Video Game / Strider (Arcade)

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Strider was released on March 1989, being the third game in Capcom's CPS-1 Arcade board, following Forgotten Worlds and Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Set in the "distant" year of 2048, the game presents a bleak cyber-future in which the Soviet Union still exists and conflicts are the order of the day. In such a situation, a mysterious being calling himself Grandmaster Meio appears on Earth and takes over the Eastern Bloc, then starts war in order to conquest the rest of the Earth, which he accomplishes after 5 years of conflict. A group of rebels from the Kazakh Federation, the Grandmaster's seat of power, seek out the assistance of the Striders, a mercenary group with ninja stylings. The mission to eliminate the Grandmaster fell to Strider Hiryu, the greatest agent and the youngest to achieve the group's highest rank, Special-A Class. Playing as Hiryu, the player has to deal with everything and everyone ranging from Russian soldiers, animal-themed machines, acrobatic Chinese assassins, dinosaurs, Amazones and gravity-altering machines in an epic quest to stop Grandmaster Meio with nothing but a nigh-unstoppable Hot Blade made of plasma on hand.

The game was ported to every known console of the time, but following a Western-made sequel most people prefer not to talk about, the series remained in hibernation until Hiryu's surprise popularity boost in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes opened the gates for a proper sequel. And so, Strider 2 came out at the tail end of 1999 for the ZN-2 Arcade board, to later be ported to the PlayStation.

A third game, set in yet another Alternate Continuity, was released on February 2014 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, but it differs from the previous ones in that it blends the classic Strider mechanics with Metroidvania elements.

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These the arcade game provide examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The Genesis port has some improvements from the arcade version, such as having a unique tune for the Stage 3 theme (some variants of the arcade version reused the Stage 1 theme) and a greatly expanded ending sequence.
  • The PC Engine port has an optional stage that was not in any other port of the coin-op version, improved and more detailed cutscenes and an extra set of dialogues for most bosses.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: The third stage in the first game has a pretty frustrating one, where the slight lag in moving will end up with a crushed Strider.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Battleship Balrog is a flying-capable aircraft carrier in the first game, and a Super-Dreadnought class warship in the second.
• All Just a Dream: All the ports by Tiertex end by revealing that the game was just a simulation.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: The Mega Drive/Genesis box art for the first arcade game. In Japan, Strider Hiryu is a young man in his late teens or early twenties. In America, he's in his forties and really digs the color purple.
• Anime Chinese Girl: The Kuniang trio (Ton Pooh, Bei Pooh and Sai Pooh) are stereotypical Dragon Ladies, portrayed as strong, vicious and cunning young women who are blindly loyal to their master.
• Assist Character: The Options in the first game. There is the Dipodal Saucer, which circles around Hiryu and shoots a ring-shaped beam at enemies; the Robot Hawk, which swoops down on enemies; and the Terapodal Robo-Panther, a mechanical tiger which lunges at enemies.
• Badass Boast:
  • The Grandmaster in the final level of the first game:
  "I shall raise the city up to the sky and rid the earth of all creatures! I will create a race to fill the new earth—all sons of old gods, die!!!"
  • Hiryu gets one in as well, doubling as an insult towards the Balrog battleship.
  "You must be joking! You're sending a toy into battle?"
• Back Stab: In the original there's a chance some of the Russian soldiers in the first stage will fall back in abject terror in Hiryu's presence, and will remain in this state for as long as Hiryu faces them. But the moment the player turns around, these soldiers will stand up and quickly charge at Hiryu for a chance of hitting him with their bayonets.
• Bald of Evil: The Grandmaster has one bald head under his hood.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The Kuniang are the only enemies in the first two games to fight Hiryu with only their martial arts mastery and no actual weapon or technological upgrade to boost them.
• Battle Boomerang: The Amazons from the fourth stage use either this or axes.
• Battleship Raid: The Balrog levels in both games, which both include fighting the ship's core, starting a chain reaction that brings it down, and dueling their respective captains in escape ships.
