planet Milamack. Alftails and the Alph. The other one, they were part of one cartoon with two segments. Maybe they were split a player. In my heart, they're different. Okay, well, we'll do the research when we do our Alf cartoon. But go to Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons to check out Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon, two different podcasts that I'm on. And we also have a bunch of

bonus podcast on top of that, including exclusive mini-series, going into series like Futurama, The Critic, and most recently, King of the Hill. And you can check those all out at your favorite podcast device or network, whatever you want to do. Thank you so much. All right. Anyway, we're done talking. We're all very sleepy and or sick. So good night, everyone.

Sleep well, enjoy the podcast. And we'll see you next week on another episode, Beam directly to you from the Third Moon. We're going to be able to be. Thank you.