like in the final fight of ST/AMIGA There is no time to add some melodies, or animate the characters, or provide the program with mechanics or gameplay, or logical collisions, but if there is time to take photographs and digitize them to include them in the program, it is wonderful.
Saw this in a game store one time, CIB for six dollars. Someone bought it before I could. This video softened the emotional blow I took that day. I'm glad I don't own this.
The funny thing is that on the computers: Strider II is an actual improvement over the shitty ports of the original. Also is worth noting that the actual creator of the Arcade original made his spiritual sequel, Osman on the arcades, which was recently finally released on consoles.
Osman is great. That's how it shouldve been done. Strider 2 is probably the best linear game in the series, before the more recent Metroidvania version on PS3/360.
11:12 - That's a Brazilian magazine. Brazilian magazines in the 16 bit era were 100% bullshit. They writers did not play the games. The magazines had literal children (yep, children) playing the games and the journalists would just take notes from the children's opitions, and then they would write fake reviews for the games. The journalists were just people borrowed from other magazines in the publisher's building. Most reviews didn't make any sense because of that. The reviews were just a bunch of random text with random trivia about the games. Later (around 95, 96), Brazilian video game magazines got better and more professional. But before that... it was all BS.
@@andrecastro1980 Nada, era isso. Ate pq, as empresas nem sabiam que o Brasil existia e as revistas eram algo bem amador, duvido que elas tinham algum acordo com alguem. Se vc pegar as revistas antigas, vc vai ver as revistas falando dos "pilotos". Esses pilotos eram as crianças que jogavam os jogos paras as revistas. Eram, literalmente, uns pivetes que moravam no bairro. Eu lembro de uma entrevista com um cara da Ação Games, eu acho. Alguem falou pra ele que o Sonic ficava amarelo a partir de uma informação dos EUA. Isso faltando pouco tempo pra edição do mes sair. Ai ele saiu correndo, foi na casa da criança que trabalhava com ele, e mandou o moleque jogar pra fazer o Sonic ficar amarelo, tirar umas fotos e botar na edição que tava pra sair.
I suspected it... Most of the publications were very amateurish (as were the TV programs that talked about the subject). But that's what we had... When I bought an E.G.M. (in 1993) I was impressed with the quality. But it's still the same today... a lot of people just want to sell...
@@gundamzerostrike Interessante. A primeira revista de games que eu comprei foi uma Super Gamepower número 7 de Outubro de 1994 e ela já parecia bem profissional pra mim que tinha 14 anos à época.
I remember when I got strider 1 back in the day! My friends stod in line to play it as it looked absolutely breathtaking especially the snow stage. Oh the nostalgia
Wow. Did not expect Tiertex to appear on this channel. They were experts at making the Amiga look woefully underpowered, with shrunken sprites, slideshow frame rates and HUDs that took up half the screen. It's a shock to see their sequel got ported. I think we liked that it had a slightly improved frame rate, but it was still a shovelware Atari ST port that didnt use the hardware. At least the Genesis version looks much smoother and prettier
I paid full price for this when it released and took it right back to target in under a 30 minutes the time it took me to discover that it was bonk and get back to target to return it.
I was wondering when you’d get around to reviewing this one. Many of these carts were labeled aa Mega Drive carts and relabeled for the western region by U.S. Gold. 👍
Strider Returns is one those, it needs a mod hack to rebalance and improve the gameplay, Maybe for visuals a better color palettes and sprite edits, for the main hero (give him a ninja mask edit) or something.
I remember seeing Journey from Darkness in magazines around the time of it release & I was super curious about it because I love the first Strider on the Genesis so much. I remember being confused as hell seeing US Gold handling the sequel
This reminds me of so many mediocre MS-Dos games. The pacing reminds me of pre-VGA games especially (VGA is where PC gaming was able to do many more fast-paced console-like games, and the era also was where NES emulation was working)
In my early days of retro game hunting (maybe around 2011, give or take a year), I came across a copy of Strider Returns at a Goodwill and grabbed it right away. I hadn’t played a Strider game yet by that point but I knew it was a well liked series. However, I never heard of this particular game so I looked up some reviews on my phone. The thrashing it got from those reviews (both text and video) saved me from making a big mistake that day. Strider Returns was… Returned (tee hee) to the shelf I pulled it from and I haven’t played the game to this day.
You should review King Colossus. It's a pretty cool action rpg that only released in Japan, but got a good fan translation years ago. I'd like to hear your take on it
It kind of feels like I'm the only one that really likes the game ,it's not abysmal ,it was just good ,I bought it in the mid 90s from this lady that would sell videogames
I like it too played it many times i like the level design and enemy design what is even better is that in this game you can adjust your jump!
