It was only a matter of time before I had to get to what might be my favorite game overall on the Sega Genesis. This game is actually the first that I had ever beat on the Genesis and that was on a snow day with my brother when we had nothing better to do but holy shit did I somehow stumble upon a game that would forever change the way I view Sega and beat’em ups. This classic game is actually the second of a trilogy that was only made to counteract the fact that the SNES had the Final Fight series which is good in its own right, but not even close to the barrage of action that this series of games provides. Streets of Rage 2 was released on December 20th 1992 and was a North American release game before it was released in Japan.
The game has you playing as one of four different characters out to stop Mr. X from using his syndicate to take over a whole city day by day. You are also out to save your old friend Adam (Who was a playable character in the first game.) from being held hostage any longer by the evil Mr. X. The young group of crime fighters who dare fight the syndicate are as follows…Max Thunder a former wrestler with black hair who is the strongest character by far but is also by far the slowest out of the four. Blaze Fielding who happens to be from the first game, is the series sex appeal who wears red and damn…Sega could have done alot better with that department. She is the average character who has no good or bad things about her, she is just average. Axel Stone is next up on the list, and yes he is complete with jeans, white T, bandanna and blond hair. This is by far the best person to pick because he is strong and frankly does not suck in any way shape or form compared to the others in this game. Finally you then have straight up stereotyping with Eddie “Skate” Hunter who so happens to be Adam’s brother who is African-American, wears roller skates, and also dons a outfit similar to some shit Kris Kross would have worn back in 92′ complete with backwards red cap and everything. Before I go on any farther I want to really try and understand what the Sega execs were thinking when they decided to come up with the concept for Skate. “Well we need something that’s hip and cool….what about rollerblades, backwards caps, urban attitude…oh also can we get away with it by making him roughly the age of 12? Oh we can?”
On this boxart you can see our heroes kicking ass…while three do not look like they do in the game. Sega decided to not fuck with Skate and how he looks in this picture due to the fact that he might have lost his “Street Cred” had they put him in a “Say no to drugs.” T-shirt.
Let me explain something…as far as beatem’ ups go this one is not hard, nor is it easy unless you have played it an insane amount of times and know where everything is and where it will be coming from constantly. In this game you can do regular attacks, jump attacks, throws, charging attacks, and special attacks….although the special ones will take health away from you if you pull them off so you really need to be careful not to hit that button when you do not mean to otherwise you could just screw yourself really badly. There are different difficulty levels and if you try to play on the secret Mania setting…you might as well kiss your ass goodbye due to the fact that everything will destroy you. Your enemies in this game consist or regular street thugs, guys in jackets, bikers, fat men, kick boxers, and even women with electric whips. This game has a total of 8 levels with a big boss fight at the end of them all just to challenge you even more so than you already had been challenged. This game is pretty by 1992 standards, and you can tell that the developers took alot of time trying to polish up the graphics to make sure they could test the limits of the system at that particular time. I really like the background art for alot of the game, due to the details that they all have. If you are fighting at the baseball stadium take a look around at the background and the stadium seating, if you are fighting in the “cage” look at the fans cheer the boss on, Hell if you are on the beach take a look at the water its very very artistic given the time it came out. As for the music….it was made by none other than Yuzo Koshiro who has worked on games such as Actraiser, Shenmue, Namco x Capcom (which is a RPG only in japan that sounds like a badass concept…look it up.), and the entire Streets of Rage Series. In this game the music has different elements but a lot of it makes you listen deeply as you punch some random asshole in the face. The boss music is amongst some of the most epic music I have ever heard and I remember when I was little I would go to the option menu and load up that song just to listen to it over and over again. These songs are so popular that when he does a show in Japan as a DJ he will get requests for the songs from this soundtrack, and he will play them due to popular demand. Amongst mere mortals this man is a god when it comes to his musical abilities.
Its foggy, it looks like an alien hideout, it has a guy dressed up in a metal suit similar to the way Blanka in Street Fighter looks….oh also it has techno rocking your shit as well. How could this get any better?
When I play this game I always pick Axel due to one move that outshines all the others in this game. He can proform the “Grand Upper” if you hit towards twice, followed up by the attack button. What this move is, is a standard uppercut…that turns your hand slightly on fire. It can drain an enemies health really fast but the best part is that if you are going against certain bosses, they will block the attack but it will do more damage due to the fact that when it is blocked it counts as a few hits compared to one gigantic hit. Axel has a slight edge against most the bosses for the simple fact that a lot of them will charge towards you in an attempt to do any damage…this is where that grand upper once again comes into play. In level four the final boss will not take your shit, or combos for that matter, he will just break out of them. To avoid his onslaught of bullshit you just need to back away from him, and let him run towards you and then uppercut his ass down to the ground. Rinse, Lather, Repeat. If you have Axel this tactic will work on most bosses, with the exception of Mr. X who has a tommy gun, and will have no reason to rush you when he can just spray lead all across the screen. He is straight up the definition of a asshole, and he will let you know it as he laughs the entire time he tries to kill you. After you kill him, you pick up Adam and low and behold the city/world is saved from the demented Mr. X.
Meet the boss Abadede he looks like the Ultimate Warrior and is a complete dick. He is possibly the hardest of the bosses to fight unless you have his strategy down.
Honestly I could go on for hours about this game being as good as anyother game on the Genesis but I refuse to write a whole damn book for one game. This game is simply put, one of the greats on any system at the time it was released and still can stand the test of time to this day. If you get the opportunity to either buy it for the Genesis, buy it for the Virtual Console, buy it on the new Sega Collection, or even to cop the Rom…you better do it and you will not be disappointed. Think of it as a hybrid between Final Fight and Double Dragon. The only way this game could be more testosterone laced is if somehow it was on fire as it fed you beef jerky and force fed you motor oil. This is a great game and I will always sing its praises. This is the first Streets of Rage to make the genocide but all of them eventually will, even the SOR Remake that Bomber Games made from the ground up will make an appearance but that’s for another day. Until then pay respect to your elders and enjoy the Genocide.
Yea my pictures are biased figuring they all have Axel in them, but his arm is on fire making the shape of a dragon so whatever bad you have to say about him is invalid.
