YEAR: 1989

HARDWARE: Motorola 68000

DEVELOPER: Capcom

PUBLISHER: Sharp

It turns out I was wrong. The NEC Turbo Duo version *isn't* the ultimate version of Strider. The X68000 version is. The X68000 was an incredibly popular Japanese home computer with no American counterpart. It had virtually identical hardware to Capcom's CPS-1 board, making it a natural choice for ports of Capcom's arcade games. In fact, "port" is hardly the right word for the X68000's Capcom conversions, since they are 99.9% identical to their arcade counterparts.

The only real difference between the arcade Strider and the X68000 version is the fact that the console version comes on three old-style 5 1/4 floppy disks. You know, the big floppies that actually bent? The ones without slide covers? Yeah, THOSE.

You shouldn't have any difficulty in finding a copy of this version. Despite the fact that the X68000 was never released Stateside, it is one of the most emulated consoles since the NES. And since the games were on floppies, finding disk images/ROMs of this game shouldn't be too difficult, either.