U.S. Gold, on the other hand, is not really known... for quality. A bunch of Commodore 64 ports, but not good games or anything. So how did this happen? How did they (and Tiertex) get the rights to develop the sequel to a masterpiece? Why would Capcom abandon it to them? Can anyone explain this?.

What to say about this game? The title theme raps... sort of. A muffled voice grinds out "Strider" to the beat of the music. This alone, how could THIS have happened? Was no sane individual involved with this project? Or perhaps it was part of a sinister, government social experiment?

No, I suppose not. Just a really bad idea. OK, the behemoth of bad ideas. The game itself sucks, for the most part. It's a bit of a shoddy mess. But it could have been appropriately forgotten along with Onslaught and Fighting Masters if it only had not been so carelessly associated with Strider. If only they had called it Blade of Var'ggoth or Ninja McCool and they had replaced the main character.

If I think about it, the real problem here is that the Strider character (who is not Hiryu, incidentally) is just not cool. He doesn't seem dynamic, powerful. In the original game, he felt like a weapon that could do amazing things if only you could figure out how to handle him. In this title, he is clumsy, awkward... sucky.

After much discontent, Capcom finally did the appropriate thing in '99: they released another Strider 2 and pretended that this one never existed. That game is not as good as the original either, but cannot be a disappointment, if only because it official negates this title from the series.

An interesting tangential bit of information is that in '96, some of the original team went on to create another Strider-esque game for Mitchell called Cannon Dancer (aka Osman). It's virtually unknown and I haven't played it, but it looks incredible. Perfect for the Strider fan. Classicgaming.com has a write up on it here.

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