Which version is this?, For the life of me, I can't tell.

So a guy over at the Sega forums posted this pic:

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...and for the life of me, I can't figure out which one it is. It's got life markers and leaves as level 1 enemies. LEAVES. WTF?

Someone on there thinks its a proto, which it may be. Any ideas?

I'm 100% certain it's a proto, and possibly it's the original 6 meg version that had omitted the Amazon stage before it was upgraded to a full 8 megs. I've seen this exact pic before in an old issue of EGM, IIRC. It was one of the pics that got me interested in seeing what this different Strider was all about.

And look closely: I don't think those are leaves. Those look like the tail ends of enemy explosions. I have no idea what that guy's talking about as far as "blowing leaves" beating him up pretty good. Could be he just thinks he remembers "leaves." Unless his video store was renting out protos (not out of the realm of possibility, depending on where he was and where they got their games from), I don't think he remembers it as it was. After all, would Sega let a proto slip into the production run of finals? If so, that's some shitty quality control.

There's another possibility too: a lot of the early proto screenshots that showed up in EGM show graphic glitches that were absent from the finished game. Look up the early ones if you can and you'll see what I mean.

Yeah, I'm not sure what he means by "blowing leaves" either. Never heard of that one before. I think you're probably right, but it's a shame he doesn't have a demo ROM dump to prove what he's talking about.

There might be one somewhere. Maybe the proto collectors on Digital Press might know where to find one.

Uhhh, yeah, not to be an ass but when I laid eyes on the screenshot, I also thought "these are just explosion trails". I mean, beat up by flying leaves? Sega's porting the game to the Genesis and they say "OK, we need to test Hiryu's collision detection. What do w--"

"FLYING LEAVES."

"What?"

"The arcade didn't have that. Just imagine it. Flying leaves. As hard to hit as a Ninja Gaiden bird."

"Uhhh..."

"Huh? HUH?"

"OK, we can test it on that. Just rehash the last explosion sprite."

(Test is succesful)

"Very well, th--"

"This is some good shit, ain't it?"

"What?"

"The flying leaves. Could't we try having more of them?"

"Look, now..."

"I've got a fever, and the only prescription is MORE LEAVES."

"Whatever. We'll take it down in the final version. Just... just make sure this beta doesn't leak."

"Yeah, okay. I guess that'll do."

:rollin :rollin :rollin

I'm pretty sure a conversation similar to that transpired during the making of the NES game.

So the guy emails me, insisting that he's not making it up, that the version of Strider he played had LEAVES:

Odd, huh?

Odd indeed. It's still a proto, that's for sure.

Maybe it's remnants for an aborted forest level still in the coding? I dunno, I got nothing. And it's given me bad flashbacks to the first level of Strider Returns which DOES take place in a forest.

I still think he's remembering it wrong. But until someone gets ahold of the proto, who knows?

I, too, can make leaves.

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As it turns out, it IS the last frame of the explosion except only one type of enemy does this and not all the time. I'm sure you can figure out what it is just from the screen shots.

So go! Go and tell this man of the leaves I have made. Maybe he's remembering leaves from another stage in the prototype but it damn sure isn't stage 1 and it's not what he saw in those screenshots. They're not leaves.

Good debunking, Prime. He says he never made it to another level because he kept getting beat up by the "leaves"/explosion trails. However, I seem to remember an odd glitch in the Genesis port that let the explosions hurt you, because I had trouble with that myself.

However, that's definitely a proto screen, because there's too many differences between its subscreen menu and the one in the Genesis screens you just posted.

I remember that screenshot vividly, and am almost sure it was the screen shown in the promotional posters included on Sega Genesis cartridges. I am almost positive it was located on the lower part of the back of the poster. I'll try finding that tonight and post back if I find it.

Sorry for double posting... But here are the images, indeed that is a scan/photo from the Sega Genesis poster:

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Ah ha! I knew I'd seen that pic before, it just wasn't in EGM like I thought. Thanks for posting these scans!

And if you note the bit about "6 mega memory", that does support my theory about this screen being from the 6 meg prototype.

That is true. But there are several interesting details in the poster. For instance, the Golden Axe screenshot is form the Arcade version, not the Genesis port. And regarding Strider, the text mentions amazons, which were supposedly not in the 6Mega cart.

I guess it just proves that they didn't know what they were doing, or that they had very little info to work with. Nothing surprising for the era I guess.

Exactly. I think at the time that poster was produced, they were working off of info for upcoming games, which more than likely wasn't concrete. In the case of the arcade ports, they were probably using descriptions from the arcade games themselves (fliers, brochures and whatnot), and they had to use arcade and proto screens to get the poster out there. Mickey Mouse is another good example of this, as that screen shown was not in the final version of Castle of Illusion.

And just like that... the case is closed. Good work, guys, and thanks for your help, Artemio!

My pleasure, thanks for the incredible Strider site!