Strider 1990 By: Sega

Storyline:

By the year 1998, a series of disasters that had plagued the world came to a long-awaited end. The future of the Earth remained uncertain. People realized the desperate situation they were in, and began to use the energy they had once saved for fighting each other to help the poor and the homeless. Gradually, through the efforts of a great many caring human beings, the standard of living rose to a tolerable level.

A few years later, in a small Eastern European nation called Kafazu, unusual activity was reported by a rancher. He said that he had seen several "red dots" move across the sky and disappear behind a mountain. They made no sound at all, he said. Three days after the sighting, though, creatures that no one had ever seen before surfaced in the capital city. They leveled the capital in a matter of days! Nothing remained but the rubble of demolished buildings and the occasional desperate cry of someone trapped beneath them...

The creatures marched across the entire European continent, doing the same kind of damage they had in Kafazu. Not long after, North and South America met the same fate. Just weeks after the beings had first exposed themselves, 5 entire continents had been completely wiped out! Any survivors were taken and used as slaves. Their lives had become a horrible nightmare from which they might never awaken...

The wicked mind behind the devastation was Meio, the Grand Master who studied the life patterns of Earth's inhabitants from his home on a distant nebula. His ultimate plan was to rule the world from a space station he had built between the Earth and its lone moon. The "Third Moon" would serve as his control and planning center.

News reports told of the sheer annihilation of 80% of the living things on the planet. The report was picked up by the inhabitants of a small island called Moralos, somewhere in the South Seas. Moralos was the secret training centre for the Striders, the last defenders of justice on the Earth. Hiryu, the youngest man ever to achieve the rank of A-class Strider, was assigned the incredible task of getting through and stopping Grand Master Meio from carrying out his plans. You can help Hiryu - guide him from the city of Kafazu, through uncharted regions of Siberia and the Amazon, and finally to the "Third Moon" space station and the final showdown with Meio!

--From the Genesis Strider instruction manual.