Ah the Sega Genesis....or is it the Sega Mega Drive? It is it the second model.....third? What ever the console this game was on, the Sega....er....thing-ah-ma-jig x32 Genesis Drive was loved, but the console didn't seem to have a lot of revolutionary games. Sure, it had Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Gunstar Heroes which are all really good games, but it didn't live up to what Nintendo were doing. Sorry Sega pal =(   And it can be easy to see why. Most of the games for this console....seemed cheap. One of those games is Streets of Rage. Now, I know what most of you are thinking. "but this was a good game, one of the finest and would be in my top ten for this console". Not that I'm saying it's bad, just cheap....and possibly bad. Just imagine that Urban Champion took the leap into 16-bit and got the ability to grab bad guys and get a special move. That is what I think when playing this game....only with a lot less green haired guys trying to knock you into a man hole. And I don't see a man hole you could drop into as well. But why leave it there? Lets get our fighting gloves on and get raging in the streets, as we look at Streets of Rage.

So the story is that an evil organization known as.....[insert awesome name here]....they didn't come up with a name? Does this mean i can call them anything? I want to call the the Black Cobras or something like that. Although I could take this opportunity to call them the Rainbow Ponies *smiles manically* Na, that would be just plain stupid. But I digress. The evil organization take over the city start creating organized crime. The police are either corrupted or too scared to take them down....apart from three brave souls. These guys want to put an end to this evil abomination and restore peace to the city. These are Adam, Axel and Blaze. They have a certain skill they are bad at, but very good in the other two skills. Adam is slow, but has great power and is a good jumper. Axel is very powerful and is fast, but jumps like a girl (really, he does), Blaze, on the other hand, is a very agile lady with great jumping skills and is very fast, however, power is the cost of this speed.

So you have to battle through eight different rounds to get to the boss and defeat him to bring your lovely and peaceful city back from the darkness. So you start off outside a chain of bars. Ok, the controls, A for the special attack, witch gets a police car to fire some bazooka to deal a lot of damage, B to attack, which results in a lot of punching, and C to Jump. Although the controls seem odd, you can just change them in the options section. You must defeat all enemies in your way in order to proceed. So now your walking around, punching bad guys till their dead. That's about it. You just punch them and if you can, rank up a combo and defeat them quicker. Not a lot of strategy going on here. You can mix things up by attacking them and then press the jump button which, sometimes, makes you grab them. You can continue to punch them, or you can press the jump button again to vault over them, then press the attack button to throw them to the ground, resulting in a lot of damage to the enemy. You can also smash items for goodies such as apples (heals some health, nom) pork (heals all your health nom nom) 1-ups (nommy) and gaining another special attack.

After some boring yet entertaining fights, you'll come across to the boss fights, which, to be very honest, look like Street Fighter rejects. You get guys that look like Freddy, a construction builder that breaths fire and....two athletic girls....ok, maybe that one doesn't look like a Street Fighter reject. They are tough, I won't argue. I normally die once or twice before I can beat them. If you can land a good combo of jits on them, you should be very proud of yourself. For a long time, the game seems to be repeating itself, apart from the fact each stage has more enemies. After round five, I lost all hope that there would be a niece for a stage. On stage six, i got just that. Conveyer belts and smashy things that would smash you. These add a lot to the game after what seems like forever of the same stage, but with increasing difficulty. I noticed you can walk passes the smashy things even though they are on the floor.

One thing I have to hand to this game, thought, is it's difficulty. It's hard. But not hard as in ultra hard. I mean hard as in "swarm of enemy" hard. You get swarmed by so many enemies it gets silly. And what are these anyway? Ladies in black with a whip and suspenders....? Juggling fire makers that throw flaming sticks? Ninjas that jump dramatically from the water....oh wait, most ninjas do that =P  This "leader" of this gang has a lot of power to get these guys in particular to over-run his city....and succeed no less! This guy has a odd sense of warriors and wannabes. But what really annoyed me is this one feature in the game. Normally, you can pick up items and use them, but when you get hit, and I mean hit just once, you drop your item. Why have that in the game? Who thought that would be a good idea? How could it be a good idea? How would you like it if you were playing a masterpiece like Ocarina of Time, but you drop your weapon every time you got hit by an enemy? Will that make the game better? No, it would ruin half of the game. you gotta then pick it up again, only to drop it again, then it fades away. Why game? Why do that?

Overall I give this game a 7.3/10, and that's being kind. You can't argue that the core game is pretty nice, but it gets old after a while and probably won't play it a third time. True, this was once an arcade game, and if it were such, I would give it a better score. But it's not, it's a on a 16-bit console, and I kinda expected more. Good to play the first time or so, but after a while, your better off getting some to play with you. That might spice things up.

I love this game,and i only get tired of it if i keep dying.

I didn't really like Streets of Rage. I dunno why, I guess it was because I died a lot.

Nice review. Really thorough.

I didn't really like Streets of Rage. I dunno why, I guess it was because I died a lot.

Nice review. Really thorough.

This is one of the first ten games I owned. It's fun but seems impossible to beat with just one player...it's much easier with 2. Overall, it's a fun game to try and beat.

Excellent review by the way.

I kind of like this game.  I was never good at these kinds of games, but I have gotten a lot better.  I love playing these kinds of games, they are fun to me and you can also play with friends.  Very good review.

Hmm I would have rated it higher I really like this game for some reason but hey to each his own I guess. I love it.

Good review!