I LOVE Strider to death, I beat this game every day for a year. It was my 1st import game ever.
I have Strider 1 and 2 on the PS1 and I like Strider 2, however I about passed out when I found out about Cannon Dancer. Now that's my sequal to Strider...
I'll just add it to the list of arcade ports that never happened that make me bitter as I get older.....
I'd like to here what others thought of that game or Strider... good or hateful.
Damn Tim, you know there are quite a few Americans out there who still lives in tents due to this shitty economy, and you're dropping loads on a single game which only last 20 min. Do you think it's fair? How much did you spend this time?
Cannon Dancer is probably my favourite arcade platformer. Gameplay aside I just cant get over how amazing it looks graphicaly (when the first stage 1 mini-boss appeared I was amazed) The entire game just has an amazing style to it, and the brief story elements and incomprehensibly wierd plot adds a lot.
I also came incredibly close to acheiving a 1cc in it, I always just managed to die on one of the last bosses.
I love Strider, but I think Cannon Dancer is a lot better! No doubt one of the best looking 2D games ever, and there are just countless cool mechanics added and great improvements from Strider. The only thing I like better with Strider is the music.
Regarding difficulty, I've come as far as ST5 boss, which was just terribly hard, how did you beat it Macaw? I can't see any strategies working well.
I like Cannon Dancer a lot. Best graphics? I wouldn't say that- my first impression was beefed up genesis style. I'm turned off a little bit by the super difficulty- I thought Strider could have been just a little bit more difficult.
I think Strider 2 isn't that bad if you're strict about the credit feeding- and It bums me out to not get the jungle level from the PS1 release, even though there's pictures of it on the high scores screen.
If you could take the play mechanics of cannon dancer, add the polished presentation of strider, and make it look as good as strider 2 (I think the 2d stuff looks great), then you'd have a super game.
zinger wrote:Regarding difficulty, I've come as far as ST5 boss, which was just terribly hard, how did you beat it Macaw? I can't see any strategies working well.
I just save my 'bombs' for him. In my opinion the bombs are overpowered, just one obliterates just about every boss.
A Strider sequel to make you cry? Go play Strider Returns.
ugh... no that makes me gag
Damn Tim, you know there are quite a few Americans out there who still lives in tents due to this shitty economy, and you're dropping loads on a single game which only last 20 min. Do you think it's fair? How much did you spend this time?
I think that Cannon Dancer/Osman is among the top 10 sidescrollers of all time. That and Strider 2. Graphically, it's great; gameplay-wise, it's a masterpiece. Plus, it has an excellent challenge; one of the few sidescrollers that I haven't been able to legitimately beat.
rip that super play and put it up!! well... if u want.
Damn Tim, you know there are quite a few Americans out there who still lives in tents due to this shitty economy, and you're dropping loads on a single game which only last 20 min. Do you think it's fair? How much did you spend this time?
GaijinPunch wrote:
Does legitimate entail non-credit feeding? I have a superplay of this on DVD I bought off of YJ, and never watched. Maybe I should dig it up.
Of course. I'm referring to among stuff I've played more than 5 min. though, which is a fair amount.
Was this an official Mitchell-endorsed Cannon Dancer replay?
How do Osman/Cannon Dancer, Run Saber, and Strider II Arcade/PSX compare? I can't believe that the U.S. Gold Strider Returns is on C64, Genesis, Amiga, Game Gear, and Atari ST (and probably some other computer versions I missed). I wonder why Tiertex was given the green light to do their own Strider sequel when their ports of the original Strider sucked.
BrianC wrote:How do Osman/Cannon Dancer, Run Saber, and Strider II Arcade/PSX compare?
Run Saber, although it has some cool ideas, really isn't comparable to atleast Cannon Dancer. It has this terrible feeling of not being an arcade game.
I've only tried Strider II briefly in MAME, and from what I could tell it's nowhere near as good as the original Strider or Cannnon Dancer. They did a lot of stuff right (cool moves, nice animation), but the level design is terrible and the whole game just lacks character.
Run Saber plays awfully; the control is nowhere on the level of the real Strider games. Stage designs comprise a dull, unimaginative mess.
