In addition to the original Streets of Rage, my brother and I also played the heck out of its followup, Streets of Rage 2, which boasted even better gameplay, another stellar soundtrack from Koshiro, plus two new characters in Max and Skate. After getting my first job, one of the first things I did was save up enough money to buy a Genesis console. If you saw our happy faces during the walk back home that night, you would think that we just stumbled upon the secret to world peace.Įven after we moved to the United States the following year, Streets of Rage continued to be a part of our gaming lives. X just as my brother ran out of continues while I was on my last life with barely a sliver of health left while desperately dodging machine gunfire. I ended up blowing through my entire weekly allowance on that day as we played all the way up until closing time and the shop had to essentially kick us out. We went through the game over and over, trying to learn the patterns for the various bosses while nursing our limited continues. On that day, I would switch between my two favorite characters, Axel or Blaze, while my brother stuck with Adam all the way. Streets of Rage proved to be even more fun with two people, to the point that playing it solo after that kind of felt, well, lonely. I loved the game so much that when my younger brother came over to visit me for the summer that year, the first thing I did was take him to that video game rental shop so we could play the game in co-op mode.
Streets of rage 4 skate series#
To this day, his work on the Streets of Rage series continues to hold up, which is even more amazing because he did it on a 16-bit console. Koshiro managed to squeeze everything out of Mega Drive’s Yamaha YM2612 sound chip and orchestrated not only one of the defining soundtracks of that generation but in the history of video games as well.
Instead of just being a simple part of the background, Yuzo Koshiro’s music was an important part of the whole Streets of Rage experience - a rocking war cry that essentially pumped you up for the fight ahead. Man, that beautiful, hard-thumping, club soundtrack. I thought, “Wow, you can do that?” Even Final Fight didn’t have that move, and this was on a home console to boot.Īnd then there’s that soundtrack. Perfect-style Perfect Plex suplex to the ground. I still remember my mind being blown the first time I grabbed an enemy, did a somersault flip to get behind it, and then finished the poor scrub off with a Mr. I just loved everything about it, from its cool lead characters, its unique aesthetic, and its over-the-top brawling mechanics. Needless to say, I instantly got hooked on Streets of Rage.Īs a fan of beat-em-up games like Double Dragon, Streets of Rage felt pretty much like an epiphany.
Streets of rage 4 skate Pc#
It was like the old-school precursor to the PC Bang or PC cafes you now see in a lot of Asian countries. This particular shop was actually a video game rental business where you can pay money to rent time on one of the machines so you can play any of the games that the store had. Right there on a CRT television propped by a store window was Streets of Rage running on a game console. I still remember the delicious scent of garlic-fried peanuts wafting through the air as several street vendors hawked their wares just outside my school on my way home.
I actually played the original Japanese version called “Bare Knuckle” on the Sega Mega Drive way back in 1991 after moving to Manila for school.
My history with Streets of Rage 4 is particularly a long one. The question is, will Streets of Rage 4 make it three-for-three as far as glorious old-school revivals go so far? I’ve already shared my thoughts on the Final Fantasy VII Remake as well as the new Sakura Wars, both of which I quite liked.