Old School Game Reviews: Streets of Rage

Welcome to a new section of the website called the “Old School Game Review”. Now this is basically a gift wrapped game review so in theory it’s nothing new, but what is different is that before I divulge into the review I’m going to talk about what makes this game so good, and some facts and memories the game gave me. Oh and what counts as an old school game? My ruling is the game has to be at least ten years old. So the inaugural “Old School Game Review” is the classic, Streets of Rage.

When did this game come out? August 1991

What console was it released on? Sega Mega Drive/Genesis

What else was it released on? Sega Game Gear, Sega CD, Sega Master System, Nintendo Wii, iPhone

Compilations? It’s appeared on “Mega Games II”, “Sega Genesis/Mega Drive 6-Pak” and “Mega 6” for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, “Sega Classics Arcade Collection” for the Sega Mega CD and the “Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection” on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (which I reviewed here)

Other interesting facts? It’s considered the spiritual successor to the “Golden Axe” series. Its spiritual successor is considered “Fighting Force”, which didn’t sell well and flopped on the Playstation and Nintendo 64. After Streets of Rage III, no other game in the series has officially been made.

Why review this game? It’s probably the first multiplayer I absolutely fell in love with. It was one of the first games I ever played on the Sega Mega Drive, as part of the “Mega 6” mentioned earlier. I have some absolutely golden memories playing this with my two sisters when I was a wee child.

Best memories? I remember the first time got to Mr X with my sister and we chose different options to join his syndicate. If you didn’t know, if you play two-player and get to this stage and choose different options, you get the bad ending. You then have to fight each other and the survivor gets the option again, if you choose not to join the syndicate, it doesn’t matter, it gives you the bad ending regardless. The first time I got the bad ending, with the horrible ending music and the sprite of your character sitting in the chair looking into your soul from the TV gave me chills. Of course, that and beating the crap into your sister on games was always fun and there was a lot of doing that I promise you!

Now onto the review!

Streets of Rage packs a mighty punch as a game on top of its generation.

Streets of Rage was released in August 1991, making it twenty years old. Two years earlier Sega had released Golden Axe; a side-scrolling beat ‘em up that was set in a medieval fantasy land with monsters and warriors. While the game was successful, there was an idea to have a similar game in a modern setting. That’s where Streets of Rage came in.

The game is set in a high-energy city that was once nice and peaceful, but has recently fell under the control of a criminal syndicate. The damage and effect on the city was so big even the police had their hands tied. Violence and crime was rife and no one could do anything there. Three police officers try to take control on an attack in the city. But the police didn’t want a special unit to disrupt the syndicate’s activities. In disgust, they hand their badges in and decide to take matters into their own hands. On their own, the three ex-police officers, with brute force and firsts, take on the syndicate to bring the city’s control back to the people.

The three ex-police officers are the three characters available for choice in the game. They all vary in fighting style, jump abilty and speed. First there’s Adam, who’s got a boxing background and is the strongest character in the game and can jump well. To compensate, he’s also the slowest. There’s then Blaze, who has a judo background, who is the quickest character but compensates it for being the weakest. Axel is the third character with a martial arts background, and is of medium strength and speed, but is a poor jumper. All three characters are useful in different ways and are very well balanced.

This is some party.

The game’s controls are simple. Moving with the D-pad, you simply press one of the eight directions you wish your character to move to and they will move on the terrain in the direction you choose. You press “B” to attack an enemy in front of you, and rapidly to do a combo. If you walk towards your enemy and latch onto them, you can apply a grappling body attack. If you grab them from behind you can suplex them backwards. To jump you press the “C” button, and combine it with either moving left or right to jump in either direction. Combining a jump and an attack is also simple, press “C” to jump and then “B” to kick them mid-air. If you press the “C” button when you have hold of an enemy, you can jump over them, either forwards to backwards or vice versa, to suplex them or pummel them, depending what way you’re facing them. If you are grappling them, pressing the “B” button and the opposite direction to which you are facing to throw them behind you, possibly throwing them into multiple enemies.

As well as melee attacks you can also use weapons. To pick up weapons simply press the “B” button when directly above one. Weapons vary from baseball bats to knives and vary in use; bats can reach enemies from further away but knives can be thrown.

