I was born in 1993 and my first console experience was getting a PlayStation One for Christmas when I was about four or five. With that said, I have had very little experience with classic Sega franchises. I have never played any Sonic games, I have no idea what Phantasy Star is about, and Echo the Dolphin just sounds like a weird fish game to me. However, I have always been interested in revisiting classic games that I might have missed growing up or that I just wasn’t alive for. When I heard so many people gushing about how great Streets of Rage 4 is, a sequel that took 25 years to make, that interest was immediately piqued once again.

With that, I set off to find out for myself if Streets of Rage is really that good or if people were just enjoying a bit of nostalgia. At this point I could have just played Streets of Rage 4. I mean, that is the game that had piqued my interest, so playing that would let me see what the hype was all about. Then I thought, why not see what it cost to play the other games in the series first, so that I could get the full Streets of Rage experience, or as close to it as possible. $2.97, that is all that it cost me for Streets of Rage one, two, and three on Steam. As soon as I saw that price, I was in. I was going to play every Streets of Rage game in the series and that is where our Journey begins.

Streets of Rage 

After starting Streets of Rage, the first thing I did was accidentally use my characters special move, which was having the police shoot a rocket launcher at my position. That seems a bit dangerous, but it was pretty cool. What wasn’t cool was wasting my special move in the first five second of the game while trying to learn the controls. Which I was surprised to find that there are not the many of. I was expecting to find at least a button for punching and a button for kicking, but no, they were both combined on the X button of my controller. So, you get X to attack, circle to jump, and square for your special ability and that is all the controls. Nice, simple, and easy to jump right in to. That game is actually pretty short as well. Consisting of only eight levels with each taking about ten to fifteen minutes to complete.  

While the first few levels were easy enough, I started to struggle around level 5 where the boss is these two women that were so annoying. They were jumping all around doing flips and would grab me anytime I got near them, they were incredibly difficult to hit because of the constant jumping, and they both dished out a ton of damage. This is where my first run ended. During my next run however, I learned about my favorite weapon in Streets of Rage, the lead pipe. The Lead pipe in Streets of Rage is so OP that it took that annoying boss fight and made it basically child’s play. I beat them so easily that it seemed like they were just regular enemies rather than the boss that had ended my earlier run. 

Moving through the next few levels, using a lead pipe anytime I could get my hands on one, the game ramped up its difficulty by throwing past bosses in to the levels as kind of mini bosses. I’m not sure if these mini bosses were weaker than their initial full boss form or not, but I did seem to have an easier time dealing with them in these appearances compared to their actual boss fights. That is of course, until I reached the game’s toughest challenge. You might think that should be the final boss, the moment when you finally take down the mastermind in charge of this whole crime syndicate. That my friend couldn’t be farther from the truth. He was easy as cake really, probably one of the easiest fights of the entire game.

No, the real fight takes place right outside the door to his room, when you have to once again fight those two annoying women from earlier who jump around and make you look like a confused idiot as you walk back and forth hitting the air only to get German suplexed into the center of the Earth again and again. This time I didn’t even have a lead pipe to make it easy on myself instead I was in for a very stressful fight, would I be able to overcome these two demons and bring peace to the city or would I have to start this climb all over again from the beginning. I bobbed and weaved. I moved up and down. I ran when I had to. I did everything I could to avoid these two nightmares. I even almost ran out of time, but in the end, I managed to bring them both to justice with a swift punch to the face. That was that, after beating them I walked through their boss and saved the day.

I actually really enjoyed my time with Streets of Rage. I think there could have been a bit more diversity in the enemies and I would have like to have senm new mini bosses rather than recycled bosses, but overall an enjoyable few hours with a boss fight that I will remember for a long long time. Now on to Streets of Rage 2. 

Streets of Rage 2

I had always heard that Streets of Rage 2 was supposed to be the pinnacle of the series and right away I was able to tell that it was a more advanced game as far as design goes. Everyone of your enemies gets a health bar and a name, which I think adds to the theming and world building. The map moves in more directions than just to the right, which makes the levels far more interesting. They even split up each of the stages in to multiple tiny levels so that each one seems varied and unique. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed with how much had changed from the first game to the second. They basically addressed any of the problem I had with the first game. 

