I remember Strider being highly hyped by Tec Toy back in the day. It was one of the killer apps they used to push Mega Drive consoles in Brazil around 1991. Damn good times. How I miss those days.
@@RetroCore I played Strider long after the hype and wasn’t impressed at first until I played the arcade original on the PSP in the Capcom Classics Remixed compilation that I realised just how good a port the Mega Drive version is and for the longest time I thought the Mega Drive version was only on a 4 Megabit cartridge until I read an online review stating that it was in fact 8 megabit.
Strider is one of those classic games that never gets old. I love both the Arcade and Mega Drive versions, all the good memories that comes back playing the shit out of that game back in the day.
It definitely was the first 8 meg cart on any system and fun fact, Sega originally wanted it to be on a 6 megabit cartridge but had to go with 8 megabits in order to fit all the levels and according to Wikipedia, the development of Mega Drive Strider was quite difficult and they actually maxed out those 8 megabits.
@@Vectormantudeoz Thunder Fox was a lacklustre port for the Genesis and apparently Genesis Thunder Fox is 8 megs, you wouldn’t know it looking how cut back the graphics are and they even had to remove 2 of the levels from the arcade original.
Sooo glad you made clear Tiertex handled the Master System version. For years, I tried pointing this out to RetroGamer magazine, even going as far as to name the coder, yet they still insisted it was done by Sega.
I reckon because they are taking the word of the Japanese Wiki. Normally Japanese Wiki is correct but in this case it states the Master System game was ported by Sega. That can't be right I though as its identical to the crappy home computer ports. A little digging and yep, it was confirmed to be a Tiertex product and my faith in Sega was renewed 😁
@@RetroCoreRG Magazine infamous for poor research and unwillingness to admit they made mistakes and issue corrections, Editor once said he wasn't interested in facts, only good stories.
@@RetroCore Sega would have done a far better job with the Master System port which I’ve never played and don’t intend to, especially having seen it on TH-cam, Tiertex sure took some liberties with the story too, with the ridiculous ending saying it was a simulation for the real battle and the less said about the terrible music the better as it’s just bastardised versions of Raid (stage 1 theme) and Urobolos the Iron Ruler (stage 1 boss theme) which is even more butchered, seriously how did Tiertex get so much work? Probably because they were cheap compared to decent developers.
It's an absolute travesty that there's versions of the arcade that don't have the proper music. The arcade machine I used to play in 1992 had the same music as the MD. Part of Strider's charm was the wonderfully atmospheric music. I can't imagine missing out on tracks like Gravity Unusual, Strider Hiryu and Theme for the Counter Attack. I first fired it up in MAME in 2001 and thought the music repeating was an emulation glitch. When I bought Strider 2 on the PS1 it seemed to have the proper music. Sadly Capcom Collection for the PS2 has the version of Strider with the missing music.
The key thing to remember with Tiertex is that they were cheap and handled multiple platforms at once, so publishers loved them. They would pay people the same to port ST code to the Amiga, as they would code specifically for the Amiga hardware, so of course people took the easy route and Amiga owners paid the price.
@@RetroCorealmost 2 years after the Japanese launch of the Mega Drive, still what a port it was at the time at 8 mega which was arcade original was 4 times the size but the Mega Drive version really held its own especially against the crappy home computer ports which were developed by the infamous Tiertex.
I had (and still have) the Japanese megadrive port and it totally blew my mind how close to the arcade it was. An excellent game at the time especially with the rare for the time character physics. Great episode👍
I always thought that 32 bit ports of many arcades are just emulation, and thanks to this channel I discovered that they're truly ports. Megadrive one is a masterpiece, amazing!
@@mortenera2294 I don't really see why not, the CPS1 goes back as far as Ghouls & Ghosts and Capcom themselves were using Sony's PSX-based ZN-1/2 boards for games like Street Fighter EX. There's a CPS1/2 emu for the PSP so it doesn't seem like it would be impossible with some fiddling 🤷♂ /edit -- just saw that there's a version of MAME that some Italian guy hacked together to work on the PS1, no idea how well it runs though
@@mortenera2294 the PS1 has the graphical grunt necessary to display all the sprites and parallax layers of the CPS-1 and the only real challenge would be the emulation of the CPUs of the CPS-1 board but at 33MHz vs 12MHz this seems almost doable. With a good Just In Time compiler this may be possible, although the limited amount of RAM available on the PS1 would clearly make this difficult.
@@nekononiaow ...You guys really don't know how emulation works, huh? The PS1 might have similar graphics, but it's got 3D hardware that is barely even passable by 1994 standards. It renders polygons and textures, not sprites, which makes this even more difficult, and it's got just 2MB RAM. Even if you tried to do a software renderer, it would run like crap
@@mortenera2294 I was developing games for the PS1 from 1998 to 2001 but I guess I must have been misreading those developer documentations back then. 😉 Both the Saturn and the PS1 have no perspective correction mechanism for textures because they essentially render their polygons as purely 2D surfaces and a 2D sprite is nothing but a rectangle polygon with its edges aligned with the borders of the screen. When you read that "the PS1 can draw X hundred of thousands of polygons per second" you can simply replace this with "sprites" and that number is still correct. The PS1 hardware can display hundred of thousands of sprites per second even with significant overdraw, which allows for parallax layers without issue. Displaying sprites actually frees CPU power because it means you do not have to do perspective correction with the GTE, which saves a lot of CPU cycles for something else. Those docs are available online by the way if you find them, if you can read them, you'll see that the machine has more than enough power to replicate the graphics of most arcade boards of the 80s and early 90s.
@@jasonlee7816 considering the size of the cartridge ROM I was certainly impressed as were more people and Mega Drive version was the best home port by a wide margin for a long time before the X68000 and PlayStation versions in which the latter isn’t all that impressive to me especially in the audio in which the PS1 should have been arcade perfect, it’s a shame the Saturn didn’t get Strider 2 with the Strider bonus disc as it would have been the best home port by a mile.
The X68 version is almost "near Arcade" at the point that even the speech of the characters in cutscenes are still doing *audio jungle* with each other before one is finished.
@@RetroCore @GamayObera Of course, the X68000 version is a reassembly of the CPS1 arcade code with custom routines for the Sharp computer. Capcom did the same for Final Fight. The X68000 version base source code is the CPS1 japanese revision 900613 (written in the game main program).
The person that did the sf3 3rd strike wide screen hack is doing all the cps1 and cps2 games now, goes by bank bank on youtube. Also the people that ported final fight to the cps2 (which is easily one of the best hacked games i played in 2023 through HBmame, and needs it's own mame driver) are working on Ghouls and Ghosts now, hopefully this will be their next project. I'd love too see a widescreen strider with cps2 enhancements.
Great remaster, Mark. I'm torn on Strider. I didn't play the CPS version until with the Callus emulator at the end of the 90s because I simply never saw a cab for it even at the big mall arcade. I also remember distinctly that it was one of the games that I couldn't run on the older family PC on Callus because that PC didn't have enough RAM (could run Final Fight, Magic Sword, UN Squadron, and maybe one or two others); instead, it was one of the games I was excited to try when I had worked enough and built my own PC in late '99 for Unreal Tournament and Quake3. I had played the Genesis port a little bit near to its release when my uncle rented it before I had a Genesis. But, that just a couple of times, and I never rented nor bought it myself after I got my Genesis until I picked up a copy in a bundle lot on ebay in the 00s. So, I didn't have much memory to compare it to, but I had a blast with it in Callus (and I didn't have to have the frame-skip sky high in the games on Callus on that slot-1 Athlon 650MHz compared to the lowly AMD K5-PR133 of our family PC). And, I played quite a bit of the PS1 version because my friend/roommate had Strider 2 (this had to be earlier than '06? since we were roommates in '01). The PS1 version was very good, and the Genesis port was good too. Besides what you show with the X68000 port, the other ports seem very poor (I don't expect much from Tiertex though). I've not played it, but the PC-Engine port seems especially disappointing, especially given it uses the arcade card. I swear there was at least a magazine preview in GamePro or EGM of upcoming Japanese releases that showed screenshots of a PC-Engine port that looked massively better. Maybe I'm misremembering, but if that was the case, I don't know what happened to end up with this final product. I've probably actually played Strider the most on that Capcom collection on the PSP, but I have to admit that I probably haven't played the original Strider in 15+ years. Anyway, I do really enjoy the arcade/Genesis Strider (and quite liked PS1/arcade Strider 2 and the 360 game was fun if not amazing), but I'll be honest: I liked NES Strider more. That probably comes 100% down to nostalgia, since though I only played the Genesis Strider port a couple of times, I played the NES Strider game dozens of hours back then. It's a very different animal, and I do appreciate how good and fun arcade Strider is, but the fun memories of playing the NES game draw me back to slap that cart in every couple years while I just don't have the same kind of draw back to the arcade and Genesis port even though I did very much enjoy them when I finally got to play them more.
