Throwback Thursday #1 is finally upon us, guys, and we’re kicking off what I hope will be a successful community series with one of my all-time favorite video games: Strider for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Tune into our Twitch channel at 4pm PT.

I’ve summed up many of my most insightful thoughts about this game in a  previous post , but that post is now, to my horror, over a year and a half old, so here’s a couple new thoughts.

It’s easy to see why, depending on who you ask, the NES game gets pinned as something of a black sheep within the Strider series. Somehow, it seems that the majority of those familiar with the series had their first experience with the arcade or Genesis/Megadrive games, which had more intuition-friendly jumping, a bigger cypher slash, and some awesomely large sprites. NES Strider, with its relative lack of technical polish, also never came out in Japan, even though it was based on a comic that only came out in Japan. 

I think it’s hard for people to speak objectively about the Strider series since there hasn’t been a new game in so long (although of course, there will be) and their opinions are inevitably colored by nostalgia, but when you examine the actual merits of each game, I think you’ll find that the arcade/Megasis games hang their hat on technical execution, while the NES game boasts big ideas. I’ll try and highlight these ideas that I think make this game so special and so worth your attention today at 4:00. Don’t miss it!

Meanwhile, if you have thoughts on this classic, let us know in the comments, or in the forum thread .