Yesterday, Sega's Streets of Rage series turned 30 – and composer Yuzo Koshiro decided to share a piece of trivia that has blown the collective minds of many fans.
Koshiro explains that in Streets of Rage 2, Axel Stone's most famous special move – performed by tapping in the same direction twice and pressing attack – is actually called 'Ground Upper' and not 'Grand Upper'.
It makes perfect sense, really – his fist starts on the ground and rises upwards before connecting with enemies. However, the speech sample does sound very much like 'Grand Upper', and Koshiro admits he's never been too concerned about correcting people – his message is, he says, to be taken as a fun piece of trivia rather than a ticking-off.
While we're on the topic of Streets of Rage, make sure you check out our series retrospective, which was republished yesterday to mark the franchise's 30th birthday. Also, be sure to sample the sublime Streets of Rage 4 if you haven't already, as well as the recently released Mr. X Nightmare DLC.
Comments (37)
I always heard "SANTA CLAUSE!" or "BARE KNUCKLE!".
I'm more curious about what Blaze yells out. "Shon-don-don" ?
"Sh*ft, rock, yeah!"
...Wait, wrong game.
What's wrong with putting "we have been wrong with pronouncing the name of this move" in the title? 🤔
I thought it was “Get the car”
Well there you go!
The guy is an absolute legend. How many game soundtrack producers could turn the music from their early 90s games into basically a big rave in Paris in 2018?
https://youtu.be/mW03QgubN0M
As a kid I always assumed he just said "Bare Knuckle"
As a kid my friends and I thought he was yelling ‘grab the car’! We thought it must be a hang over from his days as a cop, which probably made sense to a 10 year old at the time…
I wish he'd been the one directing Streets of Rage 4 and had stuck with the same gorgeous pixle art as seen in Streets of Rage 2 but just with everything in 1080p now, which would technically mean it was in high-res but not in the weird half-Flash, half-French comic art and somewhat imprecise visual style it has now. I'm talking about in-game pixel art at this level of quality:
https://wallpapercave.com/wp/wp1933949.png
https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/131/578/547/pixel-art-town-city-waneella-hd-wallpaper-preview.jpg
https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/751/638/464/video-games-pixels-pixel-art-wallpaper-preview.jpg
https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/219/887/813/pixel-art-andlt-aestheticandgt-town-city-waneella-hd-wallpaper-preview.jpg
https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/900/381/100/digital-art-pixel-art-pixelated-pixels-wallpaper-preview.jpg
And with sprite art at a quality to match it.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/d7/f9/e1d7f9b06c12cddca523c2fe8950e936.gif
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ec/2e/2f/ec2e2fd55d7c1258e7288f79fe2c8275.gif
https://www.fightersgeneration.com/news2020/char2/mai-kof94-rebout-stance.gif
https://irwt.iammanyninjas.com/images/xii/xii-joe-03.gif
All of Streets of Rage 4 should have been done like this imo, which is both in line with the original game art but also of a high enough fidelity to still look stunning today.
That was a great little video thanks for sharing Nintendo Life
@Gerald "Get to the Choppah!"
@impurekind Koshiro did pitch Streets of Rage 4 to Sega multiple times. Every time they turned him down. Someone at Sega must have liked the art style, seeing how it worked for Monster Boy and was why the developers were able to get their foot in the door in the first place to pitch to Sega.
@LegatoSkyheart @Mach_Rider "Bare Knuckle" is what he says in "Streets of Rage 3." Come to think of it, they may have actually changed it due to everyone misunderstanding him in the 2nd game.
@impurekind Maybe, but the art style they did choose also looks great in its own way.
@Joriss "Hishousouzan", and I believe it's pronounced something like "Hi-shous-ouzan". In case you were curious, her offensive Special is called Kikou Shou, but this is a lot easier to hear.
@Mach_Rider If you played Streets of Rage 3 growing up, then you did hear Bare Knuckle, as Axel says that instead of Grand... well, I guess now Ground Upper in the English version. In SOR2 though, it was still the same sound clip between all regions.