2 місяці тому+1
I bought this game when I was a kid based on the hype from the first Strider. I saw it in a store and it was an instant purchase. "More Strider? Sign me up!" Then, I came home, start playing and was immediately crushed by how bad this game was. The awesome music, cool stages, great graphics, and quick action were gone. The game felt "sticky", which now we low is a performance issue. I went back to the store, asked for a refund and got a new game. I don't remember if I got TMNT Hyperstone Heist, Flashback, or something else, but I'm glad I did!
I’m Brazilian and had that first magazine with the review!!! I played the first Strider a bit late, I loved the character design (and he was my favorite Marvel Vs Capcom character), but didn’t like the Genesis version that much… everyone seemed to love it (reviewers). Tried this Strider 2 thinking it must be an improvement (like the Shinobi series) but I hated it! I remember thinking Strider should move like Shadow Dancer… love the animation in this game. Thank you for the review! This is a game I didn’t even remember existed.
I remember when this came out. Mu brother and i brought it back to our dads electronics store and hooked it up to the best tv in the place. Couldnt believe how good it looked. I haven't been that excited about any game in this generation
I never played STRIDER in arcades as a kid. Arcade trips were a bit out of our price range sometimes. But I did play them on Sega Genesis and enjoyed both games immensely! Now I know the difference between sequel quality but personally speaking I always liked the Genesis titles. Maybe I didn’t know any better but I still liked them for what they were.
You are wrong about that it didn't show off the developers talent. 5:38 That is the level they could produce. As in it showed the low level of talent they had. And that is why it was a such a disappointing game.
I really need to play through this. So far, I've only played the first level and I liked it. Everyone else seems to have the opposite opinion, so I feel like I'm missing the problems they have encountered.
That janky walk animation made me think "Hinjo" had a limp. 😂 Like, what... Was it missing a single frame of animation? For what - so he could walk faster? A mystery, indeed.
I love the Strider environment and sounds… What I don’t like is the high difficulty. That spears stage (with inverted gravity) for me killed the game to play today…
Não acho tão difícil assim como você disse. É um de meus jogos favoritos de Mega. Questão de acostumar mesmo. Joguei bastante e me divirto até hoje com ele. Esse Strider II é que eu acho sem graça. Acho que essa revista brasileira que ele mostrou deve ter recebido uma grana da Tec Toy pra falar bem do jogo.😅
There's a Strider 2 game for the arcade. You can play it on MAME although it's not nearly as fun as the original. It's not exactly bad or anything. It just doesn't have the same cool sword sounds and great level layouts as the original. It starts out really easy so you have to sit through a very easy first level if you want to get to the meat of the game. The first game didn't pull punches as much like the 2nd game does.
Yeah its the same game as the ps1 version. The hardware used was a modified ps1 i believe. I always like that version, especially the additional playable character. I wish theyd remake it, it uses low res polys and would really benefit from a higher resolution, sprites too.
My brother still has this game! I didn’t like it as much because I just wanted to hear the beginning stage music for Siberia! It’s still in my head after all these years
Tiertex is all you need to know about this game. Almost nothing that Tiertex developed was good and most of what they're responsible for were bog standard licensed games. Sure the games they developed were mostly competent in many ways but they sure lacked a whole lot of polish! No surprise they haven't been a games developer for many years and closed for good in 2021.
I had never even heard of Strider Returns. It is too bad they did not do the series justice. I remember before I ever had a Genesis I would see adverts in magazines and (especially before Sonic) they would always have a large photo of The original Strider to show off what the Genesis was capable of. It would always be Altered Beast and Strider, and I would be so envious seeing how awesome they looked compared to what the NES was capable of. Strider Returns released right at the height of Sonic mania with 2 dominating the market, and 3 just a few months away. And with the SNES having been released a couple years prior to Strider Returns, I guess for me it just went unnoticed.
My love for Strider differs from many others, I first played Strider 2 on Playstation 1 then mained Strider Hiryu and Wolverine on Marvel VS Capcom 1 both in the late 90's. Only played Strider 1 because it is the Bonus Disc on Strider 2 PS1 Game ^_^ Being Super Famicom boy back then didnt help me experience many awesome games like Herzog Zwei on the Mega Drive, Dynamite Deka on Saturn and all those Dreamcast hits (luckily some a re ported to PS2 which I had )... But glad to have played almost all AAA on PS1 and N64...
I loved the first game on the Genesis. Couldn’t wait to play the sequel, I rented it and it was clear it was a terrible cheap cash grab. Few years later I decided to give it another shot, maybe it wasn’t THAT bad. But yeah, it was that bad.
