 SEGA DRUNK Earlier this week I posted a list video ranking what I thought were the best Super Nintendo beat-em-ups, which of course prompts a response from many of, MMMMMM, MY STREETS OF RAGE! Well, here you go. Here's a big video all about the three streets of rage games for the Sega Genesis, and no, I'm not going to act like anybody out there actually needs my advice as to whether or not these games hold up today, because they obviously do. What I like to do with games like this, though, is talk about why these games are as good as they are, and why they've held up over time. All three of these games were first-party titles, developed and published by Sega themselves, with the first Streets of Rage game being released in North America in September of 1991, and I think it goes to show how confident Sega was in this one, because that's around the same time the Super Nintendo was released. Now, this game got all sorts of ports to Game Gear and the Master System, but I'm concentrating on the Sega Genesis or Mega Drive version for each of these games. There's three playable characters, Adam, Axel, and Blaze, each with varying skill sets and move sets. Adam is a boxer and the strongest of the three, but also the slowest. Blaze is the fastest, but the weakest, and Axel is the most balanced character. Right away in the first stage, this game is so distinct looking with the neon lights, the music, it really builds a true sense of atmosphere, which is rare in a beat-em-up, at least in my experience. There's eight levels, and I really like how this game progresses through its world. You're on a beach, you're on a ship, there's this elevator stage. All of these games have such a strong sense of place, thanks to the art direction, and it warrants mentioning that the director of all three games is Noriyoshi Oba, who also directed the superb Revenge of Shinobi. When it comes to the gameplay of the first game, there's going to be inevitable comparisons to Final Fight, and yeah, it plays similarly to a certain extent, but Streets of Rage has more going on. For one thing, there's up to five enemies that appear on screen at once, and that makes a big difference. There's also a clear screen attack, where you call in the help of a policeman who fires a friggin' rocket that destroys everyone, except you, of course. You can also leap over a grappled enemy by pressing jump. If that's handy, or if you're held from behind, you can still kick in front of you, or throw the guy that's got you. My favorite thing is if an enemy throws you, you can hold up and the jump button at the same time to land on your feet. I love that. One really interesting twist comes at the end of the game that I have to point out, so, uh, spoiler alert on a 27-year-old game? When you get to the final boss, Mr. X, an evil crime lord, he asks if you'd like to become his right-hand man, or woman. If you say yes, you're sent back to level six, and when you get to Mr. X again, you become the new crime lord. It's pretty cool. If you just say no, you fight him as you normally would. What's really awesome, though, is that if you're playing this with two players, you each get asked that same question. And if you pick different answers, you eventually have to fight each other. That is awesome. The flaws that stand out about this one are that, yes, this game does drag a bit, especially when you come to the last stage, which is ridiculously hard. There's a boss gauntlet, and you don't get your clear screen attack. What? The cop can drive from nowhere on a beach or on a boat, but not in a high-rise? Come on. While at times it may feel like the levels stretch on forever, the original Streets of Rage is still a fun time, and it's since been released on like two dozen compilations, so this game is not hard to find. But if you'd rather save your time for the sequel, Streets of Rage 2, then I don't blame you. Obviously, this game has received a ton of hype over the years, so why is that? Well, for one thing, it builds on the solid foundation the first game laid down and improved on every facet, the visuals, the soundtrack, the moveset, the enemy AI, the game's structure. Just about any nitpicky flaw you could have found with the first game, it's been addressed in the sequel. One major factor Streets of Rage 2 improved is the atmosphere, and for a beat-em-up that's pretty unusual, we're used to seeing stuff like Sonic Blastman or Captain Commando, which is just sort of a hodgepodge of weirdness. For games like Batman Returns, which do a nice job representing their source material, but Streets of Rage 2 creates a new world all of its own. It compares more to something like Super Castlevania IV or even Super Metroid in that sense. A big reason for that is the music. This is beyond just another video game soundtrack. Each track is a legit good song made with great production value that got the most out of the Genesis sound hardware. The sound design here is also great. It feels really satisfying to beat the crap out of these guys. Another thing that makes Streets of Rage 2 better than its peers is something I talk about a lot on this channel, Balance. And in this case, it's not just the balance of difficulty between your character's capabilities and the enemy and boss AI, which this game does well, and it's not just the balance of speed between everyone on screen, which is also present here, but also the balance of accessibility. And by that I mean, this is still such a great pick-up-and-play game while having a layer of complexity behind it that you discover the more you play. You can land combos in this game. For example, you can stun enemies with a weaker hit and then go to town on them with a series of stronger moves, and everything is pretty easy to execute too because the controls are so satisfyingly smooth. Again, there's eight levels, and each of the now four playable characters all play differently. Adam has been kidnapped, so he's out of there. But Axel and Blaze are back, and Blaze has a lot more balanced while Axel's just kind of the same, but with more functionality. After that, we have the big, slow, strong guy, Max, and the ultra-quick weak guy, Skate. Each character has their own special moves, too, so certain characters' movesets lend themselves better to different parts of the game and different boss