A short entry for a game that you can currently play, but not in its originally intended form.
Strider 2 was a poor sequel released for various 8-bit and 16-bit platforms by US Gold and developed by Tiertex. Originally the game started off as a game called “TOR”, which stood for Transforming Overland Robot.
According to artist Wayne Billingham (who was asked to tidy up the Strider 2 artwork), the original game was so bad that they decided to just stick Strider graphics into the game to try and sell it.
We assume that the main character was originally some kind of robot that you controlled, with the potential to transform into different vehicles. Elements of this seem to be still present in Strider 2, where you can transform into a limited moving robot. It is therefore likely that the game’s backgrounds and sprites survived and were used in the Strider game, but much could well have been chopped/changed.
Paul has mentioned previously that he no longer has anything of his C64 work, so its likely that the original work is lost for good. But who knows – maybe some day an early demo will surface via strange means.
Contributions: Wayne Billingham, Fabrizio Bartoloni
