Engaging is no stars? On an orange? You get so many stim opportunities with an orange. Peeling it, taking off the webbing, maybe taking the skin off if your weird like that, not to mention segmenting it.
It’s already happening. Like guys I cannot emphasize this enough the studios are going to make content creators the deal of a lifetime because they have a void to fill and those content creators will then be on the do not work list for the rest of their professional lives.
I just this morning saw a tumblr post from someone saying they’re excited to announce they are in takes with Netflix about remaking some niche anime.
Don’t be a scab.
Do not work with any studios right now.
They aren’t giving you a chance in the industry. They are tricking you into getting a lifetime blacklist so they can strikebreak.
If the Strider series represents a Japanese team making a blazing action game set in a Soviet futurescape, then Cannon Dancer is the same but for the Middle East.
Prevously unknown except to the handful of people who either touched the arcade cabinet or downloaded the ROM for MAME, Cannon Dancer flew under the radar for nearly 30 years until it got a surprise remaster earlier this year. I have the pleasure of reporting that Cannon Dancer’s 2023 Switch port is just as batshit as the 1996 arcade original, and I’m glad that a wider audience can now experience the joy of an assassin in floopy trousers rampaging through the streets of future Dubai, kicking tigers in the face and battling giant goddesses for control over the planet.
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Cannon Dancer is a spiritual successor to the original Strider, made by designer Kouichi Yotsui after he left Capcom and decided to channel the same energy that birthed Strider Hiryu for Mitchell Corporation. He did this despite the fact that arcade platforming action games were pretty much dead in ‘96, and as a result Cannon Dancer never did well financially. But I doubt that anyone who played this visual kaleidoscope back in the day forgot it. Cannon Dancer bursts with bright colors and killer sprite art, depicting some of the most vibrant levels I’ve ever seen.
It starts out in Agadan, a cyberpunk UAE-style metropolis on the Persian Gulf, and continues to a temple, a sprawing desert, the Indian Ocean, some forest near Aleppo, Prague, and a weird final level that may or may not take place in the Earth’s upper hemisphere, except that it’s red and nightmarish instead of freezing cold. Throughout all these arenas, Cannon Dancer’s protagonist, a dude named Kirin, exquisitely beats ass by kicking things until they explode and getting powerups that shoot after-images of himself across the screen. How do you know you’ve gotten a power up? The color of Kirin’s pants change. It’s great stuff.
Visually, I’ve appreciated Cannon Dancer’s aesthetic ever since I first glimpsed it in emulated screenshots. Just as the Strider series’ unusual penchant for Soviet-era futurism feels dated yet novel at the same time, Cannon Dancer’s depiction of Western Asia populated by robots, techno troopers, oil rig mechs and pyamids rising above skyscapes is rad. It’s rare to get a Japanese game (or any game from the '90s and 2000s, really) that channels the Middle East in a way that isn’t just an Arabian Nights retread or some drab, browish setting for world militaries to make a mess in. While I wouldn’t exactly call Cannon Dancer’s “representation” good, it’s at least fun and memorable.
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One missed opportunity is that Kirin doesn’t appear to be Middle Eastern himself, despite the English version giving him the Turkish name “Osman.” (In fact, Cannon Dancer was released outside of Japan as Osman, and the new re-release generously goes by the title Cannon Dancer Osman. But let’s be real, Cannon Dancer is 100% the better name.) Instead, he seems to be your usual Japanese action game badass who serves on Teki, a mercenary squad. He takes orders from Jack Layzon, the attorney general of the WORLD who desses like a 1930s gangster, because Cannon Dancer’s vision of the future is wild. After a routine mission to take down cultists goes haywire, Kirin is left in the desert to rot and forced to seek revenge on his old Teki comrades and Mr. Layzon. Along the way, the deity Abdullah enslaves him as her personal avatar of justice…until Kirin breaks free and goes to beat the crud out of her as well, presumably becoming a deity himself by the end of the game.
This is my own interpretation of the plot as gathered from the various Cannon Dancer entries on the Strider wiki, by the way. There is a surprising amount of storybubbling around the edges of this game, but it’s all stuff cobbled together from interviews or magazine articles. There are actual cutscenes, sure, but they feel like the work of a development team tasked to create a game based on an 80-episode 1995 anime about a cyber ninja in Baghdad that nobody else watched. Obviously, most Japanese games in the '90s had something lost in translation. But Cannon Dancer takes it to a new level, relishing in its incomprehensible nature yet offering the curious a treasure trove of lore if they bother to dig around online. It reminds me of the underrated Strider NES game, which was also baffling yet at least had a manga to fill in the gaps, and I respect it for that.
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As far as its status as a Strider spiritual successor goes, I’d say that I actually prefer Cannon Dancer over both Strider 2 and Double Helix’s 2014 Strider remix. Those are decent games held back by poor pacing, whereas Cannon Dancer is just as tight as the original 1989 Strider, if not more so thanks to the additional years that Kouichi Yotsui and his team had to improve on gameplay mechanics. And while you could dismiss Cannon Dancer as too much of a clone to win such praise, as some did in the years leading up to its re-release, I think there’s more room out there for mashups which can best be described as “neon-drenched Dubai nightlife meets Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.” Cannon Dancer is a garish Middle Eastern fever dream, and the world is better off for its existence.
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