The game starts off with your man, Adam Hunter, being kidnapped by the returning baddie Mr. X, so obviously it was up to Axel, Blaze, and the two new characters, Eddie and Max, to go save him. I did think it was a little weird to take one of the games main characters and just make them not playable in the sequel. You do get the extra two characters, but I still would have liked to see Adam as an unlockable after beating the game or something. 

I decided to play as Axel again and was surprised to see that we no longer had any police back up as a special move and rather had a flurry of fiery punches that we could dole out. I liked this change. While I did enjoy calling in a strike on my enemies, I found that trying to find the right time to use that was a little bit stressful. Maybe this was because I wasted my first one right away on accident, but still, I was always a bit worried about that. With the new fiery attacks though, I could use that basically as much as I wanted, which brings me to my next point. Streets of Rage 2 is way easier than Streets of Rage 1, or at least it is fairer to the player. The hardest part of Street of Rage 1 was the few boss that made me feel like I couldn’t touch them without taking damage. The Twins, the fire breathing guy, the one with the Freddy claws, all made me worry about getting too close. Streets of Rage 2, on the other hand, makes its toughest enemies difficult because of their attacks rather than an inability to reach them. I always felt like if I just watched an enemy, I would be able to see what they were going to do and be able to get a shot in when the moment was right. I found this to be way more enjoyable because if I took damage it was because I messed up rather than the boss just being annoying and unfair. 

I did, however, kind of just walk through the game. I am not sure if it is because the fairness was that much easier, or if maybe I just got used to it because I had just played the first one. Either way, I got through the whole game on my first run without ever worrying about whether I was going to die. I think I only went under three lives once throughout my play-through and I beat down most enemies fairly easily. Which isn’t a bad thing. I mean you are supposed to be bad ass hero taking down an entire criminal organization with their fists. That should feel bad ass, and never feeling like the enemies were on my level made me feel that even more. By the time I got to Mr. X, Axel seemed so bad ass that I was like “you done messed up Mr. X.”  Then I beat him in to the ground and saved the day.

I really like Streets of Rage 2. It is a clear improvement over the first entry in the series. While I liked the first one, at the end of it, I wouldn’t say I was a fan of the series. After number 2, I am definitely a fan and am very much looking forward to getting through the next two games to see what improvements they can make. Time to hit the streets for a third time. 

Streets of Rage 3 

Wow OK, so Streets of Rage 3 is a bit of a weird one for me. I have been writing each section of this article almost immediately after having played that particular game. With Streets of Rage 3 however, I felt I had to go back and play some more of it because I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I wasn’t in to this game as much as I thought I should be. I fully believe that Streets of Rage 3 is the technically the best game in the series, but there was something about it that made me enjoy it less than the others. After playing a little bit more, I think that problem with the game is its story. 

While the story of 3 is by far the biggest and most in depth in the series, I think that is also what makes it the weakest. In the first two games all I had to know was that the baddies were bad and it was my job to punch them until the city is saved. Nice and simple. In 3, I had so many questions. Could I trust this Zan, would they include a playable character who might betray me, why are there robot clones, why is there a magic samurai and a temple in this metropolitan city? A game posing questions to a player on its own isn’t a bad thing, but when the answers were basically, just because why not, it made me feel like the game was missing a bit of soul. They could have just said “hey, Adam (who wasn’t playable again; unbelievable) found a bomb with Mr. X written on it. Time to get the team back together.” Instead they introduce a new character, without giving you his back story, and start the game off in an unsatisfying way by showing you some cool stuff that already happened that I didn’t get to actually do. I felt really confused from the onset and don’t think that I ever really recovered from that feeling. 

