Streets of Rage

"Bare Knuckle."

Crime. Something so pivotal and controversial that it hurts you inside. And if you don’t put a stop to this flurry of smuggling and bustling—then who would. That’s what Sega was focusing with in their one-of-a-kind game Streets of Rage. Fight at night in the streets—claim victory by the morning.

If you don’t know yet, Streets of Rage is a beat-‘em-up. Released in 1991, this game had some serious competition against Final Fight—a brawler with intuitive gameplay and story that was a smash hit in arcades, but a letdown in the Super Nintendo console. The SNES Final Fight game had so many faults and that’s pretty much a reason for Sega to take advantage of that, and to use a much, much more successful formula.

In Streets of Rage you play as one of three characters—the African American Adam, the poster boy Axel, and the femme fatale that is Blaze. All three are police officers willing to stop chaos on a city that is filled to the edge with crime. But this mission of theirs won’t be as easy as it sounds like—and these characters knew that. Thugs in motorcycles wielding chains try to smash you with full force, while Freddy Kruger-looking dudes try to take you with fast blades screwed deep inside their hands.

Is it a Final Fight killer? No, but it is pretty damn close.

In this game you basically pick one of the three characters mentioned above and you attempt to take out all the enemies—left and right—in a specific level. There are well over ten levels in this game and let’s just say that each level is packed with enemies. Punks in tight uniforms will attack you in one side, while four dojo artists streamline you with kicks and punches. And once you beat these reckless, but gawky thugs you will fight the boss of the level. Bosses are pretty weird, though. One boss is basically a huge pirate who wields a sword, while other bosses include two gymnastic ass-kicking girls and even a fat guy who takes fire out of his mouth (too many burritos with hot sauce for this guy).

Taking out all of these enemies, though, can be either an easy thing or a rather hard thing. You see it all depends on which character you pick. If you pick the sexy Blaze, you will be fast but not that strong. If you pick the powerful Adam you will be strong, but not that fast. And if you pick Axel your attacks will be powerful, as will your speed, but your jumps will be horrible. See, each character is different in some way, and no I’m not referring to the color of their skin. Picking the correct character that will suit you best will probably the biggest challenge you will have to deal in within this game.

The attacks that your characters have in their disposal, while not plentiful, are easily executed. Each one of the three characters has the same moves. The ‘A’ button on the Genesis controller makes you do your special attack, the ‘B’ button makes you punch (and even kick) out your enemies, and finally the ‘C’ button on the controller makes you jump (and when combined with the ‘B’ button, you will have yourself a mighty fine super kick). If, for some reason, these controls do not appeal to you though, then don’t worry because this is nothing the Options menu can’t fix up.

In the Options Menu you have the ability to change controls in whatever way you like, and you have some more user settings that should in some way make you happy. You have the ability to take a sound test; here you listen to everything this game has as audio appeal—80’s like computer generated tunes, small bits of voice acting, and the ever appalling game over screen music. You even have the ability to change the difficulty of this game to distinguish the hard core from the rookies (the four settings this game offers up are “Easy, Normal, Hard, and Hardest”).

The special attack that I mentioned throughout that mess is nothing to get excited over, though. You see the special attacks in this game are not your regular Final Fight or Double Dragon maneuvers. Unlike in those games where 200 lb men hit enemies by spinning around hitting them with their knuckles, or small Bruce Lee stereotypes powering up their energy to do flying “Dragon” kicks, in Streets of Rage, though, a squad car will merely come out and a cop holding a heavy rocket launcher on both of his hands will unleash his fury upon your own enemies. It’s nothing flashy—just small fires that enemies can’t seem to stop stepping on. You also, unlike those games, won’t get damaged when doing these maneuvers so it is always a good thing to try these things out—but remember you can only use about one per level.

Levels take place in many different areas. One level even takes place in a beach-like resort that receives little rainfall and has garbage flowing all around the ocean. Another even has the beat-‘em-up favorite, the elevator area. Here you have one weapon and one health item and you must only use them in an emergency when fighting… well over five to six punks at a time. To also put a little more Final Fight innuendo in this game, Sega put environmental placements in all of these levels. These placements are items hidden in such things as telephone booths, poles, tires, and dining tables. The items you will receive by busting these things up vary, though. One time you will probably receive a chicken, which boosts up your health, or another time you will find a weapon, nun-chucks, baseball bats, knives, bottles, et cetera, to maybe even moneybags.

Where Streets of Rage exceeds Final Fight is in how many enemies this game can hold. Unlike Final Fight for the Super Nintendo where you and three enemies combat against each other, in Streets of Rage, however, you will combat against five enemies at a time. The drawback, though, is that all of the characters are pretty tiny (about the same as the character sprites in the SNES hit, Super Double Dragon). Being “tiny” however will probably be the last thing in your mind because when you are going up against five enemies at a time—you see, you need to concentrate on much more important things.

Yet another area where Streets of Rage beats out the console version of Final Fight is with its two-player play. Many felt that this was the biggest fault in Final Fight, so as you can probably see by now, Streets of Rage is a step in the right direction. With two-player play you will be allowed to play the game alongside a friend. This helps make the impossible parts... possible.

Graphics are so-so. As said, your character sprites are kind of small so this does take out some of the graphical appeal out of this game, but environments help to cease this case of worrying. The environments are very colorful and exuberant; not as good as in Streets of Rage 2, but close. There is no slowdown whatsoever when more then three enemies come into play and menus are clean and responsive; not like the chunky one featured in Final Fight and its various sequels.

The audio is also fair. It’s not really as enticing as most games in the Genesis, nor any other systems for that matter, but it’s pretty strong and helps set the mood to this kind of game. Like when you hear the original level tune stopping and then changing to the much more immune boss theme, then you will definitely know you are going to go up against a boss.

Finally, Streets of Rage comes out on top as a boisterous and enthusiastic type of game that sadly consternates everyone with its own barring faults. This game shouldn’t even be called revolutionary; its much improved sequels, however, should be called this as they pushed the Genesis system to its craziest limits by raising the bar as to how people enjoy these kind of games and also on how they wanted them to look—because Streets of Rage isn’t exactly what one will call a pretty game. If you could get over some of this game’s faults, though, as well as some of its technical and graphical problems, then you got a game that is satisfying and enjoying from beginning to end.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/09/02, Updated 09/03/02