I remembered enjoying Strider Returns or Strider II as it was known in the UK, I got the game for pretty cheap at some secondhand store. While the drop in quality is obvious I just can’t get over how great the devices are and yes because I’ve played it so much. I remember most of the corny dialogue. I’m actually shocked that it was on an 8 Mb cartridge because looking at the graphics, you’d think it was at least half of that, But in this game’s defence, this Genesis/MD version was programmed by a single person so I can forgive its floors a little bit but what’s not forgivable is just how much of a downgrade it is from the original and I actually like a lot of the music tracks that you featured such as the forbidden forest the castle metropolis and I like the beehive level, overall it’s not a great game in fact it’s not even a good game but I see as kind of a guilty pleasure mainly because of the voices and tap some of the music which has that typical Tiertex Twangy sound that all of the genesis/MD games had. Anyway great review and I’ll be honest I wasn’t expecting you to review this great all the same. I just hope you review the original strider on Genesis/MD as I know you’ve spoken about it many times and I’ve watched your remembering strider video and your mini faces of strider video but you’ve never done an actual proper review. I’m hopefully one day you will just see how it holds up today.
I saw this game in EGM exactly once while it was still in production and always thought it was never released. To this day I still haven’t come across a physical copy.
Strider was such an eye opening game, I was so hyped to play this game, when I saw the US Gold flash on the screen I was immediately skeptical. I was let down instantly by this game. It's playable but only if you remove what you knew about the original Strider from your mind. I gave it a 6 out of 10.
US Gold ported the original home micro versions in the UK, so they just used the engine they had for Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, Amstrad and C64, and made like a level mod, like the thousands of Mario ones, so the game played just like the original on those formats. SEGA ported the Megadrive version themselves, so Teirtex had to make a whole new engine from scratch to port the Amiga levels over on the Megadrive, which is why it is awful compared to the original version, Teirtex aren't as good at making Megadrive games as SEGA are. They also did the same thing on home micros with Streetfighter, making their own unofficial sequel (Capcom had designs on making their own sequel to Streetfighter in the works, I wonder whatever became of that...) called "HKM, The Human Killing Machine" where you have to fight hookers in Amsterdam, an Alsatian in Russia, and a bull in Spain. It's painfully terrible, but you can punch a bull in it's head till you knock it out. I had it on the Spectrum.
They took the amazing high pitch sound of the sword from the first game and changed it to another Genesis fart sound. That tells you everything you need to know.
There was 2 swords type. With the second one the game was harder. I remember also having voicing issue on my genesis 2 compared to my genesis 1. At least there was one music that was good in this game. This is the adventure of a japanese sprite in a us game.
After the incredible port of the first game that I imported from japan, this was one of my biggest disappointments on the genny. Not sure if this is universal, but on my cart from back in the day. If you pealed off the label on the Genesis cart, it had the euro label under it.
As far as the conversions of the Strider original to computers of the time are concerned, they were not particularly successful. The gameplay was condensed (esp the 8bit versions), the technical implementation was mediocre and did not come anywhere close to the arcade version. Check out the Master System version by the same developer studio and you get an idea... To a certain extent, this explains the reviews of Strider II (Returns) for home computers at the time, although the magazines were, in my opinion, overly positive. The game was not really good for the time either. I didn't play the Mega Drive version until years after its release, had low expectations because of the developer and was still disappointed. btw it's actually amazing how licensed games by US Gold received decent to very good ratings in magazines and were viewed critically by gamers even back then (including in Europe). I owned an Amiga as well as a Mega Drive and you only have to look at the versions of celebrated games like Turrican 2, Rainbow Islands or Toki to see what a difference in quality there was compared to Tiertex developments.
@@vasileios6301 The thing is that most arcade ports for home computers, for example, were developed in the UK and were mostly of decent quality. I recommend browsing through the Ocean catalogue (yes... Ocean has a controversial reputation) - esp for Amiga you'll be surprised how many solid arcade ports they published. It is night and day compared to Tiertex. There is no rational reason for the good ratings except for a certain level of hype.
It seems to me the developers and publisher of this game were more focused on the voice acting and sound clarity; rather than the gameplay quality back then.
Ah, Tiertex... A name to strike fear into the hearts of many a British gamer. They were notorious for being a "quick and dirty" deve studio who churned out games of generally low quality for low cost. U.S. Gold used them a lot to maximise profits.