I did say I think it is technically the best game in the series though, so let’s talk about the things that Streets of Rage 3 does right. The soundtrack for 3 is far and away my favorite. The first two games had fine soundtracks. They got the job done but they weren’t all that memorable to me. The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 3 though, had me turning up the volume of my headphones to frankly unsafe levels and got me way more into each section. The boss battles were way more unique and interesting and probably the area that I think Streets 3 really stepped it up compared to the other ones. They were longer, more involved, and require more thought and planning than any of the fights in the previous games. I hated that stupid bulldozer though, and they did bring the Twins from the first game back to haunt me, so ebbs and flows. 

In the end, I enjoyed Streets of Rage 3 and think it was taking the game in the right direction gameplay-wise. If there had ever been a Streets of Rage 4, I think it could have been really great game. What? There is a fourth game? It just came out after 25 years? You Know what, I thought of this schtick and then I was like, don’t I talk about Streets of Rage 4 at the very beginning of this article? This doesn’t make any sense. The reader clearly knows that I know about the fourth game. It probably going to be the featured image for the whole article. This doesn’t make any sense. So, you know what let’s just get to it and play some Streets of Rage 4. 

Streets of Rage 4 

Wow, OK. So, we have to talk about how incredibly good Streets of Rage 4 Is. I really wasn’t prepared for this game to take such a step up in quality, while remaining as true to the original games as it does.  There is barely a foot put wrong here. There are no pointless microtransactions, they didn’t try and make the combat more complex, they even put my man Adam Hunter back in the game as a playable character. That is how you make a long-awaited sequel. 

The most glaring change that was made in Streets of Rage 4 is clearly the art style. Rather than try and duplicate the pixelated style of the original games, the developers went with a bright and cartoony style that I think looks absolutely fantastic. This style really makes the game a feast for the eyes. While I did enjoy playing the first three games, I wouldn’t say I found any of them particularly exciting to look at. I understand that some people might want the game to be a throwback in visuals as much as it is in gameplay, but I think this change will help make the game more enticing to new players and allow for possibly even more games in the future. 

The art style might be the most obvious change the series has seen in this entry, but my favorite thing that Streets of Rage 4 does is make its enemy characters way more interesting. The original games made some effort to make its enemies distinguishable from each other, so that you’re not just beating down random people the whole time. Naming each enemy being the main key to this, but just knowing you’re beating down your eighth Donovan or that you are getting destroyed by Yamamoto doesn’t really mean  all that much when you don’t know anything about them. In Streets of Rage 4 you still won’t be finding anything out about why Donovan wants to hit you with that bat, but you will definitely know why Estel, has just called in more cops to do a missile barrage on you. THAT USE TO BE MY MOVE! 

I loved that aspect. Getting to see someone use a move from the first game that also built and added to the story and who they were as a character was a fantastic use of nostalgia. It also made me more invested in the fight because she had to be taken down for having the gall to use my move. This is just one example of how this game creates memorable and fleshed out enemies far better than its predecessors.  

Story wise, Streets of Rage 4 does a way better job than 3 at trying to do the whole bad guy with an evil plot thing. This is because instead of finding out what is kind of happening and then just trudging through random enemies, you fight enemies that have different goals and reasons for fighting you and the story is doled out at a more even and interesting pace throughout the game. In 3, you basically get story at the beginning, story in chapter 6, and story at the end. In 4, every chapter has story to offer you that enhance the already entertaining gameplay of the series. 

One thing that I would have like to see would be more unlockable characters. While I think it is cool to unlock some retro skins for the characters, I would have loved to see some of the bosses from the game become playable as you beat them. I mean Estel would be perfect as a playable character. A cop with cool moves and a special move from the first game why can’t I play as that yet. Other than that, though, you have the Commissioner, Barbon, DJ K Washi, Diva, and Mr. and Ms. Y all which would be very cool to play. It’s not like playing the bad guys would even be a new thing to the series with Shiva and Roo being playable in 3. 

Well there you have it. I have no traversed all of the streets and experienced all of the rage. I got to say I had a fantastic time. It has been a very long time since I have gone back to play any retro games, but with how much I enjoyed doing this I might have to go back and do it more often. If you got this far through what was probably and incoherent stream of my consciousness thank you for going on this journey with me. It was a blast and I hope to do more things like this in the future..