Ah, the days of early emulation. I also remember Callus. I do recall playing it windowed as my PC was rather slow. I think the 2006 release date was when Strider was released as a standalone title. Or at least in Japan it was.
@@JorgeAraujo97 Which is certainly true I would guess: the AST Advantage Adventure 200 we had shipped with only 8MB of RAM on a single DIMM in early '97, and later that year dad had added a 4MB DIMM to the only other slot (along with a pretty-terrible 4MB Trident 3DIMage 9750 PCI video card, both of which get got at a local computer show/fair). I don't know about the Win95 port of Callus, since I didn't use that until I built my own PC in '99, but the DOS version absolutely required 16MB of RAM. It wouldn't even try to load Strider and would just give you a big warning message about not having the required amount of RAM. If I had thought to do it back then, I would have tried the Win95 port of Callus on the computer, since maybe you could get around the RAM limit with enough virtual memory set up unlike running DOS Callus.
Fun Fact: Capcom USA wanted to rename Strider to "The Falcon" in the West, to the point the alternate title screen is still in the arcade's code. Luckily they didn't get their way.
I remember it being called Falcon in a preview of upcoming arcade boards in one of the UK gaming mags at the time, but I never heard that anywhere else.
Almost correct. The full story is: "Yotsui came up with two alternate titles: Ninja Dynamics and Falcon, thinking that Hiryu's actions would remind the player of a bird of prey. "Falcon" showed up as the game's official English title during its reveal at the AM Show" Research is king.
Nice to see a remaster of Strider, although, it's nice to clearly see the great graphics of the arcade and MegaDrive version but even more painful to suffer the terrible ones of the micro ccomputers ports (except for the X68000 obviously). Tiertex was obviously the kiss of death for any license and it's almost comforting to see them using the same old methods for every game: • 100% CPU handled scrolling even on machines which support hardware scrolling (Amiga), except for the C64 (*), • gigantic useless HUD to reduce the amount of screen estate they have to scroll every "frame" because of point 1, • approximative collision detection (one of their trade secrets! No one did bad collision detection as well as Tiertex), • the color choices ... how high were they when they were making those? And so on. I don't know how anyone who worked for Tiertex managed to keep their self esteem intact. The coders, artists, audio people must have known the end result was garbage and unworthy of the sales those massively hyped games had because of the attached license name. It must not have been a pleasant and rewarding experience to work for such a result and likely in very bad conditions. (*) isn't it funny how the C64 version is the only microcomputer one which uses hardware scrolling? Wel, that's because they did not have a choice. Everyone and their grandmother knew how to use hardware scrolling on the C64 very early on in the machine's life so even Tiertex learned it. But on the Amiga? Not a chance. There was the Atari ST all CPU version that they simply could copy without making any changes and you bet they did. Thanks for the video Mark!
Some history regarding the Tiertex Home Computer versions: ST and Amiga: Since Capcom only provided Tiertex with an Arcade cabinet, none of the game's source code to work with, both conversions were programmed basically from scratch, with their sole programmer John Prince writing them based on "lengthy playing sessions" and gameplay videos. ZX Spectrum: The ZX Spectrum port was coded by Chris Brunning, who wanted to include as many of Hiryu's acrobatics as space permitted, a compromise was reached to reduce the original six angles of incline to only two, which led to the extra work of redesigning the mapping on each stage. C64: Coder Paul Cole, tried to get visuals close to the original but in doing so stretched the system too far. There was also a planned, but never released, SAM Coupé port, Chris Brunning supposed to have coding duties. U.S. Gold development manager David Baxter said "supposedly it’ll only take two weeks using our existing Speccy code and ST graphics, but we’ll have to see"
21:55 According to Playstation DataCenter, Strider was released for PS1 twice: in 2000 together with Strider 2 (all regions) and in Japan in 2006 as "Strider Hiryuu - Capcom Game Books", where the game came bundled with a hardcover book.
Good video, the attack sound sample in that lousy Amiga version was about to drive me bananas before you moved on to the next version, and in the PC Engine version it sounds like Hiryu should be playing professional football. Arcade, Genesis (the version that I played the most), x68000, and especially the PS1 remake are all very nice. The PC Engine CD is not optimized but it at least has a redeeming quality here and there. The rest of them I'd rather play the NES platform/adventure game instead. The new Mega Drive remaster is coming together very nice and I'm looking forward to that being completed.
My favorite port would have to be the Mega Drive port. Aside from being the first ever version of Strider I played, it was really the first game that convinced a friend's dad to buy him a Mega Drive. Even after playing the original game (via the arcade compilations), the MD port still holds up extremely well.
I’d agree, it’s the one I grew up with and I own the western version, I first played the Mega Drive version back in 1994 long after the hype had died down and for the longest time I thought it was only a 4 megabit game not knowing it was 8 mega and the first cartridge on the system and the biggest outside of the massive megabits inside Neo Geo cartridges and the time this game was the ultimate Nintendon’t.
Nice to see an updated video for this iconic game. Tiertex really planned ports out with a one size fits all philosophy. Why are the sprites so tiny on every version? So we can use the same base sprites but just recoloured for every single version! 16 Bit owners will surely love getting the same sprites as Spectrum and Amstrad owners! Plus we can build around the ST version which runs everything in software, ideal for porting. Amiga and PC owners will never notice the tiny play area, bad scrolling and lack of hardware sprites. It's the perfect crime. With their crap porting powers combined, team Tiertex triumphs again! Seriously, that's probably how they got so much work, they had multiformat development well figured out long before it became an industry standard. The drawbacks of such a generalised approach on hardware that's underpowered compared to the arcade original are very apparent. *edit* One correction, the PS1 version of Strider 2 was released in 2000, not 2006.
One of my fav games.. Grew up playing the Genesis version.. Played the arcade a few times. I own the Playstation version which I think is near arcade perfect. Good job on the video . Thanks 👍
Surprisingly, the PlayStation port is not near arcade perfect in the audio department. At least it’s rather weak in that area. It has clips from the arcade in terms of audio like the stage clear theme, but the actual endgame audio for the stages is rather weak. Even the arranged music, it’s pretty terrible and what was supposed to sound like the arcade original and the sounding closer to the Mega Drive version, only worse.
Another good update. I always thought Strider looked cool whenever I saw screenshots back in the day, but then I never got around to playing it until about 10 years ago. Just one of those things. Without experiencing it growing up, one way or the other, I prefer just the metallic sound sample when attacking. Now, I know Strider seems a bit primitive to some, and it is extremely straightforward, but there's always been something about the presentation that makes it into something much cooler for me. I have a similar feeling about Splatterhouse. The Mega Drive port really was impressive. The only major issue I had with that port was significant slowdown during the jungle stage. The way the vines bend probably requires some math that taxes the CPU. Last year, I tried the NES version of Strider. I had high hopes because I love those old NES action platformers with tiny sprite heroes like Power Blade, Shatterhand, Shadow of the Ninja, Ninja Geiden, etc. NES Strider looked very similar. I liked their approach in making a totally different game. In fact, my understanding is it's more in line with the manga(yes, it was a comic tie in). It has good ideas and isn't awful, but it's also an unfinished and glitchy mess. I could tell just from playing it how buggy it was, but I recently saw a video that dove into the technical side of the game and it apparently has fundamental programming issues with the way it displays sprites. And if that's not weird enough, they made the game to be like the manga in terms of narrative, as I said, but then never released the game in Japan making that aspect irrelevant. I wonder if someone got the idea that they could recoup some of their costs by releasing what they had, a game that was maybe 85 percent complete and needed major play testing it never got, in the US. I think it could have been really good with just a bit more work.
There is (kind of) a reason Strider is pink on the Amstrad version - if he was blue all the enemies would have to be blue as well. Mode 1, four colour graphics in a screen region.
I always enjoy these classic episode remakes. Gives us a chance to revisit some of the really popular titles. Strider is a very interesting game. I've never been that great at it though. It's a shame so many of the ports got the Tiertex taint to them. 😵
A cracking remaster here thanks Mark, I remember getting that 8mb cart for the Megadrive and been blown away as I'd only recently played it in a arcade, I loved console gaming in those 16bit days were you'd get something really special a few times a month, I hardly play or complete any new games nowadays. Could you remaster your old Double Dragon battle if you haven't done so already, so many crap versions to play but I love the game all the same.
Ah, the double dragon video could do with a remake. I'm not planning on doing it anytime soon but will get around to it. I also agree about the 16bit days. Back then we put a lot of effort in to our games.
@@RetroCore I also have a request for a remaster, Street Fighter 2 when you have the time as I’m sure you have a lot of other battle of the ports and other remasters to get through first.
It really is amazing just how close the Genesis version is to the arcade original. Even seeing it side-by-side it fares well, the only real giveaways are some slight color differences and the pauses for decompression. Of course the PS and X68000 ports were even closer to the arcade, but those are both far more powerful machines. As for the rest.. well at least the PC Engine version wasn't developed by Tiertex, though I have to wonder just what the hell the arcade card is being used for. The PC Engine could do so much better in the right hands, just look at After Burner II, Outrun, and Street Fighter II' CE, all of which were released on hucards! Everything else is about what you expect from Tiertex. I remember trying out the SMS version on an emulator and thinking there was something very wrong, but the other Tiertex ports are even worse! It's a shame Sega didn't handle the Master System version instead, as that would have made a world of difference.