fights, too. For example, you might want to use Skate's dash for certain areas, since he's the only character that can do that. Another change from the first game is that the omnipresent police car clear screen attack is gone. Instead, the clear screen attacks are structured like Final Fight, where you lose a bit of health every time you use them. But yeah, Streets of Rage 2 holds up as one of, if not the best beat-em-up, of the 16-bit era because of two things, atmosphere and balance. The larger sprites, the details and the visuals, and of course, the kick-ass soundtrack provide the atmosphere, setting the stage for all sorts of enemy types to come at you more than twice what the original game offered, and for you to kick some ass using all sorts of different maneuvers that are easy to execute with the game remaining challenging, but not a slog to get through. If there's any nit-picky flaws with this one, it's that it doesn't have the multiple endings like the first game did, but that's okay. Streets of Rage 2 still features a ton of replay value, just from the different characters alone. It's really easy to see why this one lives up to the hype, even today. So, how are you gonna follow that? Well, something has to come next, so we have Streets of Rage 3, and this one concentrates a bit more on story, featuring lots of dialogue between stages. I appreciate the attempt to add to the atmosphere here, but let's face it, nobody plays beat-em-ups for the story. All you really need to know for Streets of Rage is vigilante cops go after drug lord who won't die. As far as the gameplay goes, I mean, they'd be crazy to change up much from Streets of Rage 2, and to the developer's credit, it's still a solidly made game, still better than the first game. Axl, Blaze, and Skate are back, this time joined by Dr. Xan, a former cohort of Mr. X, and there's some tweaks here and there, like the small blue meter to the right of your health bar, it lets you do special moves without sacrificing any life, which is nice, and it recharges every few seconds. There's also a roll maneuver you can do by double-tapping up or down, and now every character can run by double-tapping forward or backward, not just Skate. This helps the game move along faster, but unfortunately, it also makes Skate a little expendable as a character, but at least each character still has a unique move set, including unique moves with weapons, which is pretty sweet. In addition to all that, you also get what are called Blitz moves. If you get to a certain score in one single life, you earn a star beneath your health meter, and it increases your dash attack. Hey, it kind of reminds me of the stars in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. Despite all the cool moves you can do here, there's some downers here as well, like the weapons now having their own health meter, which is a bummer. I guess they didn't want them to be too overpowered? Also, since the game has sped up so much, it feels like they lost a little bit of the balance here between your character and the enemies, and as a result, that's thrown off the difficulty a bit, because this game is way tougher than the first two games. Whether that's better or worse is up to you to decide, but I think it's for the worse. Also, maybe this is just a personal thing, but the atmosphere in Streets of Rage 3 just seems off. The colors in the backgrounds don't seem right, the soundtrack isn't as catchy, Blaze is wearing gray instead of red. For whatever reason, it just doesn't feel like a Streets of Rage game. Until you play the Japanese version, Bear Knuckle 3, it turns out the North American version was heavily censored, and the story was changed up too. Plus, this game is much easier, so you can experience the whole game instead of getting frustrated and saying screw it. I'm not sure why they made those changes when the game was localized, but whatever. A few more things I should mention. One is that once you get to stage six, the game opens up a bit to a few multiple paths, but this turns out to be more annoying than anything else in my opinion, since there's no way to tell which areas you've already been in. Another thing to mention is that the multiple endings are back. So, spoiler alert, when you're about to fight Mr. X for the first time, he's actually a Terminator? If you beat him here on easy, this is the end of the game, but on normal and hard, you keep going to a stage where you've only got 60 seconds to rescue the Chief of Police before the room fills with poison gas. If you save him, you go on to the good ending path, but even then, you have to beat Mr. X in less than three minutes. Fail to do that, and you still get a bad ending. Sheesh, this game is relentless. But yeah, if the Chief of Police dies, you go on another path to City Hall, where level one boss, Shiva, acts as the final boss. I should also mention there's a few unlockable characters in this one. For instance, at the end of stage two, if you can beat the clown without beating the box in kangaroo, you can actually play as the kangaroo. Okay, he kinda sucks, but hey, it's a neat feature. You can also unlock Shiva if you hold B after beating him in the first level. Anyway, all this is to say that Streets of Rage 3 isn't as good as the second game, but I mean, what is? And it's still a very good game with a ton of features. But I think it's best experience playing the Japanese version, Bear Knuckle 3, if only because it tones down the difficulty a bit. That was it for Streets of Rage on Sega Genesis, but Sega attempted to continue the series on Sega Saturn with a 3D game that was canceled at the last minute and instead turned into Fighting Force for PlayStation and N64. They also attempted a Streets of Rage 4 on Dreamcast, but that too was canceled. There were a couple other false starts for PS3 and 360 that never saw the light of day, but there is a Streets of Rage remake, a fan-made project that's available for PC that's floating around out there somewhere. It's kind of a mesh of all three games with some original content thrown in there as well, and as far as fan-made games go, it's pretty good. So if you need another Streets of Rage fix, I just thought I'd throw that out there. All right, that's all for now. I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.