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A Communist power has seized control of Eurasia, aided and abetted by mysterious beings from another planet. There can be only one person who can sort out this mess and that particular hero is Strider Hiryu, gold medal winner of 2048 AD Mr Gymnast competition. Strider has been taken "raw" from his years of concentrated training and, armed only with his electro sword, he is boldly going forth to kick some alien ass behind enemy lines.

But it's a voyage of carnage, destruction and doom that will take him through five levels of eight-way scrolling terror and only the fittest (and the most athletic) will survive to confront the alien leader.

There are five enormous stages crammed into Strider. In the first you hang-glide into Red Square, letting commie minions eat titanium death, before moving your death-laden antics into the Kremlin. Then it's off to deal napalm death to an enemy complex located on the slopes of Siberia, and following that, a huge enemy airship has to be destroyed.

Strider's trail of destruction isn't over though, and primitive rain-forests are his next port-of-call before the final confrontation in the enemy's heavily-defended stronghold.

Strider has a number of athletic moves in his repetoire. He somersaults, leaps and "hangs tough" on any protruding scenery, and one touch of the up-direction on the joypad will move him up to the next platform. Also, for Strider, read Slider! Putting your joypad down and pressing the jump button will make Strider slide in the required direction and with the aid of his razor heels, "cut up" the opposition!

At the end of each level, Strider has a pretty nasty surprise as the Communist "swine" have planted terrifying guardians to show hom the door to doom! Look out for the Kremlin Snake, a whip-wielding maniac, a robo-dinosaur and the aliens' head honcho! Arrrgghhh!

There's no denying that Strider is somewhat on the expensive side, but then again, that always seems to be the case with the best Megadrive carts available... and Strider certainly fits into that category.

We've consulted experts on the matter and the word is that Megadrive Strider *is* arcade Strider! The graphics (check out that wonderful screenshots!) and sound are exactly the same as in the arcade, as is the brilliant playability.

We're talking about an utterly fantastic platform game here - definitely the greatest yet seen on Sega's 16-bit wonder machine! You're pretty much getting three thousand quid's worth of arcade machine for forty one notes, so you can't really complain, can you?

Buy it pronto and enjoy! I did!