Streets of Rage Series – Left in 16-Bit

During the 16-Bit days, Sega could hardly do anything wrong. When they did have a snafu like the Activator, it barely flinched them due to the elevated level of fan support they had. If you wanted to play games that were graphically impressive and unique, odds are you chose the Sega Genesis. I am not saying that Nintendo did not have some great, graphical, games – I am just saying that Sega offered a more varied first party library. Sega was all over the place with their releases. From Alex Kidd to Sonic to Vectorman gamers got three diverse types of 2d side scrolling action games. This was just how Sega rolled and gamers were eating it up. Then Sega released a little game called Streets of Rage and fans rejoiced. The sequel came out with more of the same, only better graphics/sound and more of what made the first so good. Then gamers got the third game and it was true, Sega did not suffer from the SNK curse (that being the third game in any series was probably guaranteed to be the weakest entry). 16-Bit rocked. It still does.

Sega threw the gauntlet down at Capcom
Sega was making a point with the Streets of Rage series and it was a point that was aimed directly at Capcom, not Nintendo. Nintendo never released a scrolling brawler game, to my knowledge, but Capcom had this little franchise called Final Fight. While Capcom’s Final Fight pretty much holds the candle as far as the initial entry in either series, Streets of Rage 2 and Streets of Rage 3 hold the spotlight rather firmly. For proof, just check out Final Fight 2 and Final Fight 3 on the Super Nintendo. I apologize if you do indeed check those two titles out. They are not as good as the first and are a little bit of a shame to the franchise. Against the normal everyday brawler, the Final Fight sequels are quite good, they are just not good enough to carry the name.

Unfortunately, over the years, Sega has gone out of their way to stop fans from recreating the fun of Streets of Rage on PC’s. They have given out cease and desist letters to more than one fan group that was known to be working on a remake of the franchise.

For those that do not know, the Streets of Rage series is a scrolling brawler, sometimes referred to as a belt fighter. You are given a couple of moves that you use repeatedly against, often, repeating enemies till you meet a boss. Rinse and repeat till you beat the game. Streets of Rage hit just the right challenge and fun factor, much like Final Fight did. Sega had a winner on their hands and they hit that well two more times on the Sega Genesis, almost revisited it on the Sega Saturn, and then decided to simply re-release the originals over, and over and over again.

Streets of Rage put more enemies on the screen, gave gamers more characters to choose from and they didn’t shy away from having female characters in the games. Both playable and enemy female characters make appearances in the Streets of Rage series. The females that you faced here were more of the adult entertainment persuasion, appearing to be dominatrix dressed women, complete with whips and leather boots. Capcom shied away from having female enemies in Final Fight on the Super Nintendo in North America – they were put back in for the Sega CD release. I will leave it to you to research if they were female or not – there are arguments both ways on that one.

For such a popular series, it is a shame that Sega has not revisited it over the years since the final release on the Genesis. They did attempt to revive the Streets of Rage series on the Sega Saturn but those plans fell through and that game became Fighting Force by Eidos. Fighting Force was released on the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation and PC platforms (the Sony machine and PCs would see a sequel also). Sega left fans in the cold again and let go a chance to bring the Streets of Rage franchise to the 32-Bit world. The next time we would see Streets of Rage would be a promo “development” video for the Sega Dreamcast. Development would ultimately go nowhere and fans would have their hopes dashed yet again. Sega has no problem releasing the Streets of Rage franchise on compilations for consoles and digitally for PC’s via Steam and Gamersgate among other digital stores.

Sadly, the Streets of Rage franchise has been left in 16-Bit.

For more Streets of Rage fun, check out my article on character hacks.