Though known primarily for his appearances in video games, the character of Strider Hiryu actually first appeared 30 years ago as a comic book character. Serialized over the course of six issues in the monthly magazine Comic Computique, the Strider Hiryu manga introduced its titular character, who would go on to become a fairly popular Capcom mascot.

The manga actually ran while the original arcade game was being developed; incidentally, the entire Strider Hiryu franchise was conceived as being a multimedia project. Capcom had previously worked with the manga collective Moto Kikaku on Tenchi wo Kurau and opted to work with them again on Strider.

According to the original manga, Hiryu is an A-Class Strider, a group of black ops agents that carry out espionage of various sorts. Hiryu had actually retired after being forced to kill his older sister, who was also a Strider that had gone berserk. Eventually, Hiryu is called out of retirement in order to carry out a unique mission revolving around his best friend, Cain. Hiryu must actually take out Cain, as Cain has been captured and is now a liability to the entire Strider organization. Though he finds Cain, Hiryu also discovers a device called Zain that essentially acts as a mind control device. Instead of eliminating Cain, Hiryu works alongside his friend to take out the people behind the Zain project.

There were two different video games called Strider that released the year following the manga. While the NES version of the game followed the manga’s plot pretty closely, the arcade edition changed it completely. The games proved to be enough of a success to spur the release of sequels, with the most recent, again simply titled Strider, having released in 2014. Hiryu himself appears in a number of other Capcom games, including Marvel vs. Capcom, Namco x Capcom, Project X Zone 2, and others.