Wow, doesn’t time fly. I watched your original battle of the ports for strider probably back in 2015 and is probably my most watched battle of the ports from you because it was one of my favourites, even without the VoiceOver and I remember reading the scroll in text along the bottom, in fact, most of your early shows had no VoiceOver and just scrolling text, as for the ports, The Mega Drive, X68000 and PlayStation ports are the only versions worth playing and the only versions you need and Sega did not learn the lesson because they allowed to Tiertex to develop games on their systems more than once and the less said about the rubbish home computer ports the better , anyway, great battle of the ports, and this is probably like maybe the 10th time. I’ve probably watched this battle of the ports, I’m enjoying these remasters, greetings from the UK from a fellow Brit.
Glad you're still enjoying the show after all these years. Yeah, the earlier shows had no voice over. I think Bonaza Bros was the first to feature it after demand from the viewers.
I remember when you did the first Strider video Mark. Man, how time flies when you're having fun bro. Looking forward to the next video from you bro. 8^) Anthony...
Strider, this game was at my 7-11 next to the Street Fighter 2 machine during the early part of the 90s and I must have wasted at least 30 bucks on it over 4 years Excite.
This is a work of scholarship. and UGH all those Tiertex crap, and then the beauty of the MD version. IIR, the MD port was considered "huge" at the time at 8Mbits. Also, I never would have noticed the major differences between the arcade and the X68000 version until this video, always assuming it was pixel perfect!
Strider! What a Classic. im goin' ta need to watch this one on my bigger screen... my old phone screen wont do this one any justice im sure! Btw nice one on the remaster 😁✌️
You also have to take into consideration the kit Tiertex was using for SEGA game development. Tiertex Master System and Game Gear Dev kits we're effectively a circuit board that had all the MS/GG chips on it. It also had a connector with which you could plug on a miniature LCD screen just like the GG. Although you could also view the GG screen on a normal monitor also. For such a big and expensive piece, of kit, it was apparently a little lacking in features. The debugger was particularly awful. It also took ages to download code/data to it (partly because it only recognized a certain type of file which was effectively hex data but in ASCII!!!! This made the files more than twice the size they needed to be, which in the days of 20meg hard drives must of been an absolute nightmare
I grew up playing the Mega Drive version. I saw you mentioning the speech languages of the arcade/X68000 versions, you forgot to mention the pirate boss, which speaks Portuguese.
No, the pirate boss does actually speak Spanish. It's a very pitiful Spanish uttered by what's definitely a non native, but that's clearly Spanish, not Portuguese.
5:10 speaking of the Amiga port the game received incredibly well with many magazine reviewers gave it an almost perfect score, the Master System port which came later though didn't received as well as the Amiga one
I have both the Genesis (Mega Drive) and the PS1 versions. And if I can be honest, I've never played the home computer versions and for good reason. Cant have a good port when Tiertex is involved.
Is it wrong I actually liked the Amiga version? Bare in mind I played it before I saw either the Arcade or MD version. Once I’d played the MD version and realised the Amiga version had half the original content missing things changed 😅 the Arcade and MD versions are amongst my favourite games of the era, the design of the stages and enemies and use of changing music to create atmosphere are impressive even now.
Never let Tiertex anywhere near Strider Hiryuu, be it porting on other platforms NOT named the Mega Drive and Sharp X68K or create a sequel outside Capcom’s jurisdiction. And yet they got away with it big time, so they’re still in business today!
I'm pretty sure I left a comment on your first video when I first discovered your channel 3 years ago so I probably don't have anything valid to add that you, myself or anyone else hasn't already said LOL Except for great video Mark! And, thanks for nothing Tiertex! Seriously, I swear they had dirt on someone high up within US Gold or Capcom or something. How did these dunderheads get so much work back then?
Strider has always been one of my big favorite action platformer games and the Mega Drive's version is very dear to me. What a luck to be grown with this version! The original arcade I've found later and looking at it made me admire the Sega's reprogramming work for the Capcom original even more. As for the Tiertex' works... I feel very pissed by such a piss-poor effort they made in almost all the systems! I say "almost" because I can find some little positive points. 1 - I prefer the Atari ST version rather than the Amiga due to its processing power and fine work on the soundtrack for the quite limited chip of the computer. 2 - Master System's version has to be the best 8-bit for the game... But that's not saying much due to the reasons you've pointed out in the video. After all, that was the one I've known back in the day. I've felt really amazed about the Sharp X68000's version, also about the PlayStation One's... I felt very intrigued about why on the Earth the Strider for the PC Engine CD has such weird physics, even having such great features for the system. It made me admire the care about Strider that Sega had even more again, despite its limitations...! (And you were very reasonable in putting the Japanese version of it as well!)
The MD version is the one I played first and then I played the arcade version on the PSP in Capcom classics collection remixed which makes me appreciate the MD version even more and this is my favourite battle of the ports. And so great to see remastered.
Strider. The first and only arcade game I can 1cc. Love that game Also, some other things to note: The X68000 port, like the Mega Drive version, borders the HUD. Some MD physics isn't 100% accurate. The jump to skip the first mini boss is no longer possible, for example. You can even choose the skip the PCE's extra stage LOL
Has anyone ever noticed how the Grandmaster’s laugh is slightly lower pitched in the Meg Drive version while in the original arcade version and X68000 versions, his laugh is slightly sped up
@@RetroCore they weren’t but there was some exceptions like Street Fighter 2 and Ghouls’N Ghosts but for overall the CPS1 had a very distinct sound that you could tell it was a Capcom game with that twang in their FM synths.
No doubt that US gold offered them a brown envelope for that score, cause there’s no way the amigo version is even remotely close to the fantastic MD version.
Strider always reminds me of the almost crazed push to have as arcade-perfect home version as possible- the true high water mark of any home console or comp. And while the NES version of this (and several other) arcade classics was remade as a totally different game, I thought sometimes they were better. It wasn't until years later that I realized just how shallow many arcade games actually were.
Arcade games don't need to be deep experiences as they're designed for a quick thrill. Still, some like Strider still work as a home game as there's. Enough content in there to last a good 30 minutes or so each play. Plus it's fun so players will keep coming back. I find that with games full of content I tend to play them only once or maybe twice until completion whole an arcade game I'll play more times than I can remember.
@@RetroCore I actually think strider was one of Capcom’s sounding CPS1 games but it doesn’t hold a candle to the Mega Drive version which sounds way better.
Yeah, the ZX is even a bit too fast, but I bet it's just a coincidence. The only thing they cared for was if their ports booted and were ready for Christmas.
I’m going to have to boot up my CPS-1 multi and play some Strider to take away the bad taste of those Tiertex ports! 😅 The Megadrive port really is amazing, its plays so closely to the arcade it’s really well done. The only thing I don’t like about it are those gravity chambers where you orbit that sphere thing, I find it much harder than the arcade version for some reason. The PS1 port is excellent too, especially as you can unlock the ability to edit Hiryuu’s outfit to different colours.
Great video, as always. I’m sure I’m in the minority, but the grunting sound that Stryder makes while throwing his weapon irritated the crap out of me.
I remember Sega touting the Genesis version and saying 8 mega power and such when I was little kid in 1990. I have played the Pc Engine CD version and I agree it's terrible compared to the Genesis Version. I should try the PS1 version sometime. I played the remake on PS4.
Ah, the reason they pushed the 8meg of power thing is because at the time most games were 4mbit or less. There were very few 8mbit games at that time. The only other I can think of is Raiden.
Oh man, I feel the complete opposite way about the attack sounds. Being in the states I grew up with the north american version so the "shing shing shing" sound is iconic to me. "Huh huh huh" sounds dumb by comparison. To each his own I guess lol
For me the sword grunting sounds annoying and perfer the versions without it since thats how the Mega Drive version sounded for me back then. Still find this game looking and sounding really good. At least the arcade - Mega Drive versions. But my memory and skill have severly deteriorated on these games I used to beat easily :O
The sword grunting sounds being present or not is not a Mega Drive particularity but a region one determined by Capcom. The arcade version already has that difference between Japanese and western version, so the Mega Drive version only followed suit. Even the PlayStation version still has that difference between regions, despite the fact that it didn't apply to Strider 2.
@@jasonlee7816 The size of the ROM chip doesn’t tell the whole story; in fact it makes Sega’s home port more impressive. The fact they were able to develop a near arcade identical port on only 8 mb of memory is a very impressive feat and makes you think how better it could have been had the rom size been even larger.
Surprised at the poor quality of the Amiga version. That thing could run Shadow of The Beast II. Looks like a lazy ST port that doesn't use the Amiga's custom hardware maybe?