• BFG: Solo favors a flamethrower with a mounted missile launcher as his main weapon, and he later replaces it in Strider 2 with a plasma cannon of similar length.
• Big Bad: The Grandmaster is the source of all evil in both arcade games, invading Earth and infesting it with his corrupted lifeforms.
• Bilingual Bonus: In the first game, the names of the stages are spelled in Cyrillic, Hebrew and Nordic letters. In fact, the only time the Latin alphabet is ever used is for the fourth stage's location.
• Bilingual Dialogue: The first Strider is well-known for its multi-language cutscenes, where Hiryu responds to Tong Pooh's Chinese with Japanese and can easily understand Mikiel's Russian or the Amazon girl's gibberish language.
• Blackout Basement: One part in the Siberia stage is set in an abandoned power plant, where the lights go off constantly when electricity is discharged everywhere.
• Boss Rush: The final stage in the first game ends with one. The player must face the Gravity Core, Novo, Solo, the Mechanical Gorilla, Lago and the Ouroboros before facing the final boss himself.
• Bounty Hunter: Solo and the Kuniang team were hired by the Grandmaster, though the former is just a hired hitman, whereas the latter are blindly devoted to the villain.
• Canon Foreigner: The PC-Engine version of the first arcade game gives us the nameless navigator for the Striders' side, and the nameless desert commander and tank pilot for the Grand Master's side.
• Creating Life: The Grandmaster has the ability to create any form of life at will. In-game, this translates into him summoning enemies from previous stages to hunt Hiryu. He creates wolves, piranhas and pteranodons in his boss fight in the first game, and creatures that make up Caduceus in the second game.
• Dada Ad: The commercial for the Japanese Mega Drive port is...something to behold. The game's planner has said the company in charge literally told them they'd ignore the source material, and the entire staff was justifiably flabbergasted when they saw the end result.
• Department of Redundancy Department: In the manual for the Genesis version, the Grandmaster is referred by the name of "Grandmaster Meio". However, "Meio" is not actually a name, but a Japanese title equivalent to "Grandmaster."
• Depopulation Bomb: The Grandmaster's plan was this, erasing all lifeforms (all the "Sons of Old Gods") off Earth so he could create his own lifeforms and thus become a god.
• Domesticated Dinosaurs: In the first game, the Amazon has domesticated Triceratops and use them as steads in the latter half of the stage. Hiryu can fetch a ride if he eliminates the rider first.
• Dumb Muscle: Strobaya, the Russian not-Ivan Drago. All he does is scream his lungs out as he constantly throws himself at Hiryu. Even in-canon he's noted to have a very one-tracked mind and as such, easy to predict strategies.
• Dynamic Difficulty: Both games ramp up difficulty the less the player dies, which tries to make some features less Nintendo Hard.
• Evil Laugh: The Grandmaster's catchphrase, to the point he starts the arcade game off with one of these.
• Evil Old Folks: The Grandmaster. He's already pretty old-looking, and then he adds +2000 years to his age in Strider 2.
• Extremity Extremist: The Kuniang girls in both games fight using their martial arts proficiency, and all their attacks are exclusively kicks.
• The Faceless: Solo is always seen with his mask / visor on.
• Fake Difficulty: The original game has a metric ton of this, with an abundance of traps requiring players to be clairvoyant to avoid, combined with Hiryu being unable to be controlled while jumping and his propensity to fall off anything he's clinging onto if he isn't controlled just right.
• Fallen Hero: According to All There in the Manual, Captain Beard Jr. used to be a good guy right before he lost his limbs in a fight against the Grandmaster and decided to switch allegiances.
• Flight: A big number of enemies can fly. Most notables include Solo (who flights through thrusters on his armor's back) and Grandmaster Meio (who levitates).
• Flunky Boss:
  • Mid-way through the Metall Hengst boss fight, soldiers will start jumping into the screen to fight alongside their leader.
  • Grandmaster Meio's modus operandi is this: summoning different life forms to attack Hiryu alongside him. In the first game these were normal animals (piranhas, wolves and Pteranodon), in the second these are highly bizarre lifeforms with elemental powers.
