Lost Classics: Osman (Arcade)

The original Osman was a Turkish Sultan who established the Ottoman Empire and ruled it until his death in 1326. The Osman in this week’s Lost Classics is apparently the brother of Capcom’s Strider Hiryu who lives in a futuristic version of the middle east. He can crawl up walls, do flips, and dispatch enemies with the greatest of ease just like Capcom’s ninja. However, there is a good reason for this, as Osman was created by several former Capcom staffers, including Kouichi “Isuke” Yotsui, who also created Strider.

If you remember, Strider was one of Capcom’s most popular arcade titles, and when it was ported to the Sega Genesis around the system’s launch, it helped Sega move a lot of consoles during the system’s early days. U.S. Gold tried to develop a sequel to Strider sometime during the early 90s, and to say the least, it didn’t work out so well. Capitalizing off the character’s appearance in the Marvel vs Capcom games, Capcom created a true Strider sequel which while it was enjoyable, it was either impossibly hard or ridiculously easy depending on if you played the arcade or Playstation version.

In 1997, between the U.S. Gold and Capcom Strider sequel attempts, Mitchell Corporation quietly released Osman, which quite frankly, would be a better sequel to Strider than any other attempt. Playing as the title character, you seek to liberate the world from Abdullah the Slaver. You use your bare hands, but they are just as lethal as Strider’s blade. You also have a screen-clearing special attack and a clone maneuver that’s reminiscent of the trailing shadow copy in Ninja Gaiden 2 that can be activated by special attacks. You’ll do a lot of wall crawling just like Strider, you’ll run down a hill while being chased by a monstrosity just like Strider, and the game features a punishing level of difficulty, just like Strider (you may be noticing a theme here). The first level of Osman is even similar to the first level of Strider.

However, the Strider similarities are forgivable as number one, the game was created by many of the same people who worked on Strider and number 2, this game is freaking awesome. Thus, Osman is more of a spiritual successor to Strider rather than a direct rip off. You’ll face some cool bosses, and there is a lot of variety in the levels. You can power up Osman’s abilities by collecting special items, and the color of his pants indicates his level of power. The difficulty is barely manageable in the first few stages, but it shoots upward towards the end of the game.

The next time Capcom decides to create a sequel to Strider, then they should hunt down this arcade cabinet and study it. The developers have done an excellent job of creating a game that could easily have been the follow-up to one of Capcom’s most popular titles. Although Mitchell Corp has created games for WiiWare and Nintendo DS, it seems like there is little chance of seeing this game again, be it a downloadable title, a sequel, or a remake. A shame too, as this game is a highly overlooked classic platformer.