The only good thing about the CPC, Speccy and PC version was that the robot ape sprite was good! As for the PC Engine version, makes you wonder if the developers had compared notes with Tiertex and decided to compete on the most crap version to write.
Nice episode remaster, thanks! The ps1 era ports are really curious since the processors were not strong enough for emulation (or at least it would be a nightmare to implement even in assembly).
The PS1 version of Strider is the CPS1 version wrapped in a PS1 CPS1 engine emulator. The programmer was lent the Strider arcade source code in paper (huge amount of paper), and a pristine CPS1 arcade board of Strider to port the game.
@flink1231 : I met the PS1 port programmer with my wife in Tokyo in 2019. He told me everything about the Strider port. What he did is basically rewrite the display part and the I/O (as usual).
@@dlfrsilver thanks for sharing! It sounds a lot like what has been done with the latest mario anniversary collection but on a system with much tighter specs compared to the emulated machine. Very cool!
I admit I grew up playing the Amiga version. Living in the UK I never saw the Megadrive version, or any of the other console versions; my only comparison was the 8-bit computers, and I guess Amiga / ST owners felt fairly happy with how much better their version was... I guess it can be quite hard to swallow that the Amiga version was in fact fairly rubbish next to certain consoles, but it is clear in this video. Ah well, c'est la vie. Come to think of it Retro Core's comments about Tiertex do ring very true. I think they had a reputation for churning out arcade conversions that looked like the arcade version on the back of the box, but in a quick time and for a cheap price. So the various publishers would keep hiring them. Looking at what other more meticulous developers produced (such as Team 17's Assassin) it is easy to try and imagine what the Amiga version could have been. Sigh.
I haven't seen the box to Amiga Strider but it wouldn't surprise me if they used arcade screen shots on it. It had happened before. I'm sure it was the Speccy version of street fighter 2 I saw which had Amiga game shots on the box 😅
I think this might be my "magic wand" choice to obliterate every home conversion of this awesome arcade game. I'll never forgive Tiertex for sharting out the c64 and amiga versions in particular. Unforgivable, especially since it was released around the same time as Turrican and a glut of other properly programmed fast platformers.
You stated in the comments you wagered Tiertex outsourced Master System Paperboy and Gauntlet, as they were surprisingly good. You'd loose that wager 😂 Gary Vine coded Master System Paperboy· Former Console development manager at Tiertex · Former Programmer at Binary Design Tony R Porter did MS Gauntlet.. He's a British programmer most notable for having ported Gauntlet to more systems than anyone else, which adds another dimension to his last name.
Looks like I loose that one. So Tiertex did have some talent working for them. Just a shame most of their stuff was trash. I guess Gary and Tony didn't stick around too long?
@@RetroCorePaul Marshall:Programmer Tiertex Jan 1988 - Jan 1990 2 years 1 month Didsbury, Manchester, UK Strider Sega Master System Flintstones Sega Master System Tiertex Design Studios Limited Graphic Programmer Went to Software Creations, Warthog etc after. Looks like Tony Porter soon moved into role of Producer.
Arcade and Mega Drive/Genesis are both GOATs. The Tiertex ports are about as fun as having car batteries hooked up to one's nipples and testicles at the same time...
I've heard something about an American C64 version. Apparently it was originally going to be a separate port entirely, but that got cancelled, so they just released Tiertex's garbage in the states instead. Also, come on, the PC Engine CD versions sucks, but you really can't sell any one on that after showing it after ever Tiertex version. I would've shown the Mega Drive, then PC Engine, then Tiertex ports IMO, but that's just a personal nitpick. Honestly, I found the ZX Spectrum and DOS versions somewhat playable, more so than Tiertex's other efforts. Not to say they're good, but at the very least they are playable.
It's official. Strider gets yet another remastered Battle of the Ports treatment. But, if there is only one version missing in this video, then it's on Tiger LCD handheld system.
![1989 [60fps] Strider Hiryu Nomiss ALL (SOUND X68K)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/-TsdX-xqi6U/mqdefault.jpg)
I think Hiryu's sprite on the Mega Drive looks cooler than even the arcade version.
I been telling people this for years, Sega gave him a cool makeover.
Came here to say the same! The lack of heavy black outlines and some slight color changes in the the palettes make for a more gritty feels.
Definitely agreeing with you!
Yeah I’ve often thought that too! I think it’s the scruffier hair that does it!
Yea he does... hair is cooler too
I remember Strider being highly hyped by Tec Toy back in the day. It was one of the killer apps they used to push Mega Drive consoles in Brazil around 1991. Damn good times. How I miss those days.
Well, let's be fair, Strider was mighty impressive back then.
@@RetroCore And still looks good 30+ years later.
@@RetroCore I played Strider long after the hype and wasn’t impressed at first until I played the arcade original on the PSP in the Capcom Classics Remixed compilation that I realised just how good a port the Mega Drive version is and for the longest time I thought the Mega Drive version was only on a 4 Megabit cartridge until I read an online review stating that it was in fact 8 megabit.
Strider is one of those classic games that never gets old. I love both the Arcade and Mega Drive versions, all the good memories that comes back playing the shit out of that game back in the day.
I love how the PC combination of music and sound effects sounds like a drum and bass track.
The rotating title logo on the Master System version is pretty cool
....and thats it.
That isn't even in the original. That's Tiertex trying to pad out there crap
Megadrive Strider was also the first 8 megabit console cartridge ever produced.
It may have very well been.
It definitely was the first 8 meg cart on any system and fun fact, Sega originally wanted it to be on a 6 megabit cartridge but had to go with 8 megabits in order to fit all the levels and according to Wikipedia, the development of Mega Drive Strider was quite difficult and they actually maxed out those 8 megabits.
Thunder fox Genesis doesn't like 8 bit compared with Strider.
@@Vectormantudeoz Thunder Fox was a lacklustre port for the Genesis and apparently Genesis Thunder Fox is 8 megs, you wouldn’t know it looking how cut back the graphics are and they even had to remove 2 of the levels from the arcade original.
Sooo glad you made clear Tiertex handled the Master System version.
For years, I tried pointing this out to RetroGamer magazine, even going as far as to name the coder, yet they still insisted it was done by Sega.
Please name the coder here too, so that we know the author of this abomination.
I reckon because they are taking the word of the Japanese Wiki. Normally Japanese Wiki is correct but in this case it states the Master System game was ported by Sega.
That can't be right I though as its identical to the crappy home computer ports. A little digging and yep, it was confirmed to be a Tiertex product and my faith in Sega was renewed 😁
@@andreanardo6991 it was Paul Marshall
@@RetroCoreRG Magazine infamous for poor research and unwillingness to admit they made mistakes and issue corrections, Editor once said he wasn't interested in facts, only good stories.
@@RetroCore Sega would have done a far better job with the Master System port which I’ve never played and don’t intend to, especially having seen it on TH-cam, Tiertex sure took some liberties with the story too, with the ridiculous ending saying it was a simulation for the real battle and the less said about the terrible music the better as it’s just bastardised versions of Raid (stage 1 theme) and Urobolos the Iron Ruler (stage 1 boss theme) which is even more butchered, seriously how did Tiertex get so much work? Probably because they were cheap compared to decent developers.
It's an absolute travesty that there's versions of the arcade that don't have the proper music. The arcade machine I used to play in 1992 had the same music as the MD. Part of Strider's charm was the wonderfully atmospheric music. I can't imagine missing out on tracks like Gravity Unusual, Strider Hiryu and Theme for the Counter Attack. I first fired it up in MAME in 2001 and thought the music repeating was an emulation glitch. When I bought Strider 2 on the PS1 it seemed to have the proper music. Sadly Capcom Collection for the PS2 has the version of Strider with the missing music.
It's so strange they used the dud version on the PS2 Capcom Collection. I wonder if Xbox is the same?
I loved the Megadrive port as a kid, it's actually why i bought the PC/ps3 remake that was reliesed in 2013 ❤ and dang what an epic game !
Ah, I have thag too on my 360.
The key thing to remember with Tiertex is that they were cheap and handled multiple platforms at once, so publishers loved them.
They would pay people the same to port ST code to the Amiga, as they would code specifically for the Amiga hardware, so of course people took the easy route and Amiga owners paid the price.
When I was a kid I always thought Tiertex ruined all the good arcade games, especially the Capcom ones.
And then being cheap definitely was a disadvantage to all computer game players that parted with their hard earned cash on any crappy port by Tiertex.
You've come a long way since that first Strider video. Love your videos!
Wow, thanks! And thanks for continuing to watch the show.
Mega drive port is legend
Outstanding game on MegaDrive agreed 👍
It sure is. Especially being an Earlish release.
@@RetroCorealmost 2 years after the Japanese launch of the Mega Drive, still what a port it was at the time at 8 mega which was arcade original was 4 times the size but the Mega Drive version really held its own especially against the crappy home computer ports which were developed by the infamous Tiertex.
I had (and still have) the Japanese megadrive port and it totally blew my mind how close to the arcade it was.