• Fragile Speedster: Solo moves really fast and has a lot of firepower... But dies in 3 hits. Averted in Strider 2, where he has a boss-worthy health bar.
• Galactic Conqueror: The Grandmaster, having come to Earth in order to rule it as a God. In Strider 2, he's so disappointed in how how his created humanity has corrupted itself that he plans on destroying Earth and leaving to find a new planet where to start from scratch.
• Glorious Mother Russia: The first level in the first game takes place in the Soviet Union.
• Godhood Seeker: The Grandmaster's main obssession is to attain godhood. Failing on forcing the entire planet on worshipping him as one, he resorts to killing all life and recreating it, so that he'd become their one and only Creator God.
• Gravity Screw: Certain areas in both games have the gravity reversed, which forces the player to walk in the ceiling.
• Gratuitous Russian:
  • While the first Strider contains some Russian, it's not always the case it's fairly accurate. Just as a little example, the subtitles at the end of stage one don't even remotely point at what the USSR leader is saying. And thanks to the horrible accent acting and the fact that Meio interrupts his speech out of nowhere, the supposed phrase "Никто не уйдёт живым!" ^note  Nikto ne ooydjot zhivim - No one will leave alive has turned into "Никто не идиот!" ^note  Nikto ne idiot - No one is an idiot
  • This trope follows straight after that cutscene: The location name of stage 2, "Сибирь", is actually spelt correctly, but it's obvious that Capcom didn't used the English-Russian dictionary the right way... They forgot to remove the stress mark.
• Husky Russkie: Strobaya, the first boss in the original game. He's a hulk of muscles that can only grunt and shout. The expanded PC-Engine game apparently paints him as a Blood Knight.
• In the Hood: The Grandmaster is always wearing a black hood.
• Indy Escape: The first stage has a quick sequence like this in its 4th stage, Amazon: as soon as Hiryu sets foot on a descending incline a large, round boulder falls from above, forcing him to outrun it until he's able to jump away into a nearby vine. Strider 2 replicates a similar feeling in its 3rd stage, where Hiryu has to outrun a chain of explosions.
• Jungle Japes: The Amazon stage in the first game takes place on a lush jungle that has been overrun by dinosaurs.
• Kick Chick: The three Kuniang are all about kicks... That can create blades of plasma.
• Killer Gorilla: The first game's second stage has a miniboss called Mecha Pon, which is a giant mechanical gorilla.
• Lady Land: In the first game, the Amazon is this. There's a tribe of female-only Amazons living in seclusion in an undiscovered area within the rainforest.
• Legacy Character: As part of the Canon Welding with Street Fighter, Zeku is explicitly referred to as the "1st generation Strider Hiryu" in his character setting, and it also says he will be succeeded by the original scarf-less Hiryu from the original Strider, here called the "third generation" after Zeku, implying another "Hiryu" (possibly a student of Zeku) existing in-between them.
• Levels Take Flight: The Balrog in both games, as it is set entirely within said flying airship. Siberia in Strider ends on a section where Hiryu has to jump across flying platforms in order to reach a larger airship.
• Living Dinosaurs: At first glance, the Amazon stage seems to play this straight: a Lost World deep beneath the Amazon jungle housing not only an isolated female-only tribe, but living dinosaurs. At the end of the stage, the Amazons tell Hiryu the truth: they were brought to this place by Grandmaster Meio himself.
• Long Song, Short Scene: Stage 3 of the first game was supposed to have its unique theme music, but some variants of the arcade version reuses the BGM from Stage 1 instead. Most of the home versions fix this however.
• Macross Missile Massacre: One of Solo's attacks in the first game is a barrage of homing missiles that will relentlessly pursue Hiryu.
• Made of Explodium: Everything explodes when you strike it with your sword, even the people!
• Pirate: The Balrog's captain, Beard Jr. Comes with peg leg and hook hand included!
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: General Mikiel is a thinly-veiled Gorbachov caricature.
