Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage
Developed by M2
Published by Sega
Released for XBLA (5/2012)
Backwards Compatible with Xbox One
The
Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage contains all three of the titles that were released for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.
Streets of Rage 2 was released previously on the 360 by itself on XBLA, but was pulled from the marketplace as Sega put the
Sega Vintage Collection out. The entire trilogy is also available on the retail title from Sega,
Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, however there is one reason in particular this version may still be of interest even if you already own the disc or the original cartridges. Read on and we'll get to that, but let's start with a look at the first game...
The original
Streets of Rage, released way back in 1991 and while it hasn't aged quite as well as its sequels but is still a respectable beat 'em up. Everything is a bit simple, with your character having just a basic attack combo, jump attack, throw and a special maneuver. When being thrown, you can press up and jump to land on your feet. You also have a move to break out of a hold if grabbed from behind. The graphics are detailed, but the sprites are a bit smaller than the later games. The enemies don't display health bars except for the bosses. There are three fighters to select from and the character designs are all well done, despite the fact that Axel is pretty much a blatant copy of Cody from
Final Fight. The balance between the three characters is nice, with you standard slow/strong, fast/weak and balanced character traits. The game features eight levels and there's a decent amount of variety in locations. The level designs are very well done for the most part, with the city, beachfront and ship stages being standouts. It does drag a little towards the end with the somewhat boring factory and elevator stages, but they're short enough that it's not that big of a problem. Overall, the first game is still solid and is still a very playable beat 'em up.
Streets of Rage II would release the following year in 1992 and improves vastly upon its predecessor. One of the characters from the original has been omitted, but you have two new ones for a total of four selectable fighters. The sprites are all bigger and more detailed this time around, in addition to more interesting backdrops to beat up thugs in front of. All of the characters have two unique super moves that will deplete a bit of your health bar with each use in addition to a special move. While the special moves make the game a bit easier than your typical beat 'em up of the time, it doesn't make the game any less fun for it, especially in two-player mode with a friend.
Streets of Rage II is considered by most to the finest of the trilogy, and I have a hard time arguing against that.
One of the many nice features of this compilation is that you are able to select the region for each cart, allowing you to play the highly-coveted Japanese
Bare Knuckle III, which is universally accepted to be a far superior game to the butchered Western port that was
Streets of Rage 3. For some reason
Streets of Rage 3 was one of those games that Sega decided to tweak the difficulty when porting it to the West, making the game unreasonably difficult for a beat 'em up with less health pickups, faster enemies and a gimped special move system, just to name a few of the changes. The Japanese version of the game has a difficulty more on par with the second game, and is overall a much less frustrating game to play because of this. Some of the boss battles are bit cheap to the point of not being very fun to play, but overall the third entry is still a very good game and does sport some improvements. The action is a bit faster overall, which definitely helps with the pacing of the game, and the new special system is very different, boosting your power the longer you can stay alive and rack up a high score.
All three games feature two-player simultaneous action, with both local and online support making it easy to play with buddies near and far. The emulation is spot-on as far as I could tell and I didn't notice anything with audio or visuals looking off. The options menu is plentiful, allowing you to stretch the image to fill the screen or keep the aspect ration, smooth the pixels or add scan lines. There's a jukebox available in the settings menu as well, which is a good thing when you have a game with a soundtrack as good as these games. Often cited as composer Yuzo Koshiro's finest work, the
Streets of Rage trilogy has definitely produced some of the best music I've heard from the Sega Genesis sound chips! The first and third games have alternate endings, adding a little incentive to go back and beat it again. The game also has very generous save states, allowing you to save & load the game at anytime. Overall, this is a great collection of beat 'em up classics and I'd recommend anybody who likes video games to play them if you haven't yet!
Final Verdict: A trilogy of some of the most iconic beat 'em up titles ever created,
Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage is worth the download for beat 'em up fans, whether revisiting the series or playing it for the first time!
Related Links:
Buy Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage - Xbox Marketplace
Beat 'em Ups - Xbox Overview
Sega - Official Site
M2 - Official Site
Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage - Metacritic
Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage - GameFAQs
Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage - True Achievements
