Streets of Rage

"If I kill a man with a beer bottle, I expect to be at least entertained."

It seems really unfair to compare a game to its sequel. Streets of Rage 2 is a game preceded by its reputation: most adventurous gamers seeking it out these days in a second-hand game store (or those that download the Rom, more likely) are embarking on their journeys due to the glowing praise showered on it, and even I tend to think that this praise is deserved. Anyone that goes back to Streets of Rage after playing its sequel is practically asking to view Streets of Rage as a total de-evolution of its magnificent offspring. Again, it seems somewhat unfair to criticize a game for not being as good as the game after it; in a perfect world, sequels should be better than the first.

Comparisons aside, the first Streets of Rage wasn’t all that great.

There’s this city somewhere, and it used to be a nice and happy city—this was until Mr. X moved in with his giant criminal syndicate, who bribed the cops and government in order to bypass the whole “low profile” aspect of organized crime. If the local chapter of the mafia becomes this obtrusive to everyone’s way of life, there’s only one solution: three people need to walk down the bad parts of town and beat up people until they move into the large “bad guy” high-rise and sock the hell out of the dude sitting on the only chair in the entire city. That’s POWER. But who are the three people in this adventure? Adam is the big black badass; Axel is his fair-skinned compadre, and with those two comes Blaze, the seductive girlie girl that’s really fast but isn’t as strong.

All three have essentially the same generic skills: a self-serving punch combo, a Final Fight style grab / hit / toss close attack, a jump kick, a rear-attack, and a special move that summons a car to drive onto the screen and shoot a missile straight into whatever street fight you’re locked in. The moves are very basic when you consider that there are only three real offensive options, but it’s pretty neat to see Adam uppercut some goon and roundhouse his sorry ass halfway across the screen while he’s in midair, regardless of the simplicity in performing it. There are two real differences from the sequel, and not good ones: there are no character-specific special moves that can be frequently used, and there are certainly less moves overall with the omission of a weak jump attack and a double-tap attack. It causes a lack of personality between the three fighters, to say the least.

Fortunately, your limited attacks will usually allow you to constantly overcome your dimwitted opponents who will walk onto the screen, soak up your punches, and die. Even the harder difficulty levels leave quite a bit to be desired, where your enemies are still relatively few in number and mostly harmless. There are a few weapons to break up the monotony, but there doesn’t seem to be much more excitement in stabbing someone with a beer bottle or broadsiding them in the ribs with a baseball bat; the total lack of panache here left my sadistic tendencies a little deflated.

The graphics are also somewhat of a letdown, as while the backgrounds are reasonably interesting, the characters are very small: this creates a feeling of desolation as three characters can be spread out over a parking lot-sized distance, apparently hesitant to hit each other. The ghost town environments aren’t helped by the fact that most levels aren’t given a change of scenery: level 1 and 2 are city streets that look the same at the end as they did at the beginning, and level 5 is a decidedly boring boat. The characters themselves are much more primitive than they were in the sequel (imagine that) and end up looking like crude caricatures of the ones we know and love.

Though the sound leaves a lot to desire, what with the laryngitis-esque Genesis vocals, the music does not. Yuzo Koshiro was responsible for SOR2’s techno/hiphop soundtrack, and does a similarly good job here. Most tunes are ones you’ll recognize from the second, and while good, they feel very stripped-down when placed next to their clear evolutions. There are a few exceptions—level 7’s music is about as good as anything from the games after, an intense electronic number that fits the action like a glove.

Streets of Rage benefits the most from its subtle touches, where the background in the elevator level gives a sense of height by changing the perspective of the buildings behind you, or when you can hurl someone into a deep chasm, or where the wind in the third level blows around a few stray soda cans on the beach. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. I shudder to use the word, but most of the time it’s…

Boring.

Compared to the second game, SOR doesn’t have even a comparable amount of intensity or diversity. Enemies are fewer and stupider, and you can do less as a character in fewer environments. For god’s sakes, they turned a main character into a level boss (the Blaze twins) at the end of a level populated with the same enemies from the last levels that looks the same from start to finish, and they’re used twice in the game. If that doesn’t make you groan, I don’t know what will. Streets of Rage doesn’t hold up to its bigger brother (and especially not Final Fight, in which the “borrowed” ideas are glaring and executed not nearly as well).

I’ll wager that those that haven’t played this game yet would only give it a chance to see the birth of the Streets of Rage franchise as a whole—SOR2 had to come from somewhere. Because of this, it seems like the first Streets of Rage is less game than it is a curiosity. If you were there to pick it up on the first day it came out on the Genesis, your opinion might strongly differ from mine as you consider its scope and impact. For anyone like me, though, I’d say with a lot of certainty that Streets of Rage will seem like “SOR2 lite,” and while it has its moments, ultimately it’s been eclipsed.

5 / 10
Old and boring, much like Grandpa.

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*And don’t give me that “SoR2 looks cartoony” ****.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/29/03, Updated 01/29/03