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Streets of Rage (known in Japan as Bare Knuckle) was a popular side-scrolling beat'em up video game series made by SEGA, composed by three games, spawning from 1991 to 1994. Altough it was one of the most popular series for the Mega Drive/Genesis, it was neither updated to the Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast or any other console SEGA worked after quitting making home hadware in 2001. SEGA released Die Hard Arcade for the Saturn, was reportedly interested on Eidos' Fighting Force and SEGA Japan even produced a demo of a side-scrolling beat'em up that was rejected by SEGA of America.
Characters
- Playable character from 1 to 3, Axel is the front man of the series. Turns slowly from an all-around to a bruiser in the end of the series
- Playable character in 1, kidnapped in 2, appears in the end of 3 to rescue the team from the exploding island.
- Like Axel, is a playable character on all games. While not as powerful as Axel, Blaze is much faster either attacking and moving.
- Only playable in 2, Max is by far the slowest character in the series, but one of the hardest hitting.
- Playable character in 2 and 3, the kid brother of Adam. Known as "Sammy" in Bare Knuckle and "Skate" in the western versions. Fast, but now very powerful.
- The one who told Blaze about the robot conspiracy in 3, Zen, himself a robot, turns against his former allies.
- The Syndicate head, Mr. X survived two encounters with the SoR team, but in three is nothing more than a brain. Armed with a Tommy gun, he is the final boss in the three games.
Streets of Rage
Released in 1991 when SEGA's 16 bit console needed a boost of sales against the sNES, who had most of Capcom's arcade ports such as Final Fight.
The story was taken from typical 80's street cop movies: three young police officers (Axel, Blaze and Adam) decide to stop rampant crime on a nameless by themselves, walking the streets and buildings controlled by an evil syndicate until they face the mastermind himself (Mr. X). Gameplay was simple (A for call a "clear screen" bombing, B for attack and C for jumping), but effective enough to keep movement smooth. Each character has a stronger point: Axel and Adam are both hitters (with almost no differences) and Blaze is the fastest of them.
A port for Sega's handheld, the Game Gear appeared on 1992, and on the Master System in 1993.
Streets of Rage II
A year after, SEGA refined the successful original title. Better music (Still by Yuzo Koshiro, inspired by early 90's club music), more defined graphics and moves plus two new characters. The "rocket" screen-clearing attack was replaced by a special attack that could be used several times in a level and to release from enemy holds, but wasted player's energy, and now all enemy characters also had their own power bars. A 2-player versus arena mode was also added, and altough it did not provide match for other dedicated versus fighting games for the same platform such as Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter it was considered a nice addition. Overall, SoR 2 is regarded the best game on the series, and one of the best side-scrolling beat'em ups of the 16-bit era.
In the history, Adam is kidnapped by Mr.X one year after the trio were believed to have destroyed the syndicate. Then, with help from Max, a wrestler, and Adam's kid brother Skate they go on defeating Mr.X on his island hideout.
Streets of Rage III
1994 was the year the series saw it's end. Streets of Rage 3, packed in a 24 meg cartridge, was an enhanced version of the previous title that dispite several enhancements such as different endings for each difficulty level, better scenarios (with multiple choices and "death falls"), faster gameplay (now the player controlled characters can dash and make dodge moves), usable objects can only be used for a few times before being unusable (in the previous titles an object would only disappear when it was dropped for the third time), some bosses could be used after being defeated and a few cutscenes were added to depth the story. Max gave place to Zen, a robotic entity. However, with all the changes, the game got somewhere lost. By some reason, the eastern version had each character's looks changed: Axel had a yellow shirt on black trousers (like Adam on the original title) and Blaze a silver outfit, sound and music are inferior to those in the previous title and since the opponent characters were much stronger and more abundant, the game was too difficult for most gamers.
In the game, Axel knows by Blaze that the Syndicate is trying to take control of the City by replacing top officials by robotic lookalikes.
External links
Streets of Rage Online (http://www.classicgaming.com/soronline/)
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