Strider Review - Not Dead Yet — The Digital Bench

Not Dead Yet is a series of reviews of retro games deemed important enough to play before you die. Obviously we can’t play all of them but we can at least check them out to see how well they’ve held up

What they say about it

Able to hook onto walls and ceilings by mere touch, scaling them as quickly as if he were on foot, Strider - or Spider as he begs to be known - is a hard act to follow…
…The levels are works of art, the enemies are works of art, and so is Strider, flashing his sword in a great arc, sliding under traps and cartwheeling over bullets.

What we say about it

Strider belongs to the group of 2D beat-em-ups that Capcom built their reputation on from the late 80s. Playing as top rank ninja assassin Strider Hiryu, you seek to bring down the mysterious dictator Grandmaster.

Much like its counterparts of the time, it pulls no punches when it comes to difficulty. A seemingly endless barrage of hostile forces fill the screen in the blink of an eye, aiming to destroy you. Sometimes they come in the form of android henchmen that want to stab you with bayonets; other times it’s literally a giant arena-filling ape robot. Whatever is thrown at you, it’s essential to navigate with extreme caution. Health is at a premium in this game. There are power-ups that increase your overall health but they are scarce. Failing to find one means you’ve only got 3 hits before you’re dead. Sometimes those hits come quick.

You shouldn’t really fret as there are plenty of power-ups to find along the way. In addition to the health bar increases mentioned above, you’ll also find yourself picking items to bolster your attacks. One power-up will increase the range of your Cypher (a blade of energy that extends from Strider’s hand) to what feels like almost full-screen length. Another power-up gives you access to Options, which are companion robot-animals that attack on-screen enemies on your behalf. They’re varied and interesting enough to make what appears be a pretty cut-and-dry combat system surprisingly varied.

What ultimately set Strider apart for me is the movement. It’s fluid in a way that games from that era didn’t achieve. When leaping from one platform to another, Strider’s acrobatic flips add a bit of flair to what is normally a mundane function. You have access to a slide, which lowers your hit box while simultaneously allowing you to attack out of recovery. You can cling to ceilings to give yourself an elevation advantage over your enemies. There’s even an Anti-Gravity fight! Your opposition is fast and unrelenting; having such maneuverability makes for for an intense experience.

Punching probably isn’t effective in this scenario.

Matching that intensity is a soundtrack that perfectly captures the dystopian future the game is set in. In the first stage, you infiltration of the enemy base is backed by a grand track with the right amount of pulsing synth to make it feel like it’s right out of an action movie. By the second stage, the mood switches up. You find yourself in a desolate, winter-whipped Siberia. The backing music is now sparse, yet filled with a haunting melody that really drives home the isolation this mission. Even the almost horror-like organ playing when you finally face off with the Grandmaster capture just how “What the fuck” the entire lead has been up until that point.

Admittedly, it took me a while to come around on Strider, as my main complaint is something I never fully came to grips with. While the game does have a continue system to allow you to pick up from where you last died, it is finite in use. Once you’ve exhausted all of your continues, it is game over and you are starting the whole game over. I could not imagine playing this game without some sort of save-state feature. If I had played this in the arcade or on the original SEGA Genesis cart, I probably would have an extremely love/hate relationship with this game.

Should you play this game before you die?

It is definitely worth experiencing, if only to see just how fast paced action could still be done even in the 16-bit era. Once you learn to embrace some of the more absurd aspects of the plot, you’ll find a truly unique experience that some we say still hasn’t been replicated to this date.