Jeremy Parish checks out Strider in NES Works 134
Not the best version of a great game
Hmm, it is Strider Hiryu… and also a lot of additional material about cultural and political trends of the 1980s that greatly influenced video games. Did they necessarily have the direct impact on Strider for NES that this episode posits? Probably not… but this material needed to be covered anyway to give additional clarity to the whys and wherefores of NES games anyway. It might as well have been here.
As for Strider itself, even back in 1989, there was clearly something amiss with this production. Those troubles only become more evident in hindsight, especially when you learn that Capcom announced the cart for an early 1989 release on Famicom yet it ultimately only shipped in America.
On one hand, it’s nice that they didn’t simply cancel the game altogether and leave us with another “what might have been”-shaped hole in our libraries. On the other hand, it would have been nice if they had taken the time to make the game that did ship here a more polished overall experience.
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