Moves the game never explains
Two of the three buttons do the same job. L and Space both jump, while K swings the cypher, standing, crouching or in mid-air. From a standstill the jump goes straight up. Hold a direction as you press it, +Space, and Hiryu cartwheels instead.
Both jumps can destroy weaker opponents, and so can the slide, +Space, which also takes Hiryu under or through certain obstacles. Small fry don't need a sword swing at all.
How do you climb and hang in Strider?
Once the hook has caught a ledge or a ceiling, left and right move Hiryu along it, pulls him up onto the platform and lets go. The weak spot is the sword. This version swings slower than the arcade game, and slowest of all while hanging from a ceiling.
Watch for slopes, too. Running downhill, Hiryu moves much faster, and the momentum stretches the cartwheel into a longer jump. When a wide gap waits at the bottom of a slope, take it at full speed.
Health blocks and the Option robots
Hiryu's gauge holds three blocks, and any hit takes exactly one, whether it comes from a soldier or a dinosaur. Item containers lying around the stages break open with a sword slash, and some Flying Mosquemen carry them too. The health pickups are marked with the kanji of Hiryu's name: 飛 (Hi) restores one block, 飛竜 (Hiryuu) refills the whole gauge, and 竜 (Ryuu) adds a block, up to five in total. Ryuu is the one to chase. Its extra block stays until Hiryu loses a life, while Hi does nothing at all if the gauge is already full.
What do Options A, B and C do?
Option A is a mushroom-shaped drone on legs that follows Hiryu and attacks enemies. Picking it up turns his rightmost green health block red, and the drone lives exactly as long as that block does: take the hit that empties it, or lose a life, and the robot goes with it. He can keep two at once.
Protect that pair, because Option B only turns up in containers once Hiryu already has both. It's a robotic saber-toothed tiger that replaces the drones, turns the red blocks yellow and destroys whatever it attacks. It doesn't last long, and taking damage cuts it short, dropping Hiryu back to his Option As.
Option C, a robot hawk, plays by its own rules. It flies straight out of a container without a pickup, dives at enemies from above, leaves the health gauge alone and is gone after about a dozen seconds. Options carry over to the next stage, so drones picked up late in one stage still help at the start of the next.
The clock, lives and continues
Every stage is cut into sections with a 90-second limit, and the clock resets at each checkpoint. That's a reason not to hang back: running out of time costs a life just like an empty gauge does. Falling into a bottomless pit or moving off the screen takes one too.
A new stage always starts with a full gauge, however battered Hiryu was at the end of the last one. So the boss at the end of a stage is the place to spend health freely, unless the blocks you'd lose are the red ones holding up an Option.
This is the Western cartridge, so you get three continues, and OPTIONS lets you start with three to five lives on Easy, Normal or Hard. The game has no passwords. Playing online here, the emulator's Save button is what keeps a run going: it stores one save per game in this browser, and each new save replaces the last.
Boss guide: Kazafu City and Siberia
Strobaya and the Novo cannon
Strobaya rolls around trying to grab Hiryu. There's no trick here. Keep hacking, and with an Option A at your side he goes down fast. The danger comes after. As soon as he dies the ceiling catches fire and starts to collapse, so get clear.
Novo, the multi-laser cannon pod later in the stage, has to be rushed. The moment it activates, get right up against it and press K as fast as you can. Its lasers bounce off the ceiling and will find you if the fight drags on. The six white bars are its energy. When the floor gives way afterwards, slash the gunner below straight away, since he can't fire upwards.
How do you beat Ouroboros?
When it heads toward you, jump over the head and land on its back. The head is the only part that takes damage, so stay up there and keep slashing it. With an Option A, Ouroboros can die before you swing once.
Mecha-Pon and Solo
Mecha-Pon is probably the easiest boss in the game. Walk up, slash its stomach, and it falls apart before it tries anything. Then run, because the head explodes a few seconds later.
