Streets of Rage series: Part 1

I’m going to review the Streets of Rage series. Three games have appeared in this series, so I’ll make 3 reviews. So naturally I’ll start with the first one. This game is very special to me, because I’ve played it a lot in my childhood. I always used to play it with friends. The other 2 games in the series I got with the Ultimate Sega Mega Drive Collection.

The game was released by Sega in 1991 on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Later on the game got released on the Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System as well.

Streets of Rage is a sidescroller beat-em-up and can be best compared to Double Dragon on the NES and Golden Axe on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. You’re fighting on the streets in an unknown city against various enemies, such as criminals, punks and ninjas. These enemies have their own skills. The normal criminal attacks you with his fists or a melee-weapon, whilst the punks will try to throw you and the ninjas will try to kick you.

There are 3 difficulty levels in this game: Easy, Normal and Hard. When you play on Normal or Hard, you’ll encounter more enemies and they’ll do more damage.

The game doesn’t really have a storyline. You’re fighting on various spots. Luckily the creators did put in an intro: The mean streets of the big city are about to get even meaner. A huge crime syndicate led by the mysterious Mr. X has moved into town and has quickly infiltrated all levels of the local government. With chaos controlling the streets, it seems like life will never return to normal. All hope seems lost until three police officers decide that they’ve had enough. Adam Hunter, Alex Stone and Blaze Fielding turn in their badges and hit the streets to dish out some vigilante justice on the hoodlums that are terrorising the populace.

The game exists of 8 rounds which have a boss at the end of them (or 2 bosses, if you’re playing with a friend), except for round 7, where you’re going up in a big elevator. The fun part of this is that you can throw your enemies off the elevator. This means imminent death for enemies, of course. The surroundings vary between the centre of the city and a bridge. You also fight on a ship and in a factory. There are some bosses that you’ll encounter multiple times in this game. The bosses are inhumanly big, as a matter of fact, they’re about 1 and a half times bigger than you are. In the last level, you have to defeat every boss again before you can take on Mr. X. At the end, you can choose whether you work along with Mr. X or fight him, the first option is of course the easiest.

During the game you’ll find various melee-weapons as well, you can find the weapons in barrels, telephone cabins, bonfires and so on. Your enemies have weapons as well, sometimes. Some examples of these weapons are knives, beer bottles, baseball bats and iron pipes. These weapons make you dish out more damage, of course. The players receive points when they defeat an enemy and when reaching a certain amount of points you’ll be granted an extra life.

There are 3 characters you can use, Alex, Adam and Blaze, they each have their skills. Adam is strong and very good at jumpkicks, but he’s slower than the other 2 characters. Alex is faster than Adam but is worse at jumpkicks. Blaze is good at jumpkicks and she’s fast, but she isn’t as strong as Alex and Adam. Another thing these characters have, besides their standard moves, are special powers. If you activate it, a cop car will appear and will shoot at your enemies with a rocket launcher. Every normal enemy will get killed by this, but a boss can take a few of those attacks. You’ll only get one per life, if you’ve used them and you die, you’ll receive a new one.

One thing I find odd in this game, is that the criminals have taken over the streets without using a single firearm. If this would’ve happened in reality, this event would quickly come to a screeching halt. But, on the other hand, this isn’t a game where you should overthink the story, and besides that it’s a great game.

The graphics are okay. The graphics are by any means better than those of Alex Kidd, so that’s something positive. The soundtrack is very cool as well, the songs really fit with the game. Especially the song that plays on the background in bossfights, is one that I really love.

You just have to get your hands on this game. You could download a Sega emulator and play this game on your pc. But the graphics will really suffer from this, so I really discourage it. Streets of Rage is called differently in Japan, it’s called Bare Knuckle there, so if you’re interested in buying/importing the Japanese game, you’ll have to look for that title.