I sold my limited run copy when I heard we’ll be getting a complete version in September. Cannot wait to try out the new dlc. This is such a good game and was exactly what I wanted for streets of rage.
I sure did think it was 'Grand Upper', which sounds much more powerful than 'Ground Upper'...that good old Genesis synthesizer at work I suppose.
But as mentioned by someone else, I'm much more interested in what Blaze says during her moves...
This game is my favourite side belt scrolling fighter game
@Gerald - Totally. I always thought it sounded more like GET THE CAR!
Its obviously 'Grand Papa' in honor of the man who trained Axl. Obviously.
@Scollurio That’s Predator
I figured that's what he was saying. In any case, Axel speaks with way more clarity then when Ryu says, "Tatsumaki Senpu Kyaku!"
To me it sounds more like, "Hatspakyaspuulkick!"
@impurekind Sprites will always look better than that weird looking flash style.
SPRITE NINJA APPROVED
Haha I always just thought he said 'budda buppa!' 😅
Well I’ll be darned. Always thought it was Grand Upper.
I always thought it was "Presto Paw!" but that never made any sense. For Blaze's fireball my friend always joked that she was saying "Nytol!".
Either way, today I learned a new thing. That's cool.
@RadioShadow That wouldn't have been clickbaity enough, obviously.
@RadioShadow We try to keep headline lengths as compact as possible as they get pushed out to platforms like Twitter, where there's a word count.
@Knuckles Do you think we'll get more DLC for this game?
The game's been relatively successful, though Dotemu are currently working on other games at the moment and I hope this isn't the only DLC we'll be getting.
@russell-marlow I do not think we are getting more DLC, but probably a balance patch or two down the line. One the the main people responsible for SOR4 said on Twitter it was time for Lizardcube to brave new horizons, https://mobile.twitter.com/BenFiquet/status/1417518653189365762 , and as much as I would love more content, there is a great Streets of Rage game here.
Personally, I think we will see Streets of Rage 5 in the next 5-10 years. The story reason behind the newly added Survival Mode is that it takes place after SOR4's main story, and the characters want to be prepared for anything that could come their way next. I know that's grasping at straws, but I'd be disappointed if we never got to see the results of their training.
"GRAB THE PAW! GRAB THE PAW!"
@impurekind Unless you prefer playing the games on a CRT TV or handheld those pixel art styles and backgrounds would look pixelated and out of place on an HD monitor. The reason why pixelated games like Streets of Rage 2 look like that in the 16-Bit era was cause that's how far a limitation the game could go for, the pixelated style mesh well with the CRT scanlines at the time thus creating an allusion of 2D visual spectacle to the eyes.
On an HDTV that just does not work, the CRT scanlines are not there anymore and without those it show the images in a rough pixelated mess. This is why some pixelated games had filter options so to smooth out the rough pixel quality so that it doesn't become distracting to the eyes. Streets of Rage 4 doesn't use the old pixelated art style because it was made at an era where those kind of limitation does not exist anymore, of course they could always give you the option but considering Sega wants to evolve the series, going back to the pixel style is out of the question.
When I was a kid it sounded like "grasanta!" Which didn't seem too out of place since it was a world where people said things like "hadouken" and "tatsumaki senpukyaku." So I just assumed "grasanta" was a word in a language I didn't speak. ^_^
It wasn't until maybe 5 or so years ago that I learned it was "grand upper" and now I learn even that wasn't fully accurate. Learning is fun!
@Specter_of-the_OLED It's funny how so completely and utterly wrong you are on this. But, I guess it's going to take someone showing you a stunning pixel game drawn in the same basic art style as those classic games, particularly some of the best looking pixel arcade games of the time, but just in HD for you to understand. . . .
@BulbasaurusRex I hate it.
@Specter_of-the_OLED Old pixel art games look pixelated on an HD TV or monitor simply because they were made with a 640x480 pixel resolution. if you actually use all the pixels in HD pixel art, then it obviously wouldn't look pixelated on a TV of the same resolution.
However, if you blow up any kind of HD image (save for vector graphics) onto a theater-sized projection, then even it will look pixelated if you get a close enough look.
“Vatapá”
(Brazilian style)
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