Streets of Rage 2

aka: 3D Streets of Rage 2, Bare Knuckle II, SoR 2, Streets of Rage II
Moby ID: 6633
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Description official descriptions

After Axel Stone, Blaze Fielding and Adam Hunter destroyed the evil Syndicate leader, Mr. X, the city became a peaceful place to live, and each one of them followed their own paths. One year later, after their reunion, Adam's brother Sammy returned from school to find their apartment in a mess, and Adam nowhere to be seen, and after calling his two friends, one of them notices a photo of Adam chained to a wall, next to someone they knew very well - Mr. X, who returned to turn the peaceful city once again into a war zone. Now, Axel, Blaze, Sammy, and Axel's good friend Max, a pro wrestler, must head out to stop Mr. X once again...hopefully for good...

Streets of Rage 2 differs from the previous title in several ways. There are changes in both graphics (characters now are bigger, more detailed and with more animation frames, and scenarios are less grainy) and gameplay (the rocket move was replaced by a special move that doubles in offense and defense along several new moves), along other new features such as life bars (and names) for all enemies and the radically different new characters.

Spellings

  • ベアナックルII - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Genesis version)

31 People (25 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Main Planning
Planning
System Design
Main Program
Main Enemy Program
Enemy and Demo Program
Music Composers
Sound Effects
Sound Driver
Project Management
Object Design
Main Design
Background Design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 50 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 180 ratings with 11 reviews)

Move over Final Fight...

The Good
Streets of Rage is a side-scrolling, fighting platform game. Its very similar to Final Fight. However, unlike Final Fight for the SNES, Streets of Rage 2 is actually two player. Final Fight had an SNES sequal that was also two player, but I found that game to be more repetitive and flat than Streets of Rage 1 or 2.

There are also more techniques and combos in Streets of Rage 2 than in Final Fight and the game is longer, the backgrounds more diverse, and the enemies more varied. Its a great improvement over the original Streets of Rage also.

Graphically, it is about as nice looking as Final Fight for the SNES, and better looking than Final Fight for the Sega CD. Its not as nice looking as the Final Fight arcade game (which I still like better), but it easily beats any other Double Dragon styled fighting game on any home system from 1992 until 2000.

The Bad
The adult black character, Adam, did not return in this installment and he was my favorite character in the original. He was replaced by his annoying kid brother and a pro-wrestler pumped up on steroids. I really could do without these two new additions. I liked to play Adam. However, they did give Adam's moves to Axl.

Streets of Rage 2 is followed by an inferior sequel, Streets of Rage 3, which was still pretty good (and still lacked Adam). I would like to have seen a sequel given the full 32-bit treatment on the Saturn or the Dreamcast but that would have been intelligent and profitable which was against Sega's business policies.

The Bottom Line
Wonderful fighting game. It shows what the system was really capable of doing amid all of the crap titles that Sega's third party support was producing (Awesome Possum, etc).

I'd recommend Streets of Rage, Streets of Rage 3, and Double Dragon for the Genesis. Golden Axe is also similar in some ways.

Genesis · by Majestic Lizard (670) · 2007

The dev team have managed to hit the sweet spot between diversity and simplicity

The Good
Gosh, where to begin...

Let's start with the controls. First of all, all of the characters are controlled more or less the same way. (save for special circumstances like Skate's overhead throw or Max's inability to pole vault over enemies) That is you learn the controls for one character, you pretty much know the controls to another character.

What this means is that the entry barrier to learning a new character is actually fairly low. But this doesn't mean the characters don't PLAY differently. Oh no sir. That cannot be more different from the truth.

In fact, considering the control scheme is so uniformed, the characters play like night and day in terms of tactics and strengths.

What's even crazier is that despite this massive differences in gameplay, ALL of the characters are viable even at the highest difficulty.

Which leads to me to my next point: the difficulty.

I have never seen any game able to ramp up the difficulty so smoothly with such drastic differences. Try playing the game on hardest and then on Mania (the highest difficulty). The difference is HUGE. And yet, the game does an excellent job prepping you for it so that the skip in difficulty is not one that will just overrun you and make you throw down your controller.

Often times, you will get a situation where the added difficulty is just giving the players more numerical disadvantages and the enemies more numerical advantages. This game? The enemies will actually behave differently depending on the difficulty level. Higher level enemies will be far more efficient in their movements and attacks, and will try their best to surround you ASAP.

Which leads me to my next point, the AI.

For a game with this fairly simple attributes (simple by today's standards), the game AI is incredibly well put together at pushing the limits on those attributes.

The AIs all react to situations differently, and you can tell they have wildly different personalities, which combined with their existing movesets, make those differences even more stark.

Combining all of these attributes together, and you have a brawler that has rock solid tight gameplay, with incredible polish. This is one of those games that deserves to played again and again, not because each time you play you see new content, but because each permutation you make (i.e. character and difficulty) creates a whole new experience on the game.

For a game that only uses 3 buttons, it is incredibly deep because it is apparent that the devs have really made sure every move they put in there is accounted for in the game play experience.

In a lot of games, people will just add more content just to add more. But this game is a textbook example on how to use what you have and make it all count.

Designers now a days can learn a thing or two from games like this.

The Bad
one minor nitpick: the attributes you see in the character picking screen is more or less useless beyond the speed and stamina attribute. (The rest are highly dependent on the move you're using and the fashion you play) Imagine playing Street Fighter, and seeing a "strength" ranking on ryu's profile. Sure, you can certainly do that, but chances are it will mostly be irrelevant and meaningless. It's not even useful as a barometer for beginners because it doesn't even tell you that much. i.e. what does having a high "technique" score mean?

