Is the (acd) arcade card worth it? Sapphire and Strider

[sheath]

I was crazy about Strider from the first time I played the Arcade version back in '89.  The fluidity of the gameplay and the animation during all of the jumps and slides and strikes just really drew me in, seconded by the unique and well thought out level designs.  I am convinced that Sonic the Hedgehog would not exist as is without the inspiration of Strider, I saw the similarities in basic level designs and gameplay as soon as I played Sonic 1.  The whole concept of being able to move forward never stopping and being able to dodge everything was unprecedented, or at least under represented, at the time.  

I consider Shinobi III the only nearest neighbor to Strider when it comes to Action Platformers with this kind of extreme action emphasis.  When I play a 3D Action game today I always compare them to Strider or Shinobi III and so far not one game has lived up to them.  Cinematics be damned.

[Bonknuts]

The PCE version of Strider looks and feels unfinished. It has lots of extra art and detail from the arcade that is missing from the Genesis version, but it uses a horrible color palette.

It actually looks nice in stills when recolored. It also has terrible sprite optimization and has unecessary sprite break up/flicker as a result. All of that wouldn't be so bad, except that the framerate/scrolling is messed up. I don't know if it runs at 30fps or not, but either way it looks like it isn't scrolling at the kind of integers that regular games do.

I don't think that any version of of arcade Strider is very good, so the gameplay doesn't seem worse to me.

 Yeah, a couple of areas of the design are unpolished. But the most important area that's lacking is gameplay in my opinion. Played a lot of the Genesis and Arcade versions BITD. But yeah, poor palette choices and poor sprite management doesn't help it either. And the date it was released, the hype around it, the extra hardware it used, etc, doesn't help expectations either.
http://www.pcedev.net/sprite_management/strider/enemy1_comparison.png
http://www.pcedev.net/sprite_management/strider/sword_swing_comparison.png
http://www.pcedev.net/sprite_management/strider/sword_swing_crouch_comparison.png

[DirkFunk]

I consider Shinobi III the only nearest neighbor to Strider when it comes to Action Platformers with this kind of extreme action emphasis.  When I play a 3D Action game today I always compare them to Strider or Shinobi III and so far not one game has lived up to them.  Cinematics be damned.

I agree, most (if not all) 3D action games are inferior to Strider and Shinobi III.

Why has Capcom not released a Strider 3? Why hasn't Sega made a more straight forward Shinobi game? I liked the PS2 one (I am in the minority I think). I realize game design has "evolved" but there are so many great aspects of those games that would translate wonderfully to modern games.

[Black Tiger]

I consider Shinobi III the only nearest neighbor to Strider when it comes to Action Platformers with this kind of extreme action emphasis.  When I play a 3D Action game today I always compare them to Strider or Shinobi III and so far not one game has lived up to them.  Cinematics be damned.

I agree, most (if not all) 3D action games are inferior to Strider and Shinobi III.

Why has Capcom not released a Strider 3? Why hasn't Sega made a more straight forward Shinobi game? I liked the PS2 one (I am in the minority I think). I realize game design has "evolved" but there are so many great aspects of those games that would translate wonderfully to modern games.

[roflmao]

  Moon Diver looks insane!

[sheath]

Eh, Moon Diver and Strider 2 (PS1) feel like sequels to Run Saber to me, I can't put my finger on what's missing.  I guess I just like the whole aspect of slide tackling, doing an aerial somersault, landing in the midst of enemies and slashing them all to bits that Strider does so well and so often.  Shinobi III adds the eight shuriken throw and the guard to the mix but keeps the same gameplay flexibility.  I like this gameplay so much that I still enjoy playing Strider ACD even though it is slower.

[Black Tiger]

Eh, Moon Diver and Strider 2 (PS1) feel like sequels to Run Saber to me, I can't put my finger on what's missing.  I guess I just like the whole aspect of slide tackling, doing an aerial somersault, landing in the midst of enemies and slashing them all to bits that Strider does so well and so often.  Shinobi III adds the eight shuriken throw and the guard to the mix but keeps the same gameplay flexibility.  I like this gameplay so much that I still enjoy playing Strider ACD even though it is slower.

What do you think of Osman?

[sheath]

I don't think I've played before, but it looks to have all of the mechanics I like about Strider and decent level/character designs to back that up.  I'll need to fire up Mame at some point to give it a play.