An excellent game at the time especially with the rare for the time character physics.
Great episode👍
The Megadrive version was Amazing for its time.
It still is a great port and was the best home port by a wide margin against the cream of the crap on the home computers from Tiertex.
I always thought that 32 bit ports of many arcades are just emulation, and thanks to this channel I discovered that they're truly ports. Megadrive one is a masterpiece, amazing!
Huh?? No way the PS1 could emulate CPS1 games
@@mortenera2294 I don't really see why not, the CPS1 goes back as far as Ghouls & Ghosts and Capcom themselves were using Sony's PSX-based ZN-1/2 boards for games like Street Fighter EX. There's a CPS1/2 emu for the PSP so it doesn't seem like it would be impossible with some fiddling 🤷♂
/edit -- just saw that there's a version of MAME that some Italian guy hacked together to work on the PS1, no idea how well it runs though
@@mortenera2294 the PS1 has the graphical grunt necessary to display all the sprites and parallax layers of the CPS-1 and the only real challenge would be the emulation of the CPUs of the CPS-1 board but at 33MHz vs 12MHz this seems almost doable. With a good Just In Time compiler this may be possible, although the limited amount of RAM available on the PS1 would clearly make this difficult.
@@nekononiaow ...You guys really don't know how emulation works, huh? The PS1 might have similar graphics, but it's got 3D hardware that is barely even passable by 1994 standards. It renders polygons and textures, not sprites, which makes this even more difficult, and it's got just 2MB RAM. Even if you tried to do a software renderer, it would run like crap
@@mortenera2294 I was developing games for the PS1 from 1998 to 2001 but I guess I must have been misreading those developer documentations back then. 😉
Both the Saturn and the PS1 have no perspective correction mechanism for textures because they essentially render their polygons as purely 2D surfaces and a 2D sprite is nothing but a rectangle polygon with its edges aligned with the borders of the screen. When you read that "the PS1 can draw X hundred of thousands of polygons per second" you can simply replace this with "sprites" and that number is still correct.
The PS1 hardware can display hundred of thousands of sprites per second even with significant overdraw, which allows for parallax layers without issue. Displaying sprites actually frees CPU power because it means you do not have to do perspective correction with the GTE, which saves a lot of CPU cycles for something else.
Those docs are available online by the way if you find them, if you can read them, you'll see that the machine has more than enough power to replicate the graphics of most arcade boards of the 80s and early 90s.
Tiertex, the LJN for Homecomputer.
They sure are. 👍😁
Should be called Tear-tex, since their arcade ports will make you cry.
Any Tiertex game that isn't bad is called an accident
@@GeovaneSanciniSRthey did good with Master System Gauntlet and Impossible Mission, that's about it.
@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148Even Paperboy.
Yep, the Megadrive version is so impressive for when it was released considering the cart size.
i wasn't impressed or Mega-Drive Strider wasn't impressive for me at 8 megabits
@@jasonlee7816 considering the size of the cartridge ROM I was certainly impressed as were more people and Mega Drive version was the best home port by a wide margin for a long time before the X68000 and PlayStation versions in which the latter isn’t all that impressive to me especially in the audio in which the PS1 should have been arcade perfect, it’s a shame the Saturn didn’t get Strider 2 with the Strider bonus disc as it would have been the best home port by a mile.
The X68 version is almost "near Arcade" at the point that even the speech of the characters in cutscenes are still doing *audio jungle* with each other before one is finished.
Yeah, that's one point where being faithful is probably not the best choice.
Sonic Adventure 2 moment
@@RetroCore @GamayObera Of course, the X68000 version is a reassembly of the CPS1 arcade code with custom routines for the Sharp computer. Capcom did the same for Final Fight. The X68000 version base source code is the CPS1 japanese revision 900613 (written in the game main program).
This was personally one of the best action/platformers ive ever played!!!
The person that did the sf3 3rd strike wide screen hack is doing all the cps1 and cps2 games now, goes by bank bank on youtube. Also the people that ported final fight to the cps2 (which is easily one of the best hacked games i played in 2023 through HBmame, and needs it's own mame driver) are working on Ghouls and Ghosts now, hopefully this will be their next project. I'd love too see a widescreen strider with cps2 enhancements.
Great remaster, Mark. I'm torn on Strider. I didn't play the CPS version until with the Callus emulator at the end of the 90s because I simply never saw a cab for it even at the big mall arcade. I also remember distinctly that it was one of the games that I couldn't run on the older family PC on Callus because that PC didn't have enough RAM (could run Final Fight, Magic Sword, UN Squadron, and maybe one or two others); instead, it was one of the games I was excited to try when I had worked enough and built my own PC in late '99 for Unreal Tournament and Quake3. I had played the Genesis port a little bit near to its release when my uncle rented it before I had a Genesis. But, that just a couple of times, and I never rented nor bought it myself after I got my Genesis until I picked up a copy in a bundle lot on ebay in the 00s. So, I didn't have much memory to compare it to, but I had a blast with it in Callus (and I didn't have to have the frame-skip sky high in the games on Callus on that slot-1 Athlon 650MHz compared to the lowly AMD K5-PR133 of our family PC). And, I played quite a bit of the PS1 version because my friend/roommate had Strider 2 (this had to be earlier than '06? since we were roommates in '01). The PS1 version was very good, and the Genesis port was good too. Besides what you show with the X68000 port, the other ports seem very poor (I don't expect much from Tiertex though). I've not played it, but the PC-Engine port seems especially disappointing, especially given it uses the arcade card. I swear there was at least a magazine preview in GamePro or EGM of upcoming Japanese releases that showed screenshots of a PC-Engine port that looked massively better. Maybe I'm misremembering, but if that was the case, I don't know what happened to end up with this final product. I've probably actually played Strider the most on that Capcom collection on the PSP, but I have to admit that I probably haven't played the original Strider in 15+ years. Anyway, I do really enjoy the arcade/Genesis Strider (and quite liked PS1/arcade Strider 2 and the 360 game was fun if not amazing), but I'll be honest: I liked NES Strider more. That probably comes 100% down to nostalgia, since though I only played the Genesis Strider port a couple of times, I played the NES Strider game dozens of hours back then. It's a very different animal, and I do appreciate how good and fun arcade Strider is, but the fun memories of playing the NES game draw me back to slap that cart in every couple years while I just don't have the same kind of draw back to the arcade and Genesis port even though I did very much enjoy them when I finally got to play them more.
Ah, the days of early emulation. I also remember Callus. I do recall playing it windowed as my PC was rather slow.
I think the 2006 release date was when Strider was released as a standalone title. Or at least in Japan it was.
Now this is weird: I remember playing Strider just fine in my Pentium 166mhz with 16mb ram back in 1999.
@@RetroCorecallus...is that what it was called. Downloaded this at work experience on 12 floppys zipped with 3 wonders, strider and final fight.
@@JorgeAraujo97 Which is certainly true I would guess: the AST Advantage Adventure 200 we had shipped with only 8MB of RAM on a single DIMM in early '97, and later that year dad had added a 4MB DIMM to the only other slot (along with a pretty-terrible 4MB Trident 3DIMage 9750 PCI video card, both of which get got at a local computer show/fair). I don't know about the Win95 port of Callus, since I didn't use that until I built my own PC in '99, but the DOS version absolutely required 16MB of RAM. It wouldn't even try to load Strider and would just give you a big warning message about not having the required amount of RAM. If I had thought to do it back then, I would have tried the Win95 port of Callus on the computer, since maybe you could get around the RAM limit with enough virtual memory set up unlike running DOS Callus.
i heard someone is working on another Genesis version to improve it closer to the arcade
Fun Fact: Capcom USA wanted to rename Strider to "The Falcon" in the West, to the point the alternate title screen is still in the arcade's code. Luckily they didn't get their way.
I remember it being called Falcon in a preview of upcoming arcade boards in one of the UK gaming mags at the time, but I never heard that anywhere else.
Almost correct.
The full story is:
"Yotsui came up with two alternate titles: Ninja Dynamics and Falcon, thinking that Hiryu's actions would remind the player of a bird of prey. "Falcon" showed up as the game's official English title during its reveal at the AM Show"
Research is king.
@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 thanks for clarifying, I knew I hadn’t dreamed it!
@@HairDommy humble pleasure, I try and add full back stories when people talk of triva, helps flesh out what really happened.
Honestly, I can’t imagine the name of this game with any other name other than Strider. Thank goodness Capcom USA didn’t get their way.
Nice to see a remaster of Strider, although, it's nice to clearly see the great graphics of the arcade and MegaDrive version but even more painful to suffer the terrible ones of the micro ccomputers ports (except for the X68000 obviously).
Tiertex was obviously the kiss of death for any license and it's almost comforting to see them using the same old methods for every game:
• 100% CPU handled scrolling even on machines which support hardware scrolling (Amiga), except for the C64 (*),
• gigantic useless HUD to reduce the amount of screen estate they have to scroll every "frame" because of point 1,
• approximative collision detection (one of their trade secrets! No one did bad collision detection as well as Tiertex),
• the color choices ... how high were they when they were making those?