Solo can't be skipped. The stage won't scroll until he's dead. He carries serious firepower and is too dumb to use it well. Swing at him as he approaches and he just fires his afterburners and dodges. Lure him close instead, then jump and hit him repeatedly, land, wait for him to return and jump again. A few rounds of that finish him. Never let him land, or the bazooka comes out, and it's a real pain to dodge.
The Pooh sisters
The three sisters kick blades of compressed air. They appear once you destroy the gunner pod, and there's a spot where they can't touch you: the sloped part of the main ledge, just before the pod and above the main rotor. Crouch there with and keep pressing K until all three are gone. The pilot of the shuttle afterwards doesn't even need a sword. Walk at him and he jumps off in a panic.
Boss guide: the Balrog, the Amazon and the Third Moon
When the Balrog's main cannon comes into view, stop, crouch and slide underneath, and the blast goes over you. Stay low, and one slash blows it up and opens the way into the ship. Further in, climb the vertical tunnel with the squashing machine as fast as you can and slide behind the Frog Robot before it lands. It ends up facing the wrong way, and both it and the Robo Swarm are easy kills from there. Cut down any rocket it gets off.
How do you beat the graviton generator?
You can only damage the generator while its gravity field has hold of you, and that's only safe once most of the satellites are gone. Go to the far left of the room and crouch. When it hovers near, its pull can't catch you there, and the atom-like satellites around it are open to your sword.
Leave the health canister in the middle of the room alone if your gauge is full. Then, when the generator comes close, jump up and hack at it. After a few spins it throws you to the floor for one block of health, which is what the canister is for. A second attempt should finish it. The moment it explodes the room catches fire and the ship starts to fall, so run through the new hole in the floor at full speed and be ready for the jump that follows.
The Captain is quick work. Jump onto the helicopter straight away and slash him. Each hit makes him jump in pain, and he never gets to use the whip.
Lago, the Mecha T-Rex
The last brontosaurus carries you into a good position for this fight. If you catch the vine, it's easy: crouch on its edge and aim at the head. On the ground it's harder. Lago always attacks in the same order, a slow claw slash, fire breath, a fast claw slash, then a jump forward or back. Jump over the slow slash, hit the head, drop down and slide away before the fast one lands. Ignore the cypher power-up behind it. It's useless here, and you'll likely get squashed reaching for it.
Meio
A boss rush comes first, so arrive with continues to spare. Meio himself has no trick worth learning. Find a spot where he holds still, hit him as hard as you can and hope the continues last.
Regular enemies, secrets and one strange bug
Against soldiers and wolves, which way Hiryu faces matters as much as his sword. Walk toward the Russian soldiers and they panic and run, often straight into a crevasse. Turn your back and they charge, and a few remember they're holding machine guns. Siberia's wolves work the same way: they come in packs from both sides, stand growling while you face them and attack the moment you run.
Everything else has a simple answer. Get behind the Dipodal Mechanoids, since they only lean forward and never move. Crouch and swing at turrets. On the Balrog, the Robo Swarm is the nastiest of the lot: run, stop, crouch and swing as fast as you can. The seamen's mortar is slow, so wait for the shot and slide, which dodges it and kills the gunner in one move. In the Amazon, piranhas only stick to Hiryu, and moving left and right shakes them off. Knock the rider off a triceratops and you can ride it yourself, which keeps you out of the crevasses and the river.
Is there anything hidden in Strider?
There are no secret stages, but every stage hides item boxes with points and health, and somewhere among them is an extra life. One more secret sits on the Balrog. After the main cannon, go down into the missile silo and head left instead of right. Slash every missile shell on the ledges, and the leftmost one holds a Panda worth extra score.
Why do the controls suddenly reverse in the Amazon?
It's a bug carried over from the arcade game. Get hit by an Amazoness's axe while walking on one particular ledge in the fourth stage and the controls flip for a while. The Amazonesses are only a threat when they swarm you, so on that stretch, deal with them one at a time.