Introduction to: Streets of Rage

Introduction

Is it me, or was 1991 a fertile year for gaming? Super Mario World, ActRaiser, Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy II (IV in Japan), F-Zero, Street Fighter II...there was a lot going on. Even though the NES was still selling like hotcakes, and the Game Boy was dominating the hand-held competition, the battle cries and war flags of the 16-bit systems were thrown up like gang signs, especially after the Sega Mega Drive - renamed the Genesis in America - gradually rose to prominence and pounded a decent dent into the NES's market share before the Super NES came in and put the video game market back on lock down for Nintendo for a few more years. Either represent, or go home.

Of course, I was only four years old at the time...but it's not too hard to see that with all the variety of interesting games and systems that were supported at the time, this was not an easy time to be a gamer. PC gaming was still "nerd central," everybody loved the NES, the Master System was on the way out, the Genesis/Mega Drive was gaining ground, Game Boy tore up its competition, and the Super Nintendo was about to reinforce Nintendo's superiority.

It wasn't until July 30, 1997 - my eleventh birthday - that I played this game for the first time during the sunset of the "Bit Wars." I had never played this genre at all, so to get a Genesis Model II system with the 6-Pak cartridge and find this game as the pack-in title was a treat.

Once I played this game and found out how to grab enemies and perform some extreme close-quarter combat, I began to love the game ever more, and along with Chrono Trigger became one of the games I grew up with.

Streets of Rage

During the early 1990s, the success of Capcom's Final Fight signaled the birth of the beat-'em-up that took place in the streets of the modern world rather than in medieval setting that emphasized combat with melee weapons and magic (which Sega had already covered with the Golden Axe series), letting loose many titles that were made to cash in on the action caused by this change of pace in this setting. During the beginning of the 1990s, Sega decided to throw their hat in the ring and create their own as well. But rather than rehash Final Fight, Sega took their time and both refined and improved upon what made Final Fight so great, and in the end created a genre landmark of their own that spawned two sequels and a place in video game history.

The premise to Bare Knuckle - renamed Streets of Rage for the Western market - was simple: the city has been corrupted by a crime syndicate, and three young cops quit the force to take matters into their own hands. The standard gang member stereotypes were there" the standard street punk, the dominatrix with the whip, the martial artist from Chinatown, the freak with the mohawk. The weapons, the combat, the thrill of beating up bad guys...they were all obviously in the mix. So what separated this game from the rest of the pack?

First off, the controls were improved upon what Final Fight allowed you to do. You could still punch and grab people, but you could also vault over them after grabbing them and hold them from behind, putting them in a German suplex and knocking them to the floor. If you were playing with a friend, one person could grab the other and either have their teammate kick enemies in the torso with both feet for major damage, or they could toss their teammate towards the enemy only for the throwee to somersault and hit them with a flying kick. And if things got too hectic, one character could use their Super attack (similar to Golden's Axe magic) to call a squad car to blow everyone away with a rocket launcer or a machine gun.

Second, the game was given a contemporary soundtrack consisting of club beats with a Freestyle/Eurobeat feel by Yuzo Koshiro, who had previously composed music for the Ys series before leaving Falcom and working on ActRaiser. Not only did the music give the game more of an inner-city feel, it was also published separately and was released as a soundtrack album back in Japan, where the game was known as Bare Knuckle. Koshiro ended up producing and composing the music for the rest of the series, and the soundtrack albums for the games are hard-to-find, fetching high prices on eBay.

Third, the controls were just right. They were easy to figure out, and with the right strategies and know-how, anyone could take down the crime syndicate. The responsiveness of the controls kept the game from being harder than it already was, and allowed for a slightly larger scope of abilities than in Final Fight, and that scope would keep growing as the series continued.

The Characters

Like Final Fight, Streets of Rage had three playable characters. The most notable change in this was that none of the characters were similar to Final Fight's Mike Haggar, so all three characters were easy to pick up and experiment with even though they were all still different from one another.

Adam Hunter

Age: 23

History: Ex-cop

Hobby: Bonsai

Ability: Boxing

Power: A

Speed: B

Jump: A

Adam Hunter is slower than the other two characters; however, his uppercut can knock people into the air, and his standing kick can knock enemies clear to the other side of the screen. His standing attacks have the most range out of all three characters.

Interestingly, this is his only playable appearance in the series, though he does factor into the sequels' storylines quite nicely.

Axel Stone

Age: 22

History: Ex-cop

Hobby: Video Games

Ability: Martial Arts

Power: A

Speed: A

Jump: B

Axel Stone is playable in all three games. He is the most balanced of the three, though his jump (and jump attack range) leave something to be desired. Still he's faster than Adam and is as powerful as him, so he's still worth a try.

His standing attack combo is pretty fast, and even though his stats wouldn't improve much through the series (making him the jack-of-all-trades character of the series), his move list definitely would.

Blaze Fielding

Age: 21

History: Ex-cop

Hobby: Lambada

Ability: Judo

Power: B

Speed: A

Jump: A

Like Axel, Blaze Fielding is also playable in all three games. Her weaker strength keeps her from dealing more damage to bosses than the guys, but her jump attack has the longest range and is enough to make up for it sometimes. Her standing combo is pretty slow after the two punches, though. Still, don't let all that fool you. She's still a decent character to start out with...assuming you know how to juke and jive so that you can grab enemies on the sly.

If you stare at her picture long enough at the character select screen, she winks at you. Just pointing that out.

Legacy

Streets of Rage was released to great success, and paved the way for two sequels, the first of which was also distributed and released in arcades like its predecessor. The soundtracks of each game in the trilogy further cemented the success and growing reputation of composer Yuzo Koshiro, who had worked on the soundtracks for the Ys series and Actraiser before switching gears, with the Streets of Rage series, as the three soundtracks were also released as separate albums and garnered cult status throughout the years, leading to high prices whenever copies are sold on eBay, as genuine copies of the soundtrack albums are hard to find.