Night Striker

About Night Striker

Night Striker (1989) is Taito's into-the-screen arcade shooter, combining Space Harrier with Out Run, in which a flying armoured car battles terrorists through a futuristic city at night.

Night Striker in Depth

In a futuristic city in 2049, a terrorist organisation has kidnapped Doctor Masker Lindberry and his daughter. The agents of the United Nations Special Service Agency have investigated without success, so its leader heads a task force codenamed Night Striker, using armoured vehicles to rescue them and destroy the organisation. The player flies the armoured car and shoots enemies such as helicopters, aeroplanes, lorries, robotic spiders and boulders, steering it around the screen much like Space Harrier and dodging barriers in some stages.

There are 21 stages, themed on factories, tunnels and city centres, suburbs and streets, but only six need to be completed to finish the game. Each ends with a boss, after which the player chooses a route, as in Out Run, and the different routes lead to different endings. The car's "armour" is its shield, absorbing a number of hits; beating a boss lets it withstand one more, and a hit with the shield gone ends the game. In some final stages the car transforms into another vehicle, such as a motorbike or a robot. Computer and Video Games called the arcade version's graphics "beautiful" and the game a "must-play", and Your Sinclair praised its rolling road sequences.

Making Night Striker

Taito developed and published it for arcades in 1989. Game Machine listed it as Japan's fourth most successful upright/cockpit arcade unit in its 15 August 1989 issue. It was later converted to the Mega-CD in 1993 with an arranged soundtrack, the PlayStation in 1995 and the Saturn in 1996, and included on Taito Memories II Gekan for PlayStation 2 in 2007. Reviews were mixed, with home versions faring much worse than the arcade original.