Osman

A platform shoot-em-up that doesn't just 'borrow heavily' from Capcom's 1989 classic, "Strider", it blatently steals from it. The player controls a 'Cannon Dancer' called Kirrin : a highly acrobatic hero who is also a skilled martial arts fighter. Kirrin must jump and fight his way over a number of colourful, intricately-rendered levels in his bid to defeat the enemy forces. In addition to the many power-ups that are availble to strengthen Kirrin's attacks (with each power-up indicated by a colour change to Kirrin's costume), the player is armed with three 'Magic' attacks per life, which work in a similar fashion to those of Sega's "Shinobi".

The Strider-esque gameplay is, if anything, an improvement over the illustrious game upon which it is based. As well as the mandatory improved graphics, understandable given the six years that seperates the two games, OSman's level design is hugely inventive and offers more variety than Strider's stages.

This game is often compared to "Strider", and the main reason for that being because in the early 90's several Capcom employees went to Mitchell including Isuke, the original Game Planner for Capcom's "Strider". He is credited as the sole designer for Cannon Dancer which is why the two games are so similar.

# 2009-07-26 13:46:59

software: Emulated on MAME,

hardware: Data East "Simple" 156,

display: raster