Strider 2 has perhaps the best designed sidescroller stage designs ever IMO with every stage introducing not only different visuals but substantially different layouts. You have your scaling walls, anti-grav, hopping on rocks, hopping on planes, holding onto crags, everything you'd expect a ninja to do. There isn't a single stage that is just flat left-to-right Mario-esque action. The game is a lot faster paced than the original Strider and Osman, with some bonuses obtainable only by speeding through certain sections. Boost is very useful, somewhere between Osman's obscenely powerful supers and Strider's useful walking robot.
I've spent quite a bit of time w/ Canon Dancer and still love it to pieces. I really wish Venom had a video capture setup going when he spent all that time on it (he 1CC'd it). I can't ever seem to get a good timing pattern on Fake And that one robot that you fight later on in the game has no safe spots that I know of.
When Venom took orders from some of us as a middleman, I didn't realize that the source he had was Mitchell themselves! I have a factory kit with the invoice that's dirrectly from Mitchell to my name and home address. Sickness!
-ud
undamned wrote:When Venom took orders from some of us as a middleman, I didn't realize that the source he had was Mitchell themselves! I have a factory kit with the invoice that's dirrectly from Mitchell to my name and home address. Sickness!
-ud
Cool. I've been looking for a copy everywhere lately, but I've never seen one for sale.
oxtsu wrote:About the Cannon Dancer DVD; it's from a doujin label, but IIRC it's officially licensed. I lent mine out, so I can't check it right now though.
do you know what was the final score on that replay? I'm wondering if its in the 6mil range or even the WR.
you can try checking the Yahoo Japan auctions or PCB shops for the board, copies will sporadically appear for sale (at about 27-30,000 Yen usually).
oxtsu wrote:About the Cannon Dancer DVD; it's from a doujin label, but IIRC it's officially licensed. I lent mine out, so I can't check it right now though.
do you know what was the final score on that replay? I'm wondering if its in the 6mil range or even the WR.
I'll check for you when I get it back. I remember it's a one life clear, pretty sure it's WR (I don't think they would put it out if it wasn't).
you can try checking the Yahoo Japan auctions or PCB shops for the board, copies will sporadically appear for sale (at about 27-30,000 Yen usually).
Hmm...no stock at Tops. I need to check some others. I've seen it on YJA only once, so it might be awhile longer for that one. If you see it listed somewhere, by all means give me a shout. :)
undamned wrote:
When Venom took orders from some of us as a middleman, I didn't realize that the source he had was Mitchell themselves! I have a factory kit with the invoice that's dirrectly from Mitchell to my name and home address. Sickness!
-ud
Yeah, it's pretty amazing that Mitchell still had new Cannon Dancer boards up until 2-3 years ago, and was quietly selling them direct to whoever wanted to buy them too.
Run Saber was not just a knock-off of Strider in gameplay, but Contra in bosses. Except for that Communist robotipede in the first level, I never really thought the bosses were that great in Strider. Run Saber's got some neat boss designs I can tell that had some influence from Contra (especially the final boss). My favorite has to be that giant skeleton princess, the flowers blowing in the wind was like icing on the cake.
Ganelon wrote:
Strider 2 has perhaps the best designed sidescroller stage designs ever IMO with every stage introducing not only different visuals but substantially different layouts.
No doubt the ideas for the layouts were great, the prob is is that they look ugly as shit in polygon form. The mesh with 2D sprites and polygons remains my biggest complaint about the game.
The beginning of the Balrog stage was the only one I can overlook, just because of the clouds and Hiryu actually running on the outside of some airship had such an intensity to it.
S2 had such great potential.
The intermeshing looks a lot better using the PS2's texture smoothing, if you haven't tried that yet. I'd prefer all-sprites too, but the game is still very detailed and dramatic with the sprite-polygon mix interpsersed with 2D cutscene art. And while we're on more superficial matters, the music is quite a bit better than Strider and Osman IMO.
I really liked the music for strider 1..... I have the pc engine vers mostly for the remixed versions on it.
I'd really recommend the PS2 texure smoothing also... I'd really like to see this on bleamcast.
Damn Tim, you know there are quite a few Americans out there who still lives in tents due to this shitty economy, and you're dropping loads on a single game which only last 20 min. Do you think it's fair? How much did you spend this time?
And that one robot that you fight later on in the game has no safe spots that I know of.
Sickness!
