Osman

Osman is a 1996 arcade action platformer from Mitchell Corporation, released in Japan as Cannon Dancer. Its reputation rests largely on its pedigree: the game was made by people who had worked on the arcade Strider, and the family resemblance is obvious within seconds. The protagonist moves acrobatically, runs along walls, attacks in mid-air, and the whole design rewards chaining movement together rather than advancing cautiously.

Visually it leans on an afterimage effect, with several copies of the character trailing the main body so that attacks look as though the hero is splitting apart. By the second half of the nineties arcade platformers were losing ground to fighting games and 3D graphics, which makes Osman one of the last serious attempts to push two-dimensional action as far as it would go. The hardware of the period allowed large sprites, many simultaneously animated objects and richly coloured backdrops, and the game uses all of it.

Difficulty follows the coin-op brief: short, dense and unforgiving, built on the assumption that you will memorise when and from where each attack arrives. Single-player. On OldGame.cz it runs straight in the browser, so it is easy to check whether the fast acrobatic tempo suits you. Today Osman is valued precisely as a late, technically polished example of arcade 2D action, one that never received a wide release and remained known mainly to those who went looking for it.