I think even if it runs as poorly as it does, having SET PIECES was what made the original interesting. Literally every little bit of level you traverse is like it's own action set piece and levels were connections between these set pieces. Consider level 2. You start being attacked by wolves, then end up trapped with a mechanical ape, then have to climb out of an ice cave lined with robots into a twisted power plant and escape by hijacking hover vehicles and finally join up with an escaping airship and kick the shit out of 3 kung fu chicks. That's ONE LEVEL. Every little bit is a set piece and flows like water between each part. This is where Strider 2 ultimately fails. It uses Amiga style design which is 'We don't have much memory for graphics, but we got TONS of memory for tilemaps!' style design. Literally every 3 connected screens is a mini challenge and set piece in the original Strider. I think that's why it continues to stand out. Yeah, it's 'just a platformer' with interesting climbing and running mechnics, but really, it was a one of a small handful of games around the time built on 'OH SHIT!" experiences stacked on top one another.
As a huge Strider fan who had been waiting for a sequel, I remember seeing a preview of Strider 2 in EGM and being horrified that it a) looked so terrible and b) that it was being published by US Gold.
I didn’t get this game back in the day, I forget my reasoning but I didn’t even rent it so that says a lot. I did buy and still have the strider collection on PS1 when it came out. I got the download PS3 game and PS4 sequels as well
"The Master" said I can't win, so I'm down with that, so I'm not gonna try. Homer Simpson said it best " Trying leads to failure." You win Master. I won't be playing Strider Returns.
Tiertex and US Gold are both the universal symbol for "Throw this right in the trash!"
This and "Street Fighter 2: Human Killing Machine" can definitely compete for "Worst licensed sequel of all time". (HKM still "wins" that.)
@@menhirmike I don't understand how they stayed in business.
@@SomeOrangeCat Because dumbass kids like me went "Holy shit it's Street Fighter 2" and bought it.
@@wraithcadmus I learned that lesson the hard way, and it was Street Fighter II. For MS-DOS.
You should look up the Atlanta 1996 game both for the Genesis/SNES and the even more cursed PS1 version. Top tier US Gold jank right there.
With Strider Returns, you can tell that the developers were more interested in stuffing in as many high-quality, digitized voice clips as possible.
😂
"Don't die, Strider! Live for me!"
Me, after playing the first stage of this game: "Do I have to...?"
Those sound clips are the only impressive thing about that game. Us gold dropped the ball
like in the final fight of ST/AMIGA
There is no time to add some melodies, or animate the characters, or provide the program with mechanics or gameplay, or logical collisions, but if there is time to take photographs and digitize them to include them in the program, it is wonderful.
I am glad Capcom decided to make the real Strider 2, it was excellent
I like how they went and called it that, Strider 2, "THIS ONE's the sequel!", essentially replacing this game
I remember playing Strider for the first time in an AMC Theaters arcade. I was fucking blown away at around 8-10 years old, haha.
Old fart 💨 😂😂😂😂😂
Those days were peak!
Saw this in a game store one time, CIB for six dollars. Someone bought it before I could. This video softened the emotional blow I took that day. I'm glad I don't own this.
The funny thing is that on the computers: Strider II is an actual improvement over the shitty ports of the original.
Also is worth noting that the actual creator of the Arcade original made his spiritual sequel, Osman on the arcades, which was recently finally released on consoles.
Same on Sega Master System: the first was a really bad port. The second was a way better game.
Osman is quite awesome and more than worthy of standing next to the original. Too bad our Lord didn't mention that title.
Osman is great. That's how it shouldve been done. Strider 2 is probably the best linear game in the series, before the more recent Metroidvania version on PS3/360.
The real Strider sequel is called Osman, and it rules.
Facts
thank you very much for the indirect recommendation!
U.S. Gold and Tiertex are not labels you want attached to any game.
The only game Tiertex was involved with that didn't totally suck was the Master System port of Impossible Mission
I would add LJN and Acclaim as most of their games suck too lol.
Tiertex did'' Star Wars'' and ''World Cup USA 94'' on the Master System and I thought they were decent titles.
11:12 - That's a Brazilian magazine. Brazilian magazines in the 16 bit era were 100% bullshit. They writers did not play the games. The magazines had literal children (yep, children) playing the games and the journalists would just take notes from the children's opitions, and then they would write fake reviews for the games. The journalists were just people borrowed from other magazines in the publisher's building. Most reviews didn't make any sense because of that. The reviews were just a bunch of random text with random trivia about the games.
Later (around 95, 96), Brazilian video game magazines got better and more professional. But before that... it was all BS.
Não sabia disso. Interessante. Minha teoria era de que as revendedoras de games pagavam pra essas revistas falarem bem dos jogos.
@@andrecastro1980 Nada, era isso. Ate pq, as empresas nem sabiam que o Brasil existia e as revistas eram algo bem amador, duvido que elas tinham algum acordo com alguem.
