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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Strider - Atari ST [003] PlayThru

Title Screem
NOTE: A trainer was used for making this capture.

I first acquired Strider for the Atari ST, then for the Sega Genesis not long after release, and finally for the Sega Master System, when retailers were blowing those games out in the US.

Early on, I remember enjoying this game, but my main issue was the fact that the play area was squished, which was squished even more when playing on the 12 inch Atari SC1224 monitors of the day.



Gameplay Start
The port to the Atari ST by Tiertex is a decent effort from the original Capcom Arcade hardware.  This game was one of nine Capcom CPS-1 games that were ported to the Atari ST.  The CPS-1 and ST share the same CPU, which might have helped the port had the software house actually gotten the games source code, which they did not.

Boss Fight
While the play area is squished, as I mentioned above, the sound is decent on the ST, the background music is well composed, although there is a good deal of silence in the game.  I think that the port did a decent job with sprites and backgrounds, although, like the play area, everything is squished.

Box Front
I believe only two background tunes are used, so the musical variety present in the original arcade is not here.  One digitized sample is used, but none of the other music that plays between stages are present here.

Arcade Flyer
The game runs a little slowly, but here I am playing a version modified for faster gameplay, which enhances the experience.  For some reason, stages 3 and 4 are switched, even someone who has never touched the arcade original should be able to spot this with the backgrounds in those two stages.

And, spoiler, the ending is totally different, no final fight, it is just not included.  No idea why this design decision was made.

The tune heard in the intro of this video is an Atari POKEY rendition of the Strider theme, sourced from a mod file from the Amiga version.

Capture info -

This gameplay was captured on February 16, 2018.

Game was played on an Atari 1040 STf, TOS 1.4, 1MB, equipped with a CosmosEX from Jookie.
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A Best Electronics ST Monitor to VGA cable was used, connected to an OSSC 1.6 (processing the video in Line4x mode), with the output being captured by a Startech USB3HDCAP.

Video was edited with Shotcut.

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