Streets of Rage 4 (Multi)
By: Sega
THERE was a time when 2D urban fisticuffs ruled gaming and face-punching was a sure-fire way to suck coin from the stone-washed pockets of 90s teenage wastrels.
Powerhouses like Final Fight and Double Dragon may have extolled the simple joys of smacking goons around with some guttering in filthy arcades, but on home consoles the only game in town was Streets of Rage.
Known as Bare Knuckle in its native Japan, the seminal slaparound last troubled joypads back in 1994. But after the rose-tinted success of Sonic Mania, Sega has turned to a genre thought dead and buried for their latest nostalgia trip – picking up the thread of Streets of Rage 3 some 26 years later.
With classic characters returning alongside new fighters – each with their own distinct style – it’s time to clean up the mean streets once again, offering up your knuckles to anything that stops your progress from left to right.
Though its 90s authenticity does mean a glacial pace, dearth of variety and lack of checkpoints that may frustrate millenials, there’s a lot to be said about the simple joys of cracking someone upside their head with a lead pipe.
A gently updated fighting model fleshes out the combo system with special moves, but this is Streets of Rage as you remember, with a wonderfully simple control system and Easter eggs aplenty. The three core returning characters – Blaze, Axel, and Adam – join Cherry and Floyd, who offer more extreme options for speed versus power and, like a buff hobo, you'll still eat turkeys from bins to regain health.
A wonderfully simple control scheme means anybody can pick it up, but it'll take ages – and whole lotta poultry – to perfect your fighting style. Tech-wise, it isn’t a case of Rage before beauty, and with insanely detailed backgrounds and characters animated with heaps of personality, Streets of Rage 4 swaps the pixelated pugilism of yore for a hand-drawn comic-book style that manages to remain faithful to the Mega Drive masterpieces.
And for a series that pushed the possibilities of 16-bit soundtracks, your ears will rejoice at a raft of new tracks from original composer Yuzo Koshiro. References to the cheese of late 80s action abound in a quality street of fisticuffs that’ll remind veterans why they fell in love with the Mega Drive in the first place and whet the appetite for further remakes of Sega’s venerable vault. Here’s hoping Golden Axe, Gunstar Heroes and Revenge of Shinobi get similar love...
