Cannon Dancer was an arcade game from 1996 and it was called Osman in the US, although I have never heard of it until now.  If the game looks a LOT like Strider, there’s a reason for that.  Both were directed by the same person and some have said that Cannon Dancer is like an ‘unofficial sequel’ of sorts.  In the game you play as a martial arts dude who can climb walls and punch and kick bad guys as you stop a corrupt government in the future.  And now you can play it on all current consoles, but it’s reviewed on PS4 here.

In the game you press one button to attack, and another to jump.  A third button is for a limited screen clearing attack.  You can get power-ups that give you multiple shadows of yourself as well as increasing the range of your attack.  But if you lose all your energy, you must start back at square one, power-up wise.  Which makes it very hard because while Strider had that long reaching sword, your punches and kicks are very short range, making it easy for you to get hit.  But just like Strider, you can climb up walls and ceilings easily.

My main problem with this game is the difficulty.  Thanks to your short range attacks, it’s easy to get hit and even though you can continue right where you left off, in the second level you must run from a truck and if you don’t make it, you must start that section over, which is a bit of a roadblock.  Luckily you can activate cheats like invincibility, which was the only way I could see to the end of the game.  But you don’t get any trophies when you do that.  Even though the graphics are a little bit better, Cannon Dancer feels less like a sequel and more like an unpolished imitation of Strider.  You’re better off just playing that instead.

Kid Factor:

Cannon Dancer is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Blood and Gore, Violence, and Suggestive Themes.  Defeated enemies disappear in a splash of red pixels, and one of the characters is a golden woman who looks like she has no clothes on.  All that plus the high difficulty makes this one best for older gamers only.

Tags: Game Reviews