Se vc pegar as revistas antigas, vc vai ver as revistas falando dos "pilotos". Esses pilotos eram as crianças que jogavam os jogos paras as revistas.
Eram, literalmente, uns pivetes que moravam no bairro. Eu lembro de uma entrevista com um cara da Ação Games, eu acho. Alguem falou pra ele que o Sonic ficava amarelo a partir de uma informação dos EUA. Isso faltando pouco tempo pra edição do mes sair. Ai ele saiu correndo, foi na casa da criança que trabalhava com ele, e mandou o moleque jogar pra fazer o Sonic ficar amarelo, tirar umas fotos e botar na edição que tava pra sair.
I suspected it... Most of the publications were very amateurish (as were the TV programs that talked about the subject). But that's what we had... When I bought an E.G.M. (in 1993) I was impressed with the quality. But it's still the same today... a lot of people just want to sell...
@@gundamzerostrike Interessante. A primeira revista de games que eu comprei foi uma Super Gamepower número 7 de Outubro de 1994 e ela já parecia bem profissional pra mim que tinha 14 anos à época.
Strider 2 on the PS1 is the only strider sequel I acknowledge💯👍
The 2014 remake was pretty badass as well, mind you.
@@BrazenScullthe metroidvania? Yeah that’s good. I’ve been meaning to finish it
@@BrazenScull I have it on PC/Steam, played through a little bit of it and liked what I played so far. Still have yet to be at it though
@@BrazenScullprobably a hot take, but Strider 2014 is better than Strider 2 on the PS1 and the original imho.
@mrlaidback83 it is better. The latest game reached it's zenith.
4:10 What!!!. He called you a fool dude. Now you have to beat the game. It's only right.
Strider Lord X WILL catch you next time
Would love to see a review for Arrow Flash on the Genesis.
I remember when I got strider 1 back in the day! My friends stod in line to play it as it looked absolutely breathtaking especially the snow stage. Oh the nostalgia
Wow. Did not expect Tiertex to appear on this channel. They were experts at making the Amiga look woefully underpowered, with shrunken sprites, slideshow frame rates and HUDs that took up half the screen.
It's a shock to see their sequel got ported. I think we liked that it had a slightly improved frame rate, but it was still a shovelware Atari ST port that didnt use the hardware.
At least the Genesis version looks much smoother and prettier
Rumor says this game's development began as "Transforming Overland Robot".
I paid full price for this when it released and took it right back to target in under a 30 minutes the time it took me to discover that it was bonk and get back to target to return it.
I really liked the music in this game
I was wondering when you’d get around to reviewing this one. Many of these carts were labeled aa Mega Drive carts and relabeled for the western region by U.S. Gold. 👍
Strider Returns is one those, it needs a mod hack to rebalance and improve the gameplay,
Maybe for visuals a better color palettes and sprite edits, for the main hero (give him a ninja mask edit) or something.
My Uncle had the Stryder arcade at his convenience store.
I played a lot for free.
I remember seeing Journey from Darkness in magazines around the time of it release & I was super curious about it because I love the first Strider on the Genesis so much. I remember being confused as hell seeing US Gold handling the sequel
This reminds me of so many mediocre MS-Dos games. The pacing reminds me of pre-VGA games especially (VGA is where PC gaming was able to do many more fast-paced console-like games, and the era also was where NES emulation was working)
Tierttex and U.S. Gold. Two devs I never thought I would hear in the same context. 😮
Not gonna lie, the soundtracks you showed surprised me! I really dug them!
In my early days of retro game hunting (maybe around 2011, give or take a year), I came across a copy of Strider Returns at a Goodwill and grabbed it right away. I hadn’t played a Strider game yet by that point but I knew it was a well liked series. However, I never heard of this particular game so I looked up some reviews on my phone.
The thrashing it got from those reviews (both text and video) saved me from making a big mistake that day. Strider Returns was… Returned (tee hee) to the shelf I pulled it from and I haven’t played the game to this day.
Tiertex did a good job of porting Flashback to the Atari Jaguar
I never knew there was a Strider sequel for the Genesis until this video. And after watching, I understand why I haven’t heard of it
You should review King Colossus. It's a pretty cool action rpg that only released in Japan, but got a good fan translation years ago. I'd like to hear your take on it
Great game but very easy and short.
I'm more interested now
It kind of feels like I'm the only one that really likes the game ,it's not abysmal ,it was just good ,I bought it in the mid 90s from this lady that would sell videogames
I like it too played it many times i like the level design and enemy design what is even better is that in this game you can adjust your jump!
