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Strider EX (Enhanced version)

strygo

strygo

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Download and instructions at arcadepatches.com
Current version: rc1 (October 27, 2026)​

Strider EX aims to be the definitive version of Strider. It takes the PC Engine CD version's opening, mission briefings, boss dialogue and extended ending, plus its extra desert stage, and puts them on the arcade game, with English voices and text for the first time. Cutscenes and boss portraits keep their original pixel width.

What's in it​

  • The PC Engine CD opening, mission briefings and extended ending, with English or Japanese captions.
  • The extra Kyzylkum Desert stage, with its enemies and bosses.
  • Boss dialogue scenes with native-size portraits and English or Japanese text.
  • A Strider EX title and a hidden stage select: hold attack and jump and press Start on the title screen.
  • Two builds: USA and Japan.
  • Native audio. The USA build has English boss voices running through the arcade game's own sound hardware, and a new FM score for the cinematics.
  • An arranged soundtrack on MiSTer. The CPS+ Arrange launchers add the PC Engine soundtrack and voiced cinematics, with English and Japanese voice options and new full-quality English boss recordings. The USA launcher defaults to English voices and the Japan launcher to Japanese.
  • Smoother play. Stage-clear transitions are revised, with corrections to desert ledges, poles and camera movement.
  • More reading time for cinematic captions, and a pause after entering high-score initials.

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The Japanese title screen.

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The extra Kyzylkum Desert stage.

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Grandmaster in the opening cinematic.​

New in rc1​

First public release.

Getting it running​

  • You need your own arcade Strider romsets, striderua (USA) and striderjr (Japan), and, for split sets, their strider parent. You also need your own Strider Hiryuu (Japan) PC Engine CD, the Japanese Super CD-ROM System v3.0 BIOS, and the Strider Hiryuu X68000 disk archive, which restores the Aerial Battleship intro and ending music. The kit builds everything on your machine and includes no game data.
  • It needs Python 3.11 or later with NumPy, Pillow and SciPy, MAME 0.288 with Lua, and about 20 GiB of scratch space. Stock MAME is used only to reconstruct the source scenes. It doesn't run the finished arcade sets.
  • It runs in HBMAME (striderus01, striderjs01) and on MiSTer. HBMAME uses the native audio.
  • Every MiSTer launcher needs the included Strider EX CPS+ core for the expanded graphics mapper. It has its own filename, so an installed generic CPS+ core stays as it is.
Full instructions are on the project page.

This is a release candidate. Bug reports and suggestions are welcome right here. Tell me which build you ran and what you saw.

Fan work, unaffiliated with Capcom or NEC.
 
I haven't reviewed that patch, but I'll take a look. I suspect they're not compatible together at the moment. So for now, this stands on its own!
 
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