Strider Hiryu

Strider Hiryu is one of those titles people still argue about — whether the arcade original or the Sharp X68000 version looks better. The player takes on the role of the futuristic ninja Hiryu, who cuts his way with the plasma katana Cypher through snowy Moscow, a flying fortress, Siberian forests, and an orbital station, all the way to the immortal Grandmaster. For 1989, the controls are extraordinarily free: Hiryu climbs walls and ceilings, slides down slopes, somersaults over chasms, and his attack sweeps a wide arc, so combat feels more like a dance than careful, measured jumping. He also has three robotic helpers he can collect and summon, and the game never lets you stand still, since the scenery moves, shifts, and crumbles beneath his feet.

The conversion for the X68000 is a textbook example of how ports were supposed to look. The computer had enough sprites and colors to sustain enormous bosses, like the serpent made of shifting segments or the mechanical centipede, and it handled multi-layered parallax backgrounds as well. The music uses FM synthesis to preserve the original's grimly epic tone with its pseudo-Russian motifs, complemented by sampled shouts and impact sounds. It's precisely the audio side that leads many collectors to consider this version the definitive home rendition, long before the game reached modern platforms as part of compilations.

At the time, this was the flagship of the Japanese computer scene, a game X68000 owners showed visitors as proof their expensive machine was worth having. Strider Hiryu's influence on the genre is still visible today: fast acrobatic action, an emphasis on fluid movement, and bombastic set pieces later resonated throughout a whole range of action platformers, and its lead hero became a fixture of Capcom's crossover fighting games. Today the game is still snappy and legible, only mercilessly short and difficult, as befits its arcade origins. It suits anyone who likes action that hits the ground running from the first minute and doesn't waste time on explanations.