Streets of Rage
Reviewed by Dyson Turner
Streets of Rage was one of the truly great Genesis games
that brought it back to fame and glory. Before this game and
some other that came out in the year 1991 there wasn't much
out they're for the Genesis users. Much like the arcade hits
Double Dragon and Final Fight, this game proved to be the
Genesis savior. It was fresh it was new and the type of
thing everyone wanted. It separated it self from being just
another clone into something big. At the time it was literal
eye candy that made me and everyone else's who experienced
it jaws dropped. I thought this thing was unbelievable when
I first seen the two huge characters on the screen
performing all these moves and beating people up who looked
realistic. The great and award winning music I'm sure that
accompanied this game turned the genesis into a success.
This is not a game one would take lightly and should have in
their collection of you are a die-hard Genesis fan. Even
until this day this is still one of my favorite games to
play because it has a somewhat timeless quality to it.
Story 9.5/10
The usual story accompanies this one that you would expect
from a beatum type of game. 3 ex-cops who quit the force
recently named Axel, Adam, and Blaze are together and on the
street. The city was peaceful until a man by the name of Mr.
X decides to star this own crime syndicate. At this point it
seems that everyone except the as for mentioned ex-cops went
to crime. You are the only ones left who could save them the
police can't and they need your help. You must stop these
Streets of Rage. Each character was pretty unique in styles
and look. Not that the story really mattered when you were
trying to battle your way through hordes and hordes of bad
guys, the story was your typical one but a good one.
Graphics 10/10
The graphics were splendid at the time, and basically no
other home game rivaled it except for Sonic the Hedgehog.
Each character was very large, and hey had detail in them,
they weren't blurry or grainy like some of the other Genesis
games characters at that time. These characters all had high
detail and high resolution for the time that this game was
made. The backgrounds although kind of plain and boring for
today's standards were bright and excellent back then. They
were highly detailed and you could actually read to some
detail what signs said. You saw the little things like
flyers on walls blowing in the wind and cans rolling across
the ground to make it seem more realistic. The bosses were
usually larger than your characters and really detailed as
well. Like the boomerang throwing one on the first stage and
the Wolverine looking guy in the 2nd. These guys were big
and had some detailed not usually associated with Genesis
games. Although at the time some things did look a bit
cheesy like some of the repetitive backgrounds, that would
loop together, but for the most part this would go past
unnoticed. The graphics in this game as a whole were
wonderful, and was one of the biggest draws to this game.
Sound 10/10
What can I say? The sound on this game was UNRIVALED! The
music from the street sounding music in the intro to the
last theme was all wonderful, and some of the best midi
music in any game, except for the FF prelude, other than
that this is the music of choice. Every stage had a
wonderful beat that went with it perfectly. I can't even say
I enjoyed anything better than the other, everything music
was perfect it all fit together like it was made for this
game, like the composer had each stage in mind when he
created it. This is the best music on Genesis bar none, and
a sound track that could of won awards. The sound effects
went seamlessly perfect with the game. Even though many
would just consider the sounds punches and kicks you had
other sounds that blended in beautifully. Like each
distinctive karate yell of the 3 heroes, the cop car tires
screeching, the enemies screaming from the hit, and much
more. You also had other sounds that were for certain stages
only like, the boat stage you would hear the waves crashing
against it. Then the street stages you would hear garbage
cans, and other street sounds in the distance. This gave the
game a better overall appeal and made everything seem as
realistic as 16-bits was getting.
Game Play 10/10
This game is for one or two players. Which makes the game a
LOT of fun. You had the 3 characters to chose from which I
mentioned above. They were Adam, a strong but slow boxer,
Blaze a fast but weak fighter, and Axel and combination of
both. You had about 8 stages to get through they weren't too
long but they were mostly pretty fun. You had some weapons
that you either got off of enemies or found from breaking
open things on the ground. You also had a cop car icon,
which would call the cops who would wipe out basically every
enemy on the screen when the going got tough. At the end of
each stage there would be a boss sometimes to have them
these guys were pretty tough but, you usually could take
them down. You had a plethora of moves at your disposal. Yes
the basic ones like punching kick and flying kick. You also
had some combination moves and a couple of throws. You also
had two player moves where one player would grabbed the
other and throw them into a crowd of people, knocking people
down, and some other cool ones. This was very unique at the
time and not many games that were beat them up had this many
moves at its disposal. The difficulty as adjustable and
there wasn't any save or password feature.
Overall 10/10
This without a shadow of a doubt was one of the best games
of all time, and one of the ones that stuck out in the
memory of consumers. It had two sequels, which just add to
its greatness. The fun factor on this is through the roof
its always a good time when your playing Streets of Rage,
especially with two players. The replay value was high this
was just a fun game to play through even though basically
nothing changed when you did keep playing through it, it
just had that infinite quality to it that most games just
can't seem to have. This game will go down as one of the
classics as Genesis and it is already is so many even knew
that at the time. You can get this by its self or in a 6 pak
cartridge with 5 other Genesis classics. If you still got
that Genesis and don't have this game by all means you
should think deeply about getting its just that good. I
highly advise this game over anything out there.
OR
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