Video: It's The Perfect Time To Remember How Amazing Streets Of Rage Was, And Still Is

One of the first games I picked up on the mega drive with outrun.

Still love this game and the soundtrack.

I find it quite heartening that there are some dedicated devs and SEGA fans that have taken it upon themselves to revive their classic brands.

SEGA at its most creative was an unrivalled force in video games and whilst I happily wear my Nintendo T-shirt these days, I’ll always have my SEGA vest on underneath.

It's a shame that no one talks about the 3rd game. It was really ahead of its time, with a gritty techno soundtrack, a story that involved robots replacing politicians, and multiple endings and final stages that change depending on how you do. It's a shame though that the American version kinda ruined the plot.

@AxeltheBuizel Hopefully Sega Ages will allow Sega to bring us the Japanese version of Streets of Rage 3. I noticed for Sega Forever they did that for Dynamite Heady. Of course, since the Switch is not region locked, maybe we can get the Japanese version from their eshop if it gets released.

While I think the second one is best, the soundtrack and atmosphere are probably better in the first one. It blew my mind back in '91...also, coincidentally, I just recently reviewed this.
http://classicvideogamereviews.blogspot.com/2018/06/streets-of-rage.html

I’ll never forget the first time I played SOR with my headphones on! Man did that soundtrack blow me away!!! I couldn’t believe it was coming from a cartridge!!! More recently the kids and I had a blast with SOR 2 on the Xbox thanks to Microsoft backwards compatibility with the 360!! I hope they get SOR 4 right and we see the first 3 under the Sega ages line!!

SOR 2 is the best in the series followed by SOR3, then SOR. I think SOR2 is a CLASSIC and it's aged well. Still very playable even today.

I love all the Streets of Rage games equally, the problem with the series is that it didn't start in the arcade so it never got some of the more advance arcade features such as better graphics, more frames of animations, more on-screen sprites, scaling and zooming of sprites and backgrounds, a better rockin' soundtrack, and 4 players co-op.

"Knuckles laid bare"
leave Knuckles out of this, NintendoLife.

@Aozz101x Yeah who needs Knuckles when we already got Blaze.

The original SoR has one of my top ten videogame soundtracks of all time. Yuzo Koshiro is a damn genius with synths. I still listen to it all the time, and was pleasantly surprised it was even found and playable through Amazon Echo.

SoR 2 is probably the better game, and has some real nice music, too, but I had trouble getting into 3 (partly because the music took a nosedive).

SoR Sega 3D Classics is the definitive version, now; the 3D looks amazing and there's no slowdown

The original Streets of Rage was a really big deal, and although I now think Streets of Rage 2 is definitely better, I wasn't as much into it as I was the first one and didn't properly appreciate it until I got the 3D Classics version.

The first game has brilliant music and might be my undoubted favourite if it had the big sprites and smooth graphics of the second.

@Antraxx777

Genius in mastering the hardware but not in term of composition because koshiro ripped almost everything... :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYUuCN3A0K0

great game, truly a magnificent game.

I have many a fond memory of the first game from when I was a kid, and Streets of Rage 2 is still one of my favorites in the genre. Seriously, I'm not much for beat 'em ups - I find them too repetitive for my tastes, "classic" games often feel clunky and dated, and they tend to be either too long or too short.

None of that really stuck out in SoR2, though. It hit the right balance in so many areas, and I had a blast with it, even in singleplayer (which I realize isn't the strongest part of the genre, but everyone I've tried to get to play these types of games are always turned off by the blatant repetition, and rightly so).

SoR3's always felt "off" to me, in terms of enemy design (as in their attack patterns) and controls. It would've been fine with some tweaks, but overall it just felt unresponsive and I found myself suffering a lot more cheap deaths than I did in the previous entries in the series.

Huge fan of Streets of Rage, but not a huge fan of "articles" that are basically "Hey NLifers, check out this intriguing topic! Now go watch a video by someone who isn't actually a contributor of our site, which is posted on his own channel!"

I've said it many, many times before since the change in editorial leadership here, but ... I Am Disappoint.

@Cobalt Only a few of those in the video sound remotely similar (the Public Enemy one was really close, and I would consider that ripped, but it's really just a beat anyway), but I'd say 90% of that video is stretching. Lots of artists in hip-hop, techno and even Country and rock reuse or modify and represent similar motifs, rhythms and basslines. Hell-- lots of artists don't even write their songs: the performer takes a prewriteen work and makes it into their own. I mean how many rocakabilly songs used the same 16-bar chord progressions (it's what deems those songs rock'n'roll and doo-wop in the first place). Artists and musicians borrow from what's been created before all the time, because what they're taking from has already been proven to work.