That leaves one button on the Sega Mega Drive controller, which is the “A” button. This is your special attack, one that you get automatically per life you have, or you can pick them up on a very rare occasion otherwise. Your special attack calls on a secret member of the police force who is discretely supporting the three ex-cops, and shoots from afar; either with a large missile launcher or a heavy duty machine gun. Both of these actions do the same thing, which is basically wiping the screen completely of enemies. The exception is the bosses, and instead it takes a chunk of their health.

This is an even better party!

Streets of Rage has eight levels, which you progress from left to right in typical side-scrolling fashion. There are different enemies on route, with different levels of health and difficulty. Also on your way are breakable items, for instance, the first level is the street, and here you can find telephone boxes to break. On the fourth level is a bridge, and you can find cones lying around which you can break. In these items are different things, either apples or steaks that give you a health increase, the former less than the latter that brings your health to the max. There’s also bags of cash, other weapons, and on rare occasions, extra lives or extra uses of your special. After side scrolling to the end of the level a boss will appear. These bosses are large in size and pack a punch. Bosses have their own fighting style and increase in difficulty as you progress through the game. On some of the later levels you may have to fight bosses multiple times throughout the level.

The one thing that has always stood out about Streets of Rage is the fantastic soundtrack. Every level has its own track that fits perfectly with its design and the boss music is absolutely brilliant too. All the games in the Streets of Rage series has good music but for me personally neither sequel has beat the first for quality. Aside from the music, the sound is as good as any Mega Drive title; the enemies give out cries when they are defeated and the sounds that are made when you attack and are attacked are different. I wouldn’t say it’s realistic, I mean this was 1991, but the idea is there and it sounds good enough.

...the party is not so fun anymore.

To finalise, Streets of Rage is one of the best games of its generation. Yes the second game improved on the foundations this game set, but back in 1991 there was nothing better than this. Streets of Rage still brings great satisfaction and enjoyment today, in a time were complexity and graphics are considered favourable. The game is great if you’re playing on your own and takes around an hour to complete, but it’s even better with a friend. If you’ve never played this game before, you’re missing out, get a copy, you can find it quite cheap in many different places. Or get the “Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection”, which features this and the other two titles in the series, amongst its 40+ game collection, which you can find for less than £15 in some places. Streets of Rage packs a mighty punch as a game on top of its generation.

Rating: ****1/2 stars

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Game Review: Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection

With popular classics and a few hidden gems, the “Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection” is as good a compilation of 40+ games you’ll ever see.

The Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection was released back in February 2009, nearly two years ago, for both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 and advertises 40 classic Mega Drive (or Sega Genesis, for those elsewhere in the world) titles all on one disc and for the first time, the games are compatible in HD.  It’s one of the biggest collections of video games on one bit of media available, and it contains some of the biggest and best games that were released on the fourth generation console. Also included are some unlockable games from either the Sega Master System or the arcade.

So what games are available on this compilation? How about all the main “Sonic the Hedgehog” titles, which are Sonic 1, 2, 3, “Sonic and Knuckles”, 3D and Spinball? It also has “Streets of Rage” 1, 2 and 3, “Phantasy Star” II, III and IV, “Golden Axe” I, II and III, the two “Ecco the Dolphin” titles, “Shining Force” I and II and “Vectorman” 1 and 2 amongst others. These games, back in the day, were anything from £20 to £50 each, and considering the game was £25 upon release and available now from £10 to £15. I’m pretty good at Maths and this spells out at up to £2000 in games back in the day, and all together it’s now available for anything up to 200 times less. That’s an immense statistic. There are other great games on this list too, like “Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle”, “Altered Beast”, “Columns”, “Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine”, “Flicky”, “Gain Ground” and “Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master”. I don’t really know if I really need to review this game because simply listing all of these amazing games says it all, but I’ll continue.

It's great to see such classic titles again, crisper than ever.

Having all the classic “Sonic the Hedgehog” titles in one game isn’t a new thing, it’s been done many times before, but it’s still a great way to play these games again, or for the first time if you’re too young to have played the games when they were released. The best thing about these Sonic titles, which are now up to 20 years old (Happy Anniversary Sonic!) are that the graphics still look absolutely beautiful today, with it’s amazing palette of colours and the fast action. The tightening of the graphics to HD level doesn’t make the biggest of differences but it’s a more than welcome addition.