And so on.
I don't know how anyone who worked for Tiertex managed to keep their self esteem intact. The coders, artists, audio people must have known the end result was garbage and unworthy of the sales those massively hyped games had because of the attached license name. It must not have been a pleasant and rewarding experience to work for such a result and likely in very bad conditions.
(*) isn't it funny how the C64 version is the only microcomputer one which uses hardware scrolling? Wel, that's because they did not have a choice. Everyone and their grandmother knew how to use hardware scrolling on the C64 very early on in the machine's life so even Tiertex learned it. But on the Amiga? Not a chance. There was the Atari ST all CPU version that they simply could copy without making any changes and you bet they did.
Thanks for the video Mark!
Even though the X68000 is a computer, I like to think of it as a console simply because of the quality of games on the platform.
@@RetroCore A very expensive console then. 😉
@@RetroCore The X68000 was almost are good as the CPS1 hardware wise. Capcom has used the arcade source code to build the X68000 version.
Some history regarding the Tiertex Home Computer versions:
ST and Amiga:
Since Capcom only provided Tiertex with an Arcade cabinet, none of the game's source code to work with, both conversions were programmed basically from scratch, with their sole programmer John Prince writing them based on "lengthy playing sessions" and gameplay videos.
ZX Spectrum:
The ZX Spectrum port was coded by Chris Brunning, who wanted to include as many of Hiryu's acrobatics as space permitted, a compromise was reached to reduce the original six angles of incline to only two, which led to the extra work of redesigning the mapping on each stage.
C64: Coder Paul Cole, tried to get visuals close to the original but in doing so stretched the system too far.
There was also a planned, but never released, SAM Coupé port, Chris Brunning supposed to have coding duties.
U.S. Gold development manager David Baxter said "supposedly it’ll only take two weeks using our existing Speccy code and ST graphics, but we’ll have to see"
21:55 According to Playstation DataCenter, Strider was released for PS1 twice: in 2000 together with Strider 2 (all regions) and in Japan in 2006 as "Strider Hiryuu - Capcom Game Books", where the game came bundled with a hardcover book.
That is correct. I concidered the separate release when saying the dates in this video.
i already know this is going to be an excellent episode before i hit play
Thanks! 👍
Good video, the attack sound sample in that lousy Amiga version was about to drive me bananas before you moved on to the next version, and in the PC Engine version it sounds like Hiryu should be playing professional football. Arcade, Genesis (the version that I played the most), x68000, and especially the PS1 remake are all very nice. The PC Engine CD is not optimized but it at least has a redeeming quality here and there. The rest of them I'd rather play the NES platform/adventure game instead. The new Mega Drive remaster is coming together very nice and I'm looking forward to that being completed.
I was thinking the same thing about Hiryu in the PC Engine version. I expected him to toss a football across the screen LMAO
My favorite port would have to be the Mega Drive port. Aside from being the first ever version of Strider I played, it was really the first game that convinced a friend's dad to buy him a Mega Drive.
Even after playing the original game (via the arcade compilations), the MD port still holds up extremely well.
First game were slow down actually helped sometimes.....bullet time before bullet time...lol
I’d agree, it’s the one I grew up with and I own the western version, I first played the Mega Drive version back in 1994 long after the hype had died down and for the longest time I thought it was only a 4 megabit game not knowing it was 8 mega and the first cartridge on the system and the biggest outside of the massive megabits inside Neo Geo cartridges and the time this game was the ultimate Nintendon’t.
Nice to see an updated video for this iconic game. Tiertex really planned ports out with a one size fits all philosophy.
Why are the sprites so tiny on every version? So we can use the same base sprites but just recoloured for every single version! 16 Bit owners will surely love getting the same sprites as Spectrum and Amstrad owners! Plus we can build around the ST version which runs everything in software, ideal for porting. Amiga and PC owners will never notice the tiny play area, bad scrolling and lack of hardware sprites. It's the perfect crime. With their crap porting powers combined, team Tiertex triumphs again!
Seriously, that's probably how they got so much work, they had multiformat development well figured out long before it became an industry standard. The drawbacks of such a generalised approach on hardware that's underpowered compared to the arcade original are very apparent.
*edit* One correction, the PS1 version of Strider 2 was released in 2000, not 2006.
I think it was the standalone version which came out in 2006.
2014... was it really that long ago that i watched the first?
I do love these remastered episodes.
Yeah, 9 years ago. How time flies.
One of my fav games.. Grew up playing the Genesis version.. Played the arcade a few times. I own the Playstation version which I think is near arcade perfect. Good job on the video . Thanks 👍
Surprisingly, the PlayStation port is not near arcade perfect in the audio department. At least it’s rather weak in that area. It has clips from the arcade in terms of audio like the stage clear theme, but the actual endgame audio for the stages is rather weak. Even the arranged music, it’s pretty terrible and what was supposed to sound like the arcade original and the sounding closer to the Mega Drive version, only worse.
Another good update. I always thought Strider looked cool whenever I saw screenshots back in the day, but then I never got around to playing it until about 10 years ago. Just one of those things. Without experiencing it growing up, one way or the other, I prefer just the metallic sound sample when attacking. Now, I know Strider seems a bit primitive to some, and it is extremely straightforward, but there's always been something about the presentation that makes it into something much cooler for me. I have a similar feeling about Splatterhouse. The Mega Drive port really was impressive. The only major issue I had with that port was significant slowdown during the jungle stage. The way the vines bend probably requires some math that taxes the CPU.
Last year, I tried the NES version of Strider. I had high hopes because I love those old NES action platformers with tiny sprite heroes like Power Blade, Shatterhand, Shadow of the Ninja, Ninja Geiden, etc. NES Strider looked very similar. I liked their approach in making a totally different game. In fact, my understanding is it's more in line with the manga(yes, it was a comic tie in). It has good ideas and isn't awful, but it's also an unfinished and glitchy mess. I could tell just from playing it how buggy it was, but I recently saw a video that dove into the technical side of the game and it apparently has fundamental programming issues with the way it displays sprites. And if that's not weird enough, they made the game to be like the manga in terms of narrative, as I said, but then never released the game in Japan making that aspect irrelevant. I wonder if someone got the idea that they could recoup some of their costs by releasing what they had, a game that was maybe 85 percent complete and needed major play testing it never got, in the US. I think it could have been really good with just a bit more work.
Had the C-64 version as a kid. I must confess, I kinda liked it, but I didn't know the arcade version at all back then.
That's fair.
There is (kind of) a reason Strider is pink on the Amstrad version - if he was blue all the enemies would have to be blue as well. Mode 1, four colour graphics in a screen region.
Hmm, I guess if the backgrounds were not black that would work.
My favorite arcade game of all time.
The music is legendary
I always enjoy these classic episode remakes. Gives us a chance to revisit some of the really popular titles.
Strider is a very interesting game. I've never been that great at it though.
It's a shame so many of the ports got the Tiertex taint to them. 😵
I also like remaking them as I get to play a good game 👍😅
Wow, more versions than I realised
i was obsessed with this game since i was a kid. i even bought and played strider returns. and yes....i loved the nes game.
A cracking remaster here thanks Mark, I remember getting that 8mb cart for the Megadrive and been blown away as I'd only recently played it in a arcade, I loved console gaming in those 16bit days were you'd get something really special a few times a month, I hardly play or complete any new games nowadays. Could you remaster your old Double Dragon battle if you haven't done so already, so many crap versions to play but I love the game all the same.
Ah, the double dragon video could do with a remake. I'm not planning on doing it anytime soon but will get around to it.
I also agree about the 16bit days. Back then we put a lot of effort in to our games.
@@RetroCore I also have a request for a remaster, Street Fighter 2 when you have the time as I’m sure you have a lot of other battle of the ports and other remasters to get through first.
It's sad Tiertex handled the Master System port. I bet Sega could've done miracles if they had handled it and we could have a really good SMS Strider!
I agree.
Loving the redos :)
It really is amazing just how close the Genesis version is to the arcade original. Even seeing it side-by-side it fares well, the only real giveaways are some slight color differences and the pauses for decompression. Of course the PS and X68000 ports were even closer to the arcade, but those are both far more powerful machines. As for the rest.. well at least the PC Engine version wasn't developed by Tiertex, though I have to wonder just what the hell the arcade card is being used for. The PC Engine could do so much better in the right hands, just look at After Burner II, Outrun, and Street Fighter II' CE, all of which were released on hucards! Everything else is about what you expect from Tiertex. I remember trying out the SMS version on an emulator and thinking there was something very wrong, but the other Tiertex ports are even worse! It's a shame Sega didn't handle the Master System version instead, as that would have made a world of difference.
I think all the memory on the Arcade Card went in to the speech each boss does.
