The Sega Genesis would accomplish a great deal in its lifetime, but the console's first impressive feats were accurate translations of arcade games like the mediocre Altered Beast, the tenaciously hard Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, and the genre-defining Golden Axe. Strider was another such feather in the console's cap, as it adeptly recreated Capcom's arcade wonder with only the mild annoyances of flicker and loading pauses. In fact, it wasn't until 2000 that a PlayStation conversion of Strider, bundled with Strider 2, made its 16-bit predecessor somewhat obsolete.
Like the system's Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, the Genesis edition of Strider was actually programmed by Sega's crew, who had licensed the arcade original from Capcom. Because of this, it's hard to confirm which company was behind Strider's U.S. cover.
Strider Hiryu, one of the most stylish of Capcom's early characters, has been recast as a square-jawed, tights-wearing stock superhero using a sword from She-Ra: Princess of Power to fend off a robot and two monkey-men. In the background we see a lazy recreation of the Russian minarets from Strider's first stage, though the artist's overwhelming use of tan makes the structure look more like an enormous sand castle.
The overall effect is not unlike that given by some cheap illustration from a terrible direct-to-video sci-fi film of the 1980s. The Non-Hiryu guy even looks a little like Reb Brown, star of Space Mutiny. With that in mind, we might speculate that Sega once planned to use this box art for a different game.
Or maybe not. Either way, the artist evidently copied at least one part of the cover from another source, as reader Chris Ham notes that "the monkey people in the background are in fact space marines from the Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k universe. The images appear to have been drawn from the actual models in their original stances." Reader Neil Carleton provides this link and adds "I wonder if Marines 1, 15 and 19 ever got their royalty cheques?"
The Japanese Mega Drive cover for Strider is, for want of a better word, dark. Hiryu and a selection of attackers, including the game's recognizable robot gorilla, all stand in shadows and muted tones, with Hiryu's chiseled face resembling a wood-block carving. It's likely that this art was deemed too static and gloomy for North America. That said, Hiryu and his blue-shaded foes are all actually in Strider, and they're all an improvement on Captain Future and some space-marine toys.
Next: More Strider.
