Strider Hiryu

Overview

The character Hiryu is jointly owned by both Capcom and famous manga studio Moto Kikaku due to them having collaborated at an earlier point. The Striders are a fictional group of ninja-like secret agents who specializes in kidnapping, demolition, assassination and other specific tasks. Hiryu himself belongs to the ”Super A-Grade” class. He is usually wearing a blue-colored ninja outfit and wears a large red scarf that hides the lower half of his face. Before the game was released, the Strider Hiryu manga was serialized in a manga magazine called Weekly Comic Comp. The series was illustrated by Tatsumi Wada and was written by Tetsuo Shiba for Moto Kikaku. Capcom have been credited for the original concept.

History

Capcom and Moto Kikaku agreed to a deal, and as a result two separately released Strider Hiryu games were released in 1989. They were released outside of Japan under the shortened name, Strider. The arcade version of the game was only loosely based on the original manga, and it didn’t follow the same storyline. In the game, Hiryu is sent to defeat the Grandmaster Meio who plans to conquer the world. There was also a NES game released which was in fact based on the manga, although that was a non-linear action-adventure platformer. It was also never released in Japan. In 1999, after Hiryu made an appearance in Marvel Vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, Capcom then decided to revive the Strider franchise. They would do so by releasing a true sequel to the arcade game titled Strider 2. In the sequel, Hiryu must not only face the ressurrected Grandmaster, but also the corrupt Strider Hien. The game features the original 2D gameplay, and also uses fully polygonal 3D graphics. Strider 2 was originally released on arcades and was later ported to the Playstation. It was released in a two game bundle that also included the original Strider. The bundle has become a collector’s item due to the fact that the disc with Strider 2 printed on it was actually Strider, and the disc with Strider printed on it was in fact Strider 2. In 2013 Capcom announced a new game called ''Strider''.