Cannon Dancer Osman
Image: via Striderpedia / Mitchell Corporation

As we're only weeks away from this year's Tokyo Game Show, we're starting to find out what games developers and publishers will be showing off at the annual convention. And amidst Konami's line-up — which includes multiple Yu-Gi-Oh! games, Super Bomberman R 2, and Coffee Talk Episode 2 — is the surprise return of a forgotten classic — Cannon Dancer.

Known as Osman in Japan, the game was created by Kouichi "Isuke" Yotsui, who worked as a designer on Capcom classic Strider. Our friends over at Time Extension spotted the game in a listing shared by Twitter user @ohfivepro. What makes this so special? Well, Cannon Dancer was an arcade exclusive back in 1996, and Isuke considered it "his" sequel to the classic side-scrolling action game. So this is the very first time we're getting this game on home consoles.

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Developed by Mitchell Corporation, Cannon Dancer is set in a neon-cyberpunk Arabian world, and the plot is supposedly Isuke poking fun at his time at Capcom. And it's an absolute stunner of a game, too — though we're not surprised given how fantastic Strider is. Strider did eventually get a direct sequel, and there's another game with the name Strider 2, but given that Cannon Dancer had the original's designer on board, we think it's earned the title of 'spiritual successor' or 'unofficial sequel'.

So far, no release date has been set for this console port — which is coming to Switch and PS4 — nor do we even know if it's coming out in the west yet. But the Tokyo Game Show is only a few weeks away (15th September), so we'll surely be getting more information then.

Have you ever played Cannon-Dancer before? Do you hope this release comes out in the west? Let us know!

[source twitter.com, via timeextension.com]