I have played already, it is definitely in the same vein and plays great, though not exactly like Strider like Osman seems to be.

[geise]

Osman is actually developed by Ex Capcom devs.

[Black Tiger]

Osman is actually developed by Ex Capcom devs.

I believe that they are actually ex-Strider devs.

[SignOfZeta]

Osman is so f*cking amazingly unspeakably great. If you loved Strider then you'll basically die of pleasure playing Osman.

[PunkicCyborg]

Osman is so badass! It's hard even when you are just credit spamming. I can't get past that one point where you have to go up that hill while the cars drop down and the girls are flying all over the screen. Beautiful game though with a nice color palette and spot on Strider controls.

[sheath]

I just popped in Strider ACD for a quick play through, got most of the way through level 2 (3 with the extra level) before I fell more times than I'd like.  I have to say that it looks and plays even better than I was remembering.  Some notable exceptions are in level 2/3, the beginning of the Syberian tunnel doesn't have the bell chime tune that I absolutely love in the Genesis version, and it doesn't have the mountain range in the background during the big run.  If I recall correctly the music repeats more often in Strider ACD than it does in the Genesis game, which has more audio tracks than the Arcade original does.

Sprite flicker is only bad when there are a ton of explosion sprites on screen, otherwise I didn't notice any and fail to see how combining the cypher sprite with Hiryu's would make a significant difference.  I also noticed that Hiryu's sprite is different colors in different levels, especially the exclusive level 2 sand level.  I wonder if this was taken into account in those PCEdev edits. 

[Bonknuts]

Sprite flicker is only bad when there are a ton of explosion sprites on screen, otherwise I didn't notice any and fail to see how combining the cypher sprite with Hiryu's would make a significant difference.

 It's just specifically sprite bandwidth wasting for no apparent benefit for the PCE itself. Look at the crouching example. 160 pixels! The sprite bandwidth is only 256 pixels. It could easily be cut down to 80 pixels wide (and that's just the normal reach sword slash). That's a noticeable and significant difference. PCE's strength is also its weakness. 16x16 sprite cell size is fairly large and not always optimal (all those empty pixels in the sprite cells still contribute to sprite scanline overflow/blank out, or flicker if the programmers write the routine for it). Cutting as many cells down in size/number (horizontally) always helps, because a game is almost always dynamic as to what's being put onscreen and where - so you need to optimize for worse case scenario, or dumbly dial back the amount of objects on screen over all, or go NEC Ave's route and not give a shit. NEC AVE made games tend to completely ignore this (Dynasty Wars on PCE is probably the worse offender. At least they used a lower res for this Strider port. Surprising for direct NEC handled port). There are a lot more examples in Strider (and they all add up), I just never got around to presenting them. The explosions is another one. They remade/designed the explosions, and it saves space because of mirroring - but eats up much more bandwidth than taking the arcade originals and scaling them down to the right perspective.

[turbogrfxfan]

Sprite flicker is only bad when there are a ton of explosion sprites on screen, otherwise I didn't notice any and fail to see how combining the cypher sprite with Hiryu's would make a significant difference.

 It's just specifically sprite bandwidth wasting for no apparent benefit for the PCE itself. Look at the crouching example. 160 pixels! The sprite bandwidth is only 256 pixels. It could easily be cut down to 80 pixels wide (and that's just the normal reach sword slash). That's a noticeable and significant difference. PCE's strength is also its weakness. 16x16 sprite cell size is fairly large and not always optimal (all those empty pixels in the sprite cells still contribute to sprite scanline overflow/blank out, or flicker if the programmers write the routine for it). Cutting as many cells down in size/number (horizontally) always helps, because a game is almost always dynamic as to what's being put onscreen and where - so you need to optimize for worse case scenario, or dumbly dial back the amount of objects on screen over all, or go NEC Ave's route and not give a shit. NEC AVE made games tend to completely ignore this (Dynasty Wars on PCE is probably the worse offender. At least they used a lower res for this Strider port. Surprising for direct NEC handled port). There are a lot more examples in Strider (and they all add up), I just never got around to presenting them. The explosions is another one. They remade/designed the explosions, and it saves space because of mirroring - but eats up much more bandwidth than taking the arcade originals and scaling them down to the right perspective.

wow thts kiler ifo i didntknw.  thnx!!