Two different Strider 2s

[gameoverDude]

Everything StriderKyo said in rebuttal to ShineAqua is right on the money... although Strider 2 is even more difficult than Mars Matrix in my opinion. Finishing it with one credit is damn hard, and it's about 50 minutes long.

Originally posted by StriderKyo
Even the story from the instruction manual is shameful:

Shameful is an understatement. That story makes me want to gag. Capcom should've sent someone in to US Gold's offices with a ruler to rap some knuckles. What's the deal with Hinjo? US Gold can't even get his name right for fuck's sake. Whoever at Capcom decided to give US Gold the right to make this travesty should have been sacked.

Just imagine if Street Fighter III were produced by US Gold (Eidos) rather than Capcom. *cringe* I don't even want to, considering how perfidious their PC port of SF II is.

[GameZector]

Strider II on Genesis looks, sounds, and plays like a fanmade hack job. The backgrounds here are rather bland compared to the appealing locales of the first game. Some serious threnody serves as the BGM here.

My thoughts exactly. It's like those fake Super Mario NES games out there - the sprites may look like Mario, but you can tell that it's just not right. Real sprites on top of some hack's attempt at a game. Strider II is a bad game, I'd give it a 5/10. I'd give Strider a 9/10 and I've yet to play Strider 2.

[GameHED]

I'm good at both striders and managed to do them both in 1 credit. (lots of practice though)
They are both about the same difficulty to me except that I found the last boss of no.2 to be harder than the last boss of 1. strider 1 boss has less health and you have powerups to help you right at the last stage, while strider 2 gives you those stupid turbo homing projectile things which wrecks the gameplay. (Can't remember but I think you may get a worse rating for it?)

And those mecha gorrilas are fucking easy man.

All you need to do is mash the button really fast and they don't even get to youch you. Same thing with the mecha dinsaur which you can only barely reach. (they go into hitstun with each hit, so just keep mashing)

There's also an ED-209-like mech which is taken out the same way. As long as you mash that button like no tommorow and are fast enough, any hit you take will gradually come back to you later on. (like when you lose a bit of health in final fight but know that there's an upcoming chicken) Health is usually lying around as a reward for those who can survive those areas where the enemies are slightly at an advantage or are cheap.

This is why I think no.2 is more fun than no.1 because in 1 all it came down to was mashing the buttons but you never did it an any interesting way or using much tehcnique like in no.2. (provided you don't chicken out and use that cheap turbo move)

While no.1 was harder in a more old school way (you memorise what is coming up and just respond early), number 2 felt more like a pure action game where the ai can sometimes change habits and so you must respond accordingly to it's dynamic behaviour at the time. (not to say that the behviour wasn't unpredicable in 1, but that there was more open strategy in 2 which allowed you to take them down in varying ways.)

If capcom make a strider 3 I will be really happy if it follows a more free-flowing style like number 2 over the restrictive style of number 1. At it's heart I wish strider were more a fast paced action game rather than a faithful old school test of knowledge of levels and 'upcoming and cheap', surprise attacks. number 2's levels just offered more variety and made me feel like I was on the move, scaling castle walls, jumping around on cars at insane heights, outsmarting mercenaries armed with deadly weapons using primitive swords techniques, and avoiding pitfalls with skillful jumps while being attacked by multi headed dragons after infiltrating high security areas to find out the secret weapons.

Number 1 felt like the guy was just walking along slowly and these sprites would just pop out of nowhere and just happen to walk into your sword. Number 2 showed that the ninjas could dash and actually haul asses all over the place and make time. The gameplay in 2 was just better.

[Jeremy]

Well I'd hope the gameplay would be better in two, it had around a decade to see improvement.

[GameHED]

Yeah but sometimes games of the past still have better gameplay than the recently released sequels. Time can decieve people into thinking gameplay is progressively better and more fun based on when the title is released and how new it is..

I still consider all the final fights after no.1 crappy for example.

[Jeremy]

That's because they were. Although 3 was decent thanks to the super moves.

[TreizePlus]

Strider 2 was money, I just thought that his turbo move and the one where he jumps in the air and swings his sword 587 times were way too cheap. No way is it easy though, not if yu do what these other guys suggest and limit yourself.

Oh yea, Strider Hien is the mad note...

[Shine]

Originally posted by Dolemite
Yes, a pressing mistake in the factory is indeed what happened. 1 had 2's label and 2 had 1's label. Capcom put out a statement about it shortly after Strider 2 shipped. I was caught a bit off-guard myself when I popped my my Strider 1 disc and Strider 2 booted up...

LOL. It took me a few minutes to figure it out.

I went back and played Strider 2 (psx) and it is harder than I remember, buy then again I was just hacking away randomly as I went through. That and I usually just keep my special attack on the whole way through, and I didn't this time. Oh and I'm off to bed.

[StriderKyo]

Originally posted by ShineAqua
That and I usually just keep my special attack on the whole way through, and I didn't this time. Oh and I'm off to bed.

Heh, see, that may explain why some people find the game "easy" - you know unlimited boost isn't the default, right? It's like playing a shooter with unlimited bombs.

I really hope you guys who can win this on one credit without difficulty are messing with the options - difficulty down, more starting energy, unimited boost, whatever - and not doing all 6 levels. Otherwise my ego can't handle it. Certain parts in this game are just freaking hard. Even knowing the patterns, I'll still usually take a hit or two, and over the course of the stage it adds up.

[GameHED]

Heh, see, that may explain why some people find the game "easy" - you know unlimited boost isn't the default, right? It's like playing a shooter with unlimited bombs.

I really hope you guys who can win this on one credit without difficulty are messing with the options - difficulty down, more starting energy, unimited boost, whatever - and not doing all 6 levels. Otherwise my ego can't handle it. Certain parts in this game are just freaking hard. Even knowing the patterns, I'll still usually take a hit or two, and over the course of the stage it adds up.

Nope no cheating. Just shitloads worth of practice. And it is not just a case of knowing a pattern that never strays, like it is in other games. There are like "random choices within patterns" to make the ai seem like it was thinking and choosing and making decisions. So knowing how to react on-the-spot comes into play too. Short arcadey games are all like this. It took me far longer to win super ghouls and ghosts on unlimited credits (because of the strictness) than it did this on 1 credit. I will admit to needing to use the level select to train myself enough to get good enough to acheive a 1 credit win of all levels though. (a luxury you never get in an arcade.) I advise using the level select and practicing each level to perfection and focusing on each one in isolation of the rest of the game. That way once it is mastered there should be no excuse for screwing up when you decide to try to beat the whole game in 1 credit.

This is what I did with final fight gba on the hardest difficulty on 1 credit I think. You needed to know where the ambush points were on each level and memorise them as these were the main parts that make it so hard in the first place. Once you know everything about them and where they are triggered, then it's just a case of going through the motions.

Of course it still requires much skill and fast reflexes because no matter how you react, the enemies are still going to have a small room of random behaviour within thier pattern, but you at least know how to avoid the cheap parts in each level where the designer's have pretty much decided "it's time for you to die" and have decided it;s ok to bombard you with cheap enemies and hairy situations. (I find much pride in being able to escape the knifemen ambush without dying for example. This might seem impossible to any normal gamer who would accept a death and a new full health bar to take them on without being angry at themself. If you lower your standards to continuing over and over again without punishment, you'll feel cheated to yourself in the end anyway.)