Wow, doesn’t time fly. I watched your original battle of the ports for strider probably back in 2015 and is probably my most watched battle of the ports from you because it was one of my favourites, even without the VoiceOver and I remember reading the scroll in text along the bottom, in fact, most of your early shows had no VoiceOver and just scrolling text, as for the ports, The Mega Drive, X68000 and PlayStation ports are the only versions worth playing and the only versions you need and Sega did not learn the lesson because they allowed to Tiertex to develop games on their systems more than once and the less said about the rubbish home computer ports the better , anyway, great battle of the ports, and this is probably like maybe the 10th time. I’ve probably watched this battle of the ports, I’m enjoying these remasters, greetings from the UK from a fellow Brit.
Glad you're still enjoying the show after all these years.
Yeah, the earlier shows had no voice over. I think Bonaza Bros was the first to feature it after demand from the viewers.
@@RetroCore thanks, i think you’re correct, I have watched the Bonanza Bros episode a few times as well.
The Mega Drive version beats even the arcade, because it has the coolest ending.
"Pah Pah Pah Pah Pah." That is all.
I remember when you did the first Strider video Mark. Man, how time flies when you're having fun bro. Looking forward to the next video from you bro. 8^)
Anthony...
Tell me about it. Time really does past quickly.
Megadrive's Strider is better than the arcade one. The arcade one looks cartoonish, the Megadrive one he looks Badass.
Thank you!
You're welcome!
Strider, this game was at my 7-11 next to the Street Fighter 2 machine during the early part of the 90s and I must have wasted at least 30 bucks on it over 4 years
Excite.
Two great games next to each other 👍
This is a work of scholarship. and UGH all those Tiertex crap, and then the beauty of the MD version. IIR, the MD port was considered "huge" at the time at 8Mbits. Also, I never would have noticed the major differences between the arcade and the X68000 version until this video, always assuming it was pixel perfect!
Indeed. A 8mbit game back then was quite large as many Mega Drive games were 2 to 4mbit.
Strider! What a Classic. im goin' ta need to watch this one on my bigger screen... my old phone screen wont do this one any justice im sure!
Btw nice one on the remaster 😁✌️
I fully agree, big screen for sure.
You also have to take into consideration the kit Tiertex was using for SEGA game development.
Tiertex Master System and Game Gear Dev kits we're effectively a circuit board that had all the MS/GG chips on it. It also had a connector with which you could plug on a miniature LCD screen just like the GG. Although you could also view the GG screen on a normal monitor also. For such a big and expensive piece, of kit, it was apparently a little lacking in features. The debugger was particularly awful. It also took ages to download code/data to it (partly because it only recognized a certain type of file which was effectively hex data but in ASCII!!!! This made the files more than twice the size they needed to be, which in the days of 20meg hard drives must of been an absolute nightmare
Why did they have such crappy dev kits?
I grew up playing the Mega Drive version. I saw you mentioning the speech languages of the arcade/X68000 versions, you forgot to mention the pirate boss, which speaks Portuguese.
Oops, maybe I mixed that with Spanish. Sorry. 😥
No, the pirate boss does actually speak Spanish. It's a very pitiful Spanish uttered by what's definitely a non native, but that's clearly Spanish, not Portuguese.
5:10 speaking of the Amiga port the game received incredibly well with many magazine reviewers gave it an almost perfect score, the Master System port which came later though didn't received as well as the Amiga one
Yeah, Amiga fans where mostly blind.
At that time you could only rely on static Images and the reviews of the magazines, which got paid by US Gold through advertising: what a shady habit.
@@andreanardo6991yep, big single and double page ads for Strider by US Gold in UK mags at the time.
Yep, typical BS scores from 80s game magazines. You could never belive most of the magazines back then.
I have both the Genesis (Mega Drive) and the PS1 versions. And if I can be honest, I've never played the home computer versions and for good reason. Cant have a good port when Tiertex is involved.
Even weird, the Mega Drive version has a different ending from the Arcade version.
Oh yes, I remember reading about that. Can't say I've ever completed the Arcade version.
Is it wrong I actually liked the Amiga version? Bare in mind I played it before I saw either the Arcade or MD version. Once I’d played the MD version and realised the Amiga version had half the original content missing things changed 😅 the Arcade and MD versions are amongst my favourite games of the era, the design of the stages and enemies and use of changing music to create atmosphere are impressive even now.
I guess from a nostalgic point of view it's fine to like the Amiga version.
@@RetroCore well if the Amiga version was all that someone had to play they have my sympathies.
thats messed up that women isnt shown to he who composed the music. im glad you mentioned the artist
Never let Tiertex anywhere near Strider Hiryuu, be it porting on other platforms NOT named the Mega Drive and Sharp X68K or create a sequel outside Capcom’s jurisdiction. And yet they got away with it big time, so they’re still in business today!
It's like a turd that will stink forever.
I'm pretty sure I left a comment on your first video when I first discovered your channel 3 years ago so I probably don't have anything valid to add that you, myself or anyone else hasn't already said LOL
Except for great video Mark!
And, thanks for nothing Tiertex! Seriously, I swear they had dirt on someone high up within US Gold or Capcom or something. How did these dunderheads get so much work back then?
Yeah, something very fishy about haw Tiertex kept getting all the Capcom ports despite everyone knowing Tiertex sucked big time.
@@RetroCoreeven Sega themselves gave them some work with crap tastic ports of Strider on the Master System and Turbo OutRun on the Mega Drive.
Strider has always been one of my big favorite action platformer games and the Mega Drive's version is very dear to me. What a luck to be grown with this version! The original arcade I've found later and looking at it made me admire the Sega's reprogramming work for the Capcom original even more.
As for the Tiertex' works... I feel very pissed by such a piss-poor effort they made in almost all the systems! I say "almost" because I can find some little positive points. 1 - I prefer the Atari ST version rather than the Amiga due to its processing power and fine work on the soundtrack for the quite limited chip of the computer. 2 - Master System's version has to be the best 8-bit for the game... But that's not saying much due to the reasons you've pointed out in the video. After all, that was the one I've known back in the day.
I've felt really amazed about the Sharp X68000's version, also about the PlayStation One's... I felt very intrigued about why on the Earth the Strider for the PC Engine CD has such weird physics, even having such great features for the system. It made me admire the care about Strider that Sega had even more again, despite its limitations...! (And you were very reasonable in putting the Japanese version of it as well!)
Yep, Japanese Strider on the Mega Drive is what I grew up with. Such amazing box art as well unlike the western Flash Gordon looking western box.
The MD version is the one I played first and then I played the arcade version on the PSP in Capcom classics collection remixed which makes me appreciate the MD version even more and this is my favourite battle of the ports. And so great to see remastered.
Strider. The first and only arcade game I can 1cc. Love that game
Also, some other things to note:
The X68000 port, like the Mega Drive version, borders the HUD.
Some MD physics isn't 100% accurate. The jump to skip the first mini boss is no longer possible, for example.
You can even choose the skip the PCE's extra stage LOL
I always skip the PC Engine's extra stage because it's so bad.
Has anyone ever noticed how the Grandmaster’s laugh is slightly lower pitched in the Meg Drive version while in the original arcade version and X68000 versions, his laugh is slightly sped up
The PlayStation version is also the last game released for the PlayStation.
i still feel the mega drive port is marginally better than the arcade. the sprites and colours just seem to look better but that's just my opinion.
I also think that the vast majority of the music in the Mega Drive version sounds better than the original arcade version.
I'd agree with you there. Capcom's CPS 1 doesn't have the best sound if we're being honest.
@@RetroCore they weren’t but there was some exceptions like Street Fighter 2 and Ghouls’N Ghosts but for overall the CPS1 had a very distinct sound that you could tell it was a Capcom game with that twang in their FM synths.
The Amiga version scored a bewildering 96% by some Commodore rag back in the day! 🤣🤣🤣
Never under estimate the power of advertising revenue in UK magazines, to buy review scores.
Yeah, typical. I bet that issue had a few US Gold ads as well.
@@RetroCore Sure US GOLD did that. Too many rubbish games.
No doubt that US gold offered them a brown envelope for that score, cause there’s no way the amigo version is even remotely close to the fantastic MD version.
I'm still in awe with Strider after all these years. It only works in the Coin Op and Sega consoles.
Brutal Drive.
Strider always reminds me of the almost crazed push to have as arcade-perfect home version as possible- the true high water mark of any home console or comp. And while the NES version of this (and several other) arcade classics was remade as a totally different game, I thought sometimes they were better. It wasn't until years later that I realized just how shallow many arcade games actually were.
Arcade games don't need to be deep experiences as they're designed for a quick thrill. Still, some like Strider still work as a home game as there's. Enough content in there to last a good 30 minutes or so each play. Plus it's fun so players will keep coming back.
I find that with games full of content I tend to play them only once or maybe twice until completion whole an arcade game I'll play more times than I can remember.
I forgot how grating the sound design was in this
Classic Capcom CPS1
@@RetroCore I actually think strider was one of Capcom’s sounding CPS1 games but it doesn’t hold a candle to the Mega Drive version which sounds way better.
