竜, the second character in Hiryu's name), an extra life, and a power-up that not only makes Hiryu invulnerable to attack but also increases his own attack abilities via shadow images of himself for 15 seconds. Hiryu can also summon robotic companions known collectively as "options" that help him fight enemies. These consist of up to two mushroom-like droids, a saber-toothed robo tiger and a robot hawk, known individually as Options A, B and C respectively. The game has five stages: the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (called "St. Petersburg" during the arcade game's attract sequence), the Siberian Wilderness, the Aerial Battleship Balrog, the Amazonian Jungle, and the Grandmaster's lair itself, the Third Moon. Each of the stages is divided into a number of smaller sections, each with their own time limit and checkpoint location. The player has a three-point health gauge (which can be increased to five points with the health extensions). Hiryu will lose a life when either his health gauge is fully depleted, by moving him off the screen entirely (like falling into a bottomless pit) or when the game's timer reaches zero. It is Game Over when all of Hiryu's lives are lost, but the player can be given the opportunity to continue. Plot Strider is set in a dystopian future in the year 2048, where a mysterious dictator known as the "Grandmaster" rules over the world. Hiryu, the youngest ever Super A Ranked member of an organization of high-tech ninja agents known as the "Striders", is alone tasked with the Grandmaster's assassination. Hiryu begins his mission by infiltrating the Grandmaster's capital at the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, a Federation referred to as Eastern European which became the Imperial Capital of the Russian Empire by the year 2048. The game features multilingual voice clips during cutscenes (presented in English, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian and Swahili). Development The arcade version of Strider was part of a three-way project conceived in a collaboration between Capcom and Hiroshi Motomiya's manga studio Moto Kikaku, which also included the Strider Hiryu manga by Moto Kikaku's Tatsumi Wada that was published in Kodansha's Comic Computique anthology in Japan, as well as the NES version of Strider. Kouichi Yotsui, director of the coin-op Strider (who is credited as Isuke in the game), was chosen for his experience with the CP System hardware while working as a background designer on Ghouls 'n Ghosts. The three