One of the main bad points about this compilation is that it doesn’t include the “lock-on” Sonic games. Just in case you’re not familiar, the Mega Drive cartridge for “Sonic and Knuckles” had an innovative “lock-on” section at the top where you can attach a second cartridge to it. This was so you could attach another Sonic title to it; if you attached “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” to it, a game that does not feature the Knuckles as a playable character, allows you to now do so. It also allows you to play through the “Sonic 3” levels and then the “Sonic and Knuckles” levels, giving you a whopping fourteen levels of gameplay. I always maintain that these two games combined a game that’s often called “Sonic 3 and Knuckles”, is the most complete version of Sonic the Hedgehog ever. The “lock-on” feature also gave you access to “Sonic 2 and Knuckles” and the original “Sonic the Hedgehog” title locked onto “Sonic and Knuckles” gave you access to hundreds of random bonus stages that are similar to those available on “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and “Sonic and Knuckles”. So no “lock-on” features is a major downer for me personally, and many other fans as well, due to these versions of the games being so good in the original formats. The producer of this compilation said that there were “tight development times” for the release of this game and that’s the reason they’re not included. They said that if they were to release these “lock-on” games there would be no room for other games, like the bonus “Master System” games. It’s a fair point, although personally I would have preferred the “lock-on” versions over the old Master System and arcade games. But you also have to consider, we have six Sonic titles on this compilation already, so there’s enough Sonic content on here for other games to be considered, which is fair enough.

Riding dragons in Golden Axe was so much fun, now you can do it again!

There are so many games for you to choose from in this compilation, and they cover a lot of different genres here too. Sonic, naturally is a platformer, and that along with other games like “Alex Kidd”, “Dynamite Headdy” and “Shinobi III” will keep you going in a variety of different ways. For the RPG fans you can’t look any further than the “Shining Force” series, a turn based RPG that’s as good turn based RPG ever. The “Shining Force” series stands out as some of the best RPG games ever, and most certainly on the Mega Drive, a console lacking in good quality RPGs. The three “Phantasy Star” games are also well received RPG games that are available, so you have hours and hours of fantasy role playing games to sink your teeth into here. For the side scrolling beat-em-ups, the “Streets of Rage” series set the standard and has arguably never been beat for them. The “Streets of Rage” series, the trilogy, vary in difficulty and have great looking sprites, a range of characters and some funky music, some of the best music available on the Mega Drive. Other alternative side scrollers are the “Golden Axe” series, which are all very similar in style but still are very enjoyable, the very retro “Altered Beast”, a game that has dated a little since the early nineties but is still a little but of fun to play, and is slightly harder than the other games in the genre. There are other games in other genres too, too many to put into great detail here and are all worth a look.

I told you earlier, if you bought these games back when they came out, your total bill could have possibly reached £2000 so you definitely have a vasts amount of content here. There are some popular classics here, but there are also some games here that you may have not played, and that’s a good thing. There’s a justifiable reason for each of the 40+ games to be included here. There’s the obvious, Sonic and “Streets of Rage”, but there’s the more subtle, less popular games here that are of good quality yet their lack of popularity made them almost forgotten. Take “Gain Ground” for example, my favourite game from the few games I had never played before, it’s really good. “Gain Ground” is an odd arcade strategy-shooter, where you simply have go through all the levels and beat the game. In more depth, you can either get through each level by getting your characters individually to the other side of the screen, or kill all the enemies on the screen for automatic progress. As you go through the game you can save and recruit your hostages, all which are trapped warriors and can aid you in battle. It’s easier to play this game than explain it, and it’s a lot of fun, especially as each warrior has their own ways of attacking enemies with their own weapons and special abilities. If you get this compilation give this game a go if you’ve never played it before, it’s an interesting little game that doesn’t have much recognition as a great quality game from the Mega Drive days. Another decent effort is “Ristar”, a game released in 1995 when the Mega Drive was in its dying days, which was made by the same team that made Sonic. Give that a go as well as it deserves more recognition than it has. As I said though, it’s hard to do mini reviews of all the games available on here, but if I were to choose two ‘not-so-popular’ games on the compilation to play, these two are the ones I’d choose.

Shinobi III is still so much fun all these years later.

So all in all this is a fantastic compilation. I’m not going to claim that you’ll love all the 40+ games on this CD, you won’t. But there’s something here for everyone, and chances are there are games on this disc that you’ve never played before. Seriously, give the new games a go. You might find a hidden gem or two. It’s hard to rate compilations due to the fact that not every game on these things are going to be to your taste. But as homage to one of the best video game consoles of all time and the great games that came out on it, the “Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection” is as good a compilation of 40+ games you’ll ever see.

Rating: ****1/4 stars

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