Tiertex at its peak: even the ZX port looks faster than the Amiga port. Did they have any QA team?
Yeah, the ZX is even a bit too fast, but I bet it's just a coincidence. The only thing they cared for was if their ports booted and were ready for Christmas.
I think the only QA team they had was the one that checked the quality of profit was high enough.
The C64 version has some decent renditions of the arcade's tunes. That's about it for that one.
At least it does have something positive to say about it unlike the Speccy or Amstrad.
@@RetroCore all the 8 bits versions are pure shite, and the c64 is not an exception.
It looks like the SEGA version is the top one!
I’m going to have to boot up my CPS-1 multi and play some Strider to take away the bad taste of those Tiertex ports! 😅
The Megadrive port really is amazing, its plays so closely to the arcade it’s really well done. The only thing I don’t like about it are those gravity chambers where you orbit that sphere thing, I find it much harder than the arcade version for some reason. The PS1 port is excellent too, especially as you can unlock the ability to edit Hiryuu’s outfit to different colours.
Oh yeah, I agree about the orb sections.
Great video, as always. I’m sure I’m in the minority, but the grunting sound that Stryder makes while throwing his weapon irritated the crap out of me.
Yeah. The metallic sound doesn't bother me, though it bothers others. But the grunting or "ho" for every slash is pretty tiresome for me.
Surprisingly many people dislike it. I think I'm in the minority on this one because I prefer it.
I remember Sega touting the Genesis version and saying 8 mega power and such when I was little kid in 1990. I have played the Pc Engine CD version and I agree it's terrible compared to the Genesis Version. I should try the PS1 version sometime. I played the remake on PS4.
Ah, the reason they pushed the 8meg of power thing is because at the time most games were 4mbit or less. There were very few 8mbit games at that time. The only other I can think of is Raiden.
Oh man, I feel the complete opposite way about the attack sounds. Being in the states I grew up with the north american version so the "shing shing shing" sound is iconic to me. "Huh huh huh" sounds dumb by comparison. To each his own I guess lol
Definitely a case of each to their own.
I really love do love this game, but Tiertex? Oh, fuck no. Here we go again.
For me the sword grunting sounds annoying and perfer the versions without it since thats how the Mega Drive version sounded for me back then. Still find this game looking and sounding really good. At least the arcade - Mega Drive versions. But my memory and skill have severly deteriorated on these games I used to beat easily :O
Don't worry. I have the same issue. Games that were once easy to beat are now a struggle.
The sword grunting sounds being present or not is not a Mega Drive particularity but a region one determined by Capcom. The arcade version already has that difference between Japanese and western version, so the Mega Drive version only followed suit. Even the PlayStation version still has that difference between regions, despite the fact that it didn't apply to Strider 2.
It’s a shame the only decent port is on the Mega Drive. Damn you US Gold.
if the Strider arcade game is 32 Mbits (megabits)
Mega Drive Strider is 8 Mbits (megabits) it wasn't an acceptable port
@@jasonlee7816 The size of the ROM chip doesn’t tell the whole story; in fact it makes Sega’s home port more impressive. The fact they were able to develop a near arcade identical port on only 8 mb of memory is a very impressive feat and makes you think how better it could have been had the rom size been even larger.
I fully agree. What was done with only 8mbit is very impressive.
@@jasonlee7816the fact that Sega managed to get this close to the arcade version with one an 8 megabit ROM is rather impressive.
Man, I had to mute this one just to ward of an encroaching headache.
2006 for the PlayStation? huh feels like yesterday
It should've been 2000.
Surprised at the poor quality of the Amiga version. That thing could run Shadow of The Beast II. Looks like a lazy ST port that doesn't use the Amiga's custom hardware maybe?
You’re surprised? When it comes to US gold poor quality is there gold standard.😂😂
Fantastic genesis version. Some like it more than the original.
I can understand why. It's a great version of Strider.
The only good thing about the CPC, Speccy and PC version was that the robot ape sprite was good! As for the PC Engine version, makes you wonder if the developers had compared notes with Tiertex and decided to compete on the most crap version to write.
Lol, I love the idea of the Japanese trying to make a crappy version than Tiertex 🤣
Nice episode remaster, thanks! The ps1 era ports are really curious since the processors were not strong enough for emulation (or at least it would be a nightmare to implement even in assembly).
The PS1 version of Strider is the CPS1 version wrapped in a PS1 CPS1 engine emulator. The programmer was lent the Strider arcade source code in paper (huge amount of paper), and a pristine CPS1 arcade board of Strider to port the game.
@@dlfrsilver this is cool! Do you have some first hand experience on this? Sounds like a cool history!
@flink1231 : I met the PS1 port programmer with my wife in Tokyo in 2019. He told me everything about the Strider port. What he did is basically rewrite the display part and the I/O (as usual).
@@dlfrsilver thanks for sharing! It sounds a lot like what has been done with the latest mario anniversary collection but on a system with much tighter specs compared to the emulated machine. Very cool!
I admit I grew up playing the Amiga version. Living in the UK I never saw the Megadrive version, or any of the other console versions; my only comparison was the 8-bit computers, and I guess Amiga / ST owners felt fairly happy with how much better their version was... I guess it can be quite hard to swallow that the Amiga version was in fact fairly rubbish next to certain consoles, but it is clear in this video. Ah well, c'est la vie.
Come to think of it Retro Core's comments about Tiertex do ring very true. I think they had a reputation for churning out arcade conversions that looked like the arcade version on the back of the box, but in a quick time and for a cheap price. So the various publishers would keep hiring them. Looking at what other more meticulous developers produced (such as Team 17's Assassin) it is easy to try and imagine what the Amiga version could have been. Sigh.
I haven't seen the box to Amiga Strider but it wouldn't surprise me if they used arcade screen shots on it. It had happened before.
I'm sure it was the Speccy version of street fighter 2 I saw which had Amiga game shots on the box 😅
I think this might be my "magic wand" choice to obliterate every home conversion of this awesome arcade game. I'll never forgive Tiertex for sharting out the c64 and amiga versions in particular. Unforgivable, especially since it was released around the same time as Turrican and a glut of other properly programmed fast platformers.
You stated in the comments you wagered Tiertex outsourced Master System Paperboy and Gauntlet, as they were surprisingly good.
You'd loose that wager 😂
Gary Vine coded Master System Paperboy· Former Console development manager at Tiertex · Former Programmer at Binary Design
Tony R Porter did MS Gauntlet.. He's a British programmer most notable for having ported Gauntlet to more systems than anyone else, which adds another dimension to his last name.
Looks like I loose that one. So Tiertex did have some talent working for them. Just a shame most of their stuff was trash. I guess Gary and Tony didn't stick around too long?
@@RetroCorePaul Marshall:Programmer
Tiertex
Jan 1988 - Jan 1990 2 years 1 month
Didsbury, Manchester, UK
Strider Sega Master System
Flintstones Sega Master System
Tiertex Design Studios Limited Graphic
Programmer
Went to Software Creations, Warthog etc after.
Looks like Tony Porter soon moved into role of Producer.
Has anyone picked up an Evercade EXP that has Capcom games built-in?
Arcade and Mega Drive/Genesis are both GOATs. The Tiertex ports are about as fun as having car batteries hooked up to one's nipples and testicles at the same time...
I actually get pleasure from that myself.
@@johnebbs3819 You do you, Hoss... 🤣
Wait, the C64 version slows down every time you attack?
slow motion for dramatic effect 🤣
Yep.
it's the C64 and it's tiertex, what do you think you would be getting ? XD
Are you sure the Playstation version came out in 2006? I swear I played it earlier. Plus 2006 seems very late for a Original Playstation release.
It did come out earlier with Strider 2, but it got a separate release in 2006 as I understand it.
Yep, that is correct.
Think Disney would aprove of the Amstrad and PC Striders graphical Makeover, seems to fit their modern 📍portfolio.
Maybe you could do an interview with Tiertex sometime?
I don't think I could be polite long enough.
I've heard something about an American C64 version. Apparently it was originally going to be a separate port entirely, but that got cancelled, so they just released Tiertex's garbage in the states instead. Also, come on, the PC Engine CD versions sucks, but you really can't sell any one on that after showing it after ever Tiertex version. I would've shown the Mega Drive, then PC Engine, then Tiertex ports IMO, but that's just a personal nitpick. Honestly, I found the ZX Spectrum and DOS versions somewhat playable, more so than Tiertex's other efforts. Not to say they're good, but at the very least they are playable.
We expect home computer ports to suck ass but the PC Engine version should have been so much better.
It's official. Strider gets yet another remastered Battle of the Ports treatment. But, if there is only one version missing in this video, then it's on Tiger LCD handheld system.
Very true.
Tiertex
I can safely say the PS1 version slaughters the PC Engine version in comparison, as is the case with most PCE to PSX conversions.
Whoever thought "hahahahaha" should be the only sound the main character makes clearly never sat down to play it. That'd get annoying really quick.