I bought this game when I was a kid based on the hype from the first Strider. I saw it in a store and it was an instant purchase. "More Strider? Sign me up!" Then, I came home, start playing and was immediately crushed by how bad this game was. The awesome music, cool stages, great graphics, and quick action were gone. The game felt "sticky", which now we low is a performance issue. I went back to the store, asked for a refund and got a new game. I don't remember if I got TMNT Hyperstone Heist, Flashback, or something else, but I'm glad I did!
I remember being excited when i discovered this on the Sega Channel way back then, both me and my brother loved the first game on the Genesis.
I’m Brazilian and had that first magazine with the review!!! I played the first Strider a bit late, I loved the character design (and he was my favorite Marvel Vs Capcom character), but didn’t like the Genesis version that much… everyone seemed to love it (reviewers). Tried this Strider 2 thinking it must be an improvement (like the Shinobi series) but I hated it! I remember thinking Strider should move like Shadow Dancer… love the animation in this game.
Thank you for the review! This is a game I didn’t even remember existed.
Well my Saturday night just got significantly better. Thanks young lad!
That death scene at 10:10, right after killing a boss, explains this one perfectly.
This game is an absolute legend in the Strider fan community (yes, there is a Strider fan community, believe it or not). We all absolutely hate it. 😂
I remember when this came out. Mu brother and i brought it back to our dads electronics store and hooked it up to the best tv in the place. Couldnt believe how good it looked. I haven't been that excited about any game in this generation
I never played STRIDER in arcades as a kid. Arcade trips were a bit out of our price range sometimes. But I did play them on Sega Genesis and enjoyed both games immensely! Now I know the difference between sequel quality but personally speaking I always liked the Genesis titles. Maybe I didn’t know any better but I still liked them for what they were.
A bit harsh. I’m not saying it’s a really good game. But if I ended up with it for a weekend rental, I’d have a good time with it.
Not if you paid $60 for it.
@@neozeed1984 that would be an expensive rental, indeed!
US Gold most likely paid these magazines to give the game a good review. They knew the game would sell
You are wrong about that it didn't show off the developers talent. 5:38
That is the level they could produce.
As in it showed the low level of talent they had. And that is why it was a such a disappointing game.
You have some of the best and well produced retro gaming videos. Also a voice that is easy on the ears!!!❤❤❤❤
Such a shame they did not bring out more old UK PC games i would have loved Death Wish 3 or Cobra on Megadrive.
It seems that Palpatine has returned...
Somehow...
I'd still listen to this sound track on repeat then hear dance monkey one more time
You gave this game way more of a fair shake than most would. Respect.
I really need to play through this. So far, I've only played the first level and I liked it. Everyone else seems to have the opposite opinion, so I feel like I'm missing the problems they have encountered.
That janky walk animation made me think "Hinjo" had a limp. 😂 Like, what... Was it missing a single frame of animation? For what - so he could walk faster? A mystery, indeed.
I love the Strider environment and sounds… What I don’t like is the high difficulty. That spears stage (with inverted gravity) for me killed the game to play today…
Não acho tão difícil assim como você disse. É um de meus jogos favoritos de Mega. Questão de acostumar mesmo. Joguei bastante e me divirto até hoje com ele. Esse Strider II é que eu acho sem graça. Acho que essa revista brasileira que ele mostrou deve ter recebido uma grana da Tec Toy pra falar bem do jogo.😅
Thanks for this vid. The history behind this Strider game is quite interesting.👍
There's a Strider 2 game for the arcade. You can play it on MAME although it's not nearly as fun as the original. It's not exactly bad or anything. It just doesn't have the same cool sword sounds and great level layouts as the original. It starts out really easy so you have to sit through a very easy first level if you want to get to the meat of the game. The first game didn't pull punches as much like the 2nd game does.
Yeah its the same game as the ps1 version. The hardware used was a modified ps1 i believe.
I always like that version, especially the additional playable character. I wish theyd remake it, it uses low res polys and would really benefit from a higher resolution, sprites too.
The original japanese version of Strider on the Mega Drive is one of my favorite games. i played the hell out of that game back then.
My brother still has this game! I didn’t like it as much because I just wanted to hear the beginning stage music for Siberia! It’s still in my head after all these years
Awesomeness video slx I love it! Please do more thanks ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Damn, calm the hell down
Tiertex is all you need to know about this game. Almost nothing that Tiertex developed was good and most of what they're responsible for were bog standard licensed games. Sure the games they developed were mostly competent in many ways but they sure lacked a whole lot of polish! No surprise they haven't been a games developer for many years and closed for good in 2021.
