yep, you need an Arcade Card Duo or Pro to play ACD games like Strider.
I remember when I first walked into a small store called Games to Go (RIP) in a suburb of Minneapolis in 1997. It was one of those rare, almost non-existent game stores that had tons of random used gear for every system ever made. I had never heard of the Arcade Card before and I thought the guy at the counter was totally pulling my leg at first. I kept going back to that store and, over the next several months, I purchased an Arcade Card Duo ($70 new), Fatal Fury 2 ($60 new), World Heroes 2 ($40), an Avenue pad 6 ($40) and a Barney Converter ($40?).
As you can see, I got screwed. Ebay and the global market have brought the price down on
some things.
To get back on topic, the Barney Converter sucks.
I always got it to work, but sometimes it would take me 10 full minutes of sliding it in and out of the system and sliding the card in and out of the converter. sometimes i would get a blank screen or a white screen or a flashing screen. sometimes a game would work for a second and than freeze as soon as i hit start...err, RUN.
Sometimes a game would work but half the graphics would be scrambled.
I now have most of the ACD games and my Miria adapter works fine with all of them, including Sapphire on the 2nd level. I've never used a Kisado converter.
You can buy the Miria Converter for $99 at TZD.com
you can also get your system modified (
http://www.oldschoolgamer.ca or
http://www.multimods.com), buy a PC engine or do random searches on evilbay hoping for a cheap turbo grafx/pc engine converter/adapter.
The miria adapter is pretty good. it usually works on the first try, sometimes the second.
The Arcade Card Duo is typically the cheaper of the two cards but it only works on..you guessed it--Duo systems. The Pro card works on everything. The best deal in town is to order the $26 Arcade Card Pro (loose) at
http://japangamestock.com/you can scope out sweet pictures of all the ACD games at
www.pcecp.com and decide whether this is all worth the hassle (yes).
welcome to the forums, Bloodsack