• Nubile Savage: The Amazons from the eponymous stage look quite good for being an isolated woman-only community dealing with resurrected dinosaurs.
• Outside-Genre Foe: One can make the case for the Kuniang girls as well, as they fight completely with their martial arts skills and have no advanced weaponry or external enhancements of any kind, unlike similar bosses like Solo (who uses weapons and a flight-capable armor) or Strobaya (a cyborg enhanced through drugs), making them more at home in a Wuxia setting than a sci-fi world.
• Powered Armor: Solo's primary element is his "Fighting Suit", a technological armor that grants him flight capabilities and a number of extra weapons.
• Power-Up Letdown: The robot panther looks awesome, but doesn't shoot and has serious problems keeping up with Hiryu and not falling off ledges. Most experienced players avoid further power-ups once they have two droids.
• Production Throwback: Captain Beard Jr. is one to one of Capcom's oldest games, Pirate Ship Higemaru. He's known as Captain Higemaru Jr. in Japan, and his design is very evocative of an enemy character in the game's sequel Higemaru Makaijima, which happens to be the "Captain" of the Higemaru Corps.
• Recurring Boss: Solo is fought two or three times (depending if the player ignores the first encounter) in the first game, and twice in the second (the initial fight being now two phases). Hien becomes a recurring boss in the PS port of Strider 2 since he's the Final Boss in the PS-only bonus stage.
• Recurring Location: The Balrog and the Third Moon appear in both games, although in both cases they are reconstructions of the originals.
• Reflecting Laser: Several enemies have this ability. The first stage sub-boss Novo throws 4 at a time, which bounces off the walls around it.
• Segmented Serpent: Ouroboros in the first game and the Emperor Dragon in Strider 2 are long multi-segmented machines resembling a centipede and an Eastern dragon respectively.
• Sinister Scythe: Ouroboros, the first arcade boss, uses one, though it's more of a sinister sickle. With a hammer.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Siberia in the first game and Antarctica in the second take place in laboratories hidden in the snowy mountains.
• Skyscraper City: Later areas of Neo Hong Kong City in Strider 2 are set on the upper layers of the city where the rich and powerful live.
• Space Base: The Third Moon is the Grandmaster's moon-shaped lair.
• Speaking Simlish: The Amazon gals in Strider speak what amounts to gibberish sounds that vaguely resemble speech. This was forced upon by Capcom, as they were originally going to speak in Swahili.
• Spent Shells Shower: One enemy in the first arcade game with a big machinegun ejects them constantly as he (tries to) shoot Hiryu.
• Spider Tank: The "Mosqueman" enemies in the first game are walking, four-legged, laser-spewing tanks.
• This Is a Drill: There are moving drill traps in Strider, most memorably in the last stage, where Hiryu has to maneuver around them while gravity is reversed.
• Timed Mission: With all the slowly approaching hazards, you probably wouldn't see Time Over very often.
• Translation Convention: Averted in the original arcade game, where each character speaks in his or her own native language during voice clips (i.e. Japanese for Hiryu, English for Solo and the Grandmaster, Mandarin for Ton Pooh). Played straight by the PC Engine version, where everyone speaks Japanese.
• Translation Train Wreck: A subtle example: In Hebrew, a language read from right to left, the correct spelling for "Balrog" is "באלרוג". It's written as "געלראב" at the start of Stage 3, which would be pronounced as "Gelrab" when read correctly.
• Tree Top Town: The middle area in the Amazon stage of the original game features Hiryu jumping across swinging vines, avoiding poisonous mushrooms and thorned walls and reaching the village of the Amazoness on top of the trees.
• Virtual Training Simulation: Home computer ports only. The home computer versions appear to follow the arcade version story (aside from a stage swap), revealing only after destroying Mecha Pon in the fifth stage that it is a training simulation to prepare when the real invasion begins.
• Worthy Opponent: Solo seeks a fight with Hiryu to match his supposedly-unmatched skills as the strongest human in the world against one of the fabled Striders. In the end, he ends up biting way more than he can chew.