So the game wasn't lying: it said it would be a "Journey from Darkness" lol
I had never even heard of Strider Returns. It is too bad they did not do the series justice. I remember before I ever had a Genesis I would see adverts in magazines and (especially before Sonic) they would always have a large photo of The original Strider to show off what the Genesis was capable of. It would always be Altered Beast and Strider, and I would be so envious seeing how awesome they looked compared to what the NES was capable of.
Strider Returns released right at the height of Sonic mania with 2 dominating the market, and 3 just a few months away. And with the SNES having been released a couple years prior to Strider Returns, I guess for me it just went unnoticed.
I love Strider on the Genesis and the NES version of Strider was fun. On God, I just saw him climb a chain and had a Castlevania Adventure flashback.
I've heard nothing good about this one.
My love for Strider differs from many others, I first played Strider 2 on Playstation 1 then mained Strider Hiryu and Wolverine on Marvel VS Capcom 1 both in the late 90's. Only played Strider 1 because it is the Bonus Disc on Strider 2 PS1 Game ^_^ Being Super Famicom boy back then didnt help me experience many awesome games like Herzog Zwei on the Mega Drive, Dynamite Deka on Saturn and all those Dreamcast hits (luckily some a re ported to PS2 which I had )... But glad to have played almost all AAA on PS1 and N64...
If you bought a game with US Gold on the packaging back in the day then that's on you.
I'll give you one. Not everyone had access to gaming mags at the time, but if you bought a SECOND U.S. Gold title, that was on you.
I loved the first game on the Genesis. Couldn’t wait to play the sequel, I rented it and it was clear it was a terrible cheap cash grab. Few years later I decided to give it another shot, maybe it wasn’t THAT bad. But yeah, it was that bad.
Keep the content coming
I remembered enjoying Strider Returns or Strider II as it was known in the UK, I got the game for pretty cheap at some secondhand store. While the drop in quality is obvious I just can’t get over how great the devices are and yes because I’ve played it so much. I remember most of the corny dialogue. I’m actually shocked that it was on an 8 Mb cartridge because looking at the graphics, you’d think it was at least half of that, But in this game’s defence, this Genesis/MD version was programmed by a single person so I can forgive its floors a little bit but what’s not forgivable is just how much of a downgrade it is from the original and I actually like a lot of the music tracks that you featured such as the forbidden forest the castle metropolis and I like the beehive level, overall it’s not a great game in fact it’s not even a good game but I see as kind of a guilty pleasure mainly because of the voices and tap some of the music which has that typical Tiertex Twangy sound that all of the genesis/MD games had. Anyway great review and I’ll be honest I wasn’t expecting you to review this great all the same. I just hope you review the original strider on Genesis/MD as I know you’ve spoken about it many times and I’ve watched your remembering strider video and your mini faces of strider video but you’ve never done an actual proper review. I’m hopefully one day you will just see how it holds up today.
I saw this game in EGM exactly once while it was still in production and always thought it was never released. To this day I still haven’t come across a physical copy.
No idea what capcom was thinking letting us gold and tiertex use the strider name
I always saw this game advertised in the west all the time. Especially in gaming magazines.
Strider was such an eye opening game, I was so hyped to play this game, when I saw the US Gold flash on the screen I was immediately skeptical. I was let down instantly by this game. It's playable but only if you remove what you knew about the original Strider from your mind. I gave it a 6 out of 10.
This games feels likes a Temu version of Strider. 😊
The level designers and graphics artists REALLY liked right angles
I totally agree with you my lord !!
When me and my friends seen us gold was behind the sequel. We said. Nope. Till this day I havent played this game. Even with a emulation port.
13:12 Perfectly explained 2K / Take Two Interactive in regard to the WWE games.
10:09 That's Tiertex for you
Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time
Too bad about the game design and spotty music, the art, especially the illustrations, are excellent, and that's impressive voice work tbh.
US Gold ported the original home micro versions in the UK, so they just used the engine they had for Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, Amstrad and C64, and made like a level mod, like the thousands of Mario ones, so the game played just like the original on those formats.
SEGA ported the Megadrive version themselves, so Teirtex had to make a whole new engine from scratch to port the Amiga levels over on the Megadrive, which is why it is awful compared to the original version, Teirtex aren't as good at making Megadrive games as SEGA are.
They also did the same thing on home micros with Streetfighter, making their own unofficial sequel (Capcom had designs on making their own sequel to Streetfighter in the works, I wonder whatever became of that...) called "HKM, The Human Killing Machine" where you have to fight hookers in Amsterdam, an Alsatian in Russia, and a bull in Spain. It's painfully terrible, but you can punch a bull in it's head till you knock it out. I had it on the Spectrum.