The Bottom Line
This game is the textbook example of milking every bit of game play out of a relatively small set of attributes. A lot of games out there will add more for the sake of more, not realizing it doesn't always add to the game play experience. This game is different.

Chances are, you will never find a better brawler with this streamlined of a system.

Genesis · by Elliott Wu (40) · 2010

Taking The Streets To The Bare Knuckle

The Good
Streets Of Rage 2, followed shortly after SOR 1. In 1992, the sequel to one of Sega’s most promising franchises hit the Genesis, like a baseball bat to the head.

In SOR 2, Mr. X the villain, defeated by the Adam, Axel, and Blaze, is back and out for revenge. So he abducts, Adam. Blaze and Axel, head out after him, joined by to new fighters. Skate, Adam’s little brother, and Max, a friend of Axel’s and a wrestler.

The game takes you from the streets, to a baseball field, to Mr.X’s base. The levels never seems out of place. Unlike many games of this genre, Final Fight, and Captain Commando, to name a few. And you can often see previous levels from your current one. The team combos are back, which of course was one of SOR 1’s best features, even many newer games do not make use of this feature. There is still a large verity of moves. If you are thrown by an opponent you can still recover in mid-air and take no damage.

Gone are the area effecting moves from it’s predecessor. Now new power moves like “Bare Knuckle” are available. Each fighter has several. Using them drains life from your fighters, so don’t count on them when your health is low.

The Game has much more to it than SOR 1. Stages are now multi-part. And are overall more plausible. With mini-bosses as well as stage bosses. The enemies are also more varied and the game relies less on “palette swapping”.

The Graphics are a vast improvement fro than of SOR 1. It is almost like comparing 8 bit, to 16 bit. The fighters are now huge on screen, giving the game more of an arcade feel, which it is trying to do. Blaze is even hotter.( Pun intended!) The backgrounds are sharp and have lot’s of detail. This game really helps one appreciate the beauty of 16-bit graphics.

The sound is improved over the previous game as well. The punching sounds are more realistic. Gone are the metallic punch sounds of SOR 1. As one would expect the score of SOR 2, by Yuzo Kosihiro, is excellent. Not as good as than of SOR 1 but still good.

The Bad
The plot is pretty absurd. How could Adam be taken hostage? Have you seen him fight? He kicks ass. And some how he is taken prisoner. Plus I hate the save the kidnapped person plot it is a major clichĂŠ.

The music is not as good this time around. And the game is too easy. Even on the higher difficulty settings.

The Bottom Line
Overall, if you want to see what all the fuss is over the SOR series, this is the one to play. And if you like it try the others.

Genesis · by MasterMegid (723) · 2006

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cut fighting moves

In early beta versions of Streets of Rage 2, Axel had two very different (and familiar) attacks: a move VERY similar to a Shotokan Dragon Punch, and...a Shotokan Hurricane Kick?

Looks like Sega axed them for good reason: legal action from Capcom for unauthorized teachings of Shotokan moves to their characters. (Shotokan, by the way, is the fighting technique Ryu, Ken, and Akuma use in Capcom's Street Fighter series).

MC.K

In Stage 1, there is an enemy called MC.K who only appears once in the entire game. He is worth about 10,000 points, much more than any other non-boss character.

Music

Yuzo Koshiro claims to have been influenced by early 90's European club music while producing the soundtrack for SoR 2. This is mostly visible with the music in the first part of level 4, which bears an uncanny resemblance with the dance hit Move Any Mountain by The Shamen, released two years before.

References

  • Two fat thugs in the game are called Talk and Wanter. They're named after Talk Uchimura (Planning & System design) and Wanta (Project management).
  • Before the Round 4 Stadium, you can see a sign that says "It's like Boo!". This may be a reference to "Fat Boo" from Dragonball Z, which looks an awful lot like the SoR2 character Big Ben.
  • The character Skate resembles DJ Boy (from the game DJ Boy, another side-scrolling beat-em-up game). This arcade game developed by Kaneko was later published by Sega on the megadrive. In fact, Sega changed the name of the character from 'Sammy' in Bare Knuckle 2 (Japanese release) into Skate in Streets of Rage 2 (US release) and the US publisher for the Megadrive conversion of DJ Boy was the company "Sammy".
  • It's no coincidence that the fat enemies in the game often go by the name of 'Heart'. It's a reference to the popular manga Fist of the North Star (Hokuto No Ken), which featured an extremely overweight martial artist also called Heart.

Version differences

  • Sammy "Skate" Hunter was renamed to Eddie "Skate" Hunter in the U.S. and European versions of the game.
  • Max Thunder, the hulking pro wrestler, doesn't appear in the 8-bit versions (Game Gear and SMS) of SoR2.
  • Only in the Japan version, the final boss smokes a cigar
  • In the US version, the jump kick animation of Blaze was changed. Originally her legs are wider apart and reveal her panties.

Awards

  • EGM
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Hottest Video Game Babe (Blaze)
    * Retro Gamer + September 2004 (Issue #8) – #64 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote) Information also contributed by [Luis Silva](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,61998/), [MasterMegid](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,44055/) and [Sciere](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,30979/)
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    Contributors to this Entry

    Game added by Satoshi Kunsai.

    Windows added by Duduzets. PlayStation 3 added by Lain Crowley. Nintendo 3DS added by Michael Cassidy. iPad added by Rik Hideto. Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. SEGA Master System, Game Gear added by RKL. iPhone added by Sciere. Linux, Macintosh added by Foxhack. Arcade added by Kohler 86. Wii added by gamewarrior. Android added by Deleted. Xbox 360 added by Ben K.

    Additional contributors: chirinea, Sciere, Alaka, lights out party, LepricahnsGold, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Thomas Thompson, Jo ST, Harmony♡.

    Game added June 7, 2002. Last modified March 25, 2024.