On top of this, Yuzo was tasked with recreating the American New York sound to go with the visuals of the game, where else was he going to get ideas and inspiration to do that then from learning that country's already produced, popular music?

He still added way more of his own flair to it, especially through melody and the awesome use of imagery. I freaking love how every SoR song has a police siren effect somewhere in it, not only playing into the fact that you're playing as ex cops, but you're doing so through an urban wasteland that is absolutely overrun by them (which plays directly back into the story). I especially love the implied doppler effect cutting off the sirens in the second stage's music, as if they're driving past the very alley you're fighting in. Just brilliant composition in my opinion.

On a side note, I love the feeling of progressive plot throughout Sor as each new level literally goes deeper into the seedy underbelly: Shopping district> Back Alleys> Druggie beach head (feeling of NJ)> Smuggler's ferry> Mafia fronted factory> Ambushed on an elevator> Skyrise to the source of all the evil corruption. It's the perfect beat 'em up that contains the whole package of plot, gameplay and soundtrack, whereas most in the genre only obtain 1 of those. One of my top five Genesis games for sure.

Streets of Rage is still one of my all-time favourite series to date. I play it regularly in the way that I'm sure many Mario fans still play his classics. I love all 3 games equally, and switch up depending on my mood. I really wish Sega had added 3 to its 3D Classics line on 3DS, but at least all 3 are on the Megadrive Classics disc for PS4/Xbox, including the first official Western release (to my knowledge) of the Japanese edition of SoR 3!!

In terms of music, my favourite soundtrack belongs to 1. 2 is pretty damn good, too. 3 less so, unfortunately, but there are still some amazing tracks (mainly composed by Motohiro Kawashima), such as Cycle II and The Poets I.

@CanisWolfred - Apparently the Western Streets of Rage 3 was made much harder than the Japanese Bare Knuckle III. I've not played either myself, but would still like to try the Japanese one.

The visual aesthetic in the original trilogy is just much better than in the new Streets of Rage 4 as far as I'm concerned, which I just don't like the look of--and I don't mean because it's pixel art vs not pixel art.

This is what I wanted in 2018 but just in HD (even if it were still pixel art but drawn at a much higher resolution*):

Imagine if the characters in the 2018 game were drawn to this level of pixel art quality:

Zoom that kind of stuff out to an HD resolution game, which would roughly make those characters end up looking around the size of the ones in a Streets of Rage game, and it would look utterly stunning if all the in-game characters for a new Streets of Rage game were drawn like that.

And that actually looks very close to how the original art looked stylistically too.

THAT is how a new Streets of Rage game should look in 2018 imo--not some kinda Flash-looking vector-ish type of art.

@MetalKingShield Wow, isn't that the opposite of how that story usually goes? It would certainly explain some of my problems, and if they changed any of the animations or sprites, that'd explain why the feel always seems off. Yeah, now I want to try Bare Knuckle 3 as well.

@impurekind Considering once you zoom it out that much, the problem is just in the shading/color-blending, you don't necessarily need pixel art to fix that. Yes, the new art looks a little flat - it wasn't a problem in Dragon's Trap because the original sprites were just that cartoony, but Streets of Rage was going for a more textured look. I certainly hope they work on that while the game is in development.

@Cobalt There’s a huge difference between “ripped off” and “inspired by.” Yuzo most definitely didn’t “rip off” anyone. Like Antrax777’s very well-detailed comment stated, he was tasked with capturing a particular vibe, and he absolutely nailed it. That YouTube video clearly shows this, to the point that it has “inspiration” in its title.

@joey302 Right on! I recently played through 1 and 2 with my son, and we had an absolute blast. He loved them. It was just like playing with my friends back in the day. Games have aged immaculately.

@StephenWolf yes sir! The true meaning of a timeless classic video game!! That’s why when people moan about he old classics coming to the Switch I don’t quite get it! I mean A great song from the 70s is a still a great song today right? Or a great Movie etc!

@StephenWolf

Do you have any knowledge in music ? I mean, I went to music school, I have 12 years of cello behind me and i write music too.

So, now tell me if for you that's not a rip off... because I can tell you that IT IS !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCeP5x0-bZ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wzQ4R-SRE

@Cobalt I can’t view that video in the US. Your comment was a bit patronizing, though...I am also a musician...and I write music...and I have a bit more than 12 years of experience. Agree to disagree?

@StephenWolf hope you can watch those ! ^^
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-TSNcoe8pA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJfSz06Qtco

@joey302 Right on! And adding that portability factor only sweetens the pot!