Keep up the great work, brother!
Thanks! Will do!
They took the amazing high pitch sound of the sword from the first game and changed it to another Genesis fart sound. That tells you everything you need to know.
There was 2 swords type. With the second one the game was harder. I remember also having voicing issue on my genesis 2 compared to my genesis 1. At least there was one music that was good in this game. This is the adventure of a japanese sprite in a us game.
After the incredible port of the first game that I imported from japan, this was one of my biggest disappointments on the genny. Not sure if this is universal, but on my cart from back in the day. If you pealed off the label on the Genesis cart, it had the euro label under it.
SOUNDS LIKE THE SOUNDTRACK TO CADASH!!
As far as the conversions of the Strider original to computers of the time are concerned, they were not particularly successful. The gameplay was condensed (esp the 8bit versions), the technical implementation was mediocre and did not come anywhere close to the arcade version. Check out the Master System version by the same developer studio and you get an idea...
To a certain extent, this explains the reviews of Strider II (Returns) for home computers at the time, although the magazines were, in my opinion, overly positive. The game was not really good for the time either. I didn't play the Mega Drive version until years after its release, had low expectations because of the developer and was still disappointed.
btw it's actually amazing how licensed games by US Gold received decent to very good ratings in magazines and were viewed critically by gamers even back then (including in Europe). I owned an Amiga as well as a Mega Drive and you only have to look at the versions of celebrated games like Turrican 2, Rainbow Islands or Toki to see what a difference in quality there was compared to Tiertex developments.
I think because they were british developed ports, british magazines overyhyped them to give them credit for their work.
@@vasileios6301 The thing is that most arcade ports for home computers, for example, were developed in the UK and were mostly of decent quality. I recommend browsing through the Ocean catalogue (yes... Ocean has a controversial reputation) - esp for Amiga you'll be surprised how many solid arcade ports they published. It is night and day compared to Tiertex. There is no rational reason for the good ratings except for a certain level of hype.
It seems to me the developers and publisher of this game were more focused on the voice acting and sound clarity; rather than the gameplay quality back then.
I didn't think the sound was that bad but then again I do like to go to hippie festivals and Raves😂
Ah, Tiertex... A name to strike fear into the hearts of many a British gamer. They were notorious for being a "quick and dirty" deve studio who churned out games of generally low quality for low cost. U.S. Gold used them a lot to maximise profits.
never did ever play the arcade version of strider. only had played the NES version. Played the gen version/sequel years later
As soon as I saw US Gold, I knew we were in trouble.
I think even if it runs as poorly as it does, having SET PIECES was what made the original interesting. Literally every little bit of level you traverse is like it's own action set piece and levels were connections between these set pieces. Consider level 2. You start being attacked by wolves, then end up trapped with a mechanical ape, then have to climb out of an ice cave lined with robots into a twisted power plant and escape by hijacking hover vehicles and finally join up with an escaping airship and kick the shit out of 3 kung fu chicks. That's ONE LEVEL. Every little bit is a set piece and flows like water between each part.
This is where Strider 2 ultimately fails. It uses Amiga style design which is 'We don't have much memory for graphics, but we got TONS of memory for tilemaps!' style design.
Literally every 3 connected screens is a mini challenge and set piece in the original Strider. I think that's why it continues to stand out. Yeah, it's 'just a platformer' with interesting climbing and running mechnics, but really, it was a one of a small handful of games around the time built on 'OH SHIT!" experiences stacked on top one another.
Damn that slow down
I’ve been a little bit obsessed with this game, I love that this came up(yes it’s horrible). Didn’t it come out in 1990 not 1993?
As a huge Strider fan who had been waiting for a sequel, I remember seeing a preview of Strider 2 in EGM and being horrified that it a) looked so terrible and b) that it was being published by US Gold.
Back in the day… I was hype when I heard about this game.. soon as I seen “U.S.Gold” instead of The tried and true “Capcom”. I avoided this atrocity.
I didn’t get this game back in the day, I forget my reasoning but I didn’t even rent it so that says a lot. I did buy and still have the strider collection on PS1 when it came out. I got the download PS3 game and PS4 sequels as well
"The Master" said I can't win, so I'm down with that, so I'm not gonna try. Homer Simpson said it best " Trying leads to failure." You win Master. I won't be playing Strider Returns.
This makes me wonder, is there a rom hack for this?
I bet the fans could make a great sequel.
Strider Returns really said somehow the grandmaster has returned
Sega Lord X and Strider good combo
I'll save the suspense.... It sucks!
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It isn't the most popular title, but I really enjoyed Double Helix' (2014) Strider.