AnchorCrab reviews Streets of Rage

I was once a columnist for the now-defunct Riders, Rangers, and Rambles website. This article, a review of the Sega Genesis game "Streets of Rage", was written as a sample of my writing when I first applied to be the site's gaming columnist. I never published it on the site, though, because my computer got a virus mere days after I submitted my application and the file was destroyed.
Luckily, my friend ShukuenShinobi, who was once the site's administrator, had a copy of my original application and he was able to send me a copy of this article. Really the article isn't that great. I've gotten better as a writer since then, but unfortunately that means that my old work is kind of crappy compared to what I write now. I guess some people might want to read it, though.

Okay, everybody, I'm going to tell you about a game that is near and dear to my heart. We're going to talk about Streets of Rage, published by Sega in 1991. It was originally called "Bare Knuckle" in Japan, but it was changed to Streets of Rage because you can add "of rage" to anything and it will sound cooler. When this game starts off, you discover that the city has been taken over by a vicious criminal syndicate. The police have been bought out, and thugs can roam the streets doing whatever they please. Only three young ex-cops, Axel Stone, Adam Hunter, and Blaze Fielding, can fight for justice on the streets... OF RAGE! Each of the three playable characters has their own statistics. Adam is the strongest, but he is slower than Axel or Blaze. Blaze can move faster and jump higher than the boys, but she isn't nearly as strong. Axel has good speed and attack, but he can't jump to save his life. I always pick Axel or Blaze because the combat (OF RAGE!) in this game is all about the fancy footwork. When you're surrounded by thugs, agility and evasion are of the utmost importance.

Speaking of thugs, the enemy selection in this game is diverse, but rarely threatening. The most common enemy is a guy with blue jeans, a jeans jacket, and safety-orange kneepads (of rage?). These guys run around with switchblades, but they feel the need to protect their knees? After every fight, do they say, "Well, he broke my nose, but at least I didn't skin my knees." Oh, and remember that the intro story said the police (OF RAGE!) had been bought out by the syndicate? Well, it turns out that this city's police force is made up entirely out of women in skin-tight vinyl uniforms and they use whips for weapons. Taxpayer dollars hard at work! Also, as is custom in side-scrolling beat-em-ups of this era, boss sprites are very detailed but at times oversized. The boss of stage four is a fat guy who is at least seven feet tall, upwards of 600 pounds, and he can run as fast as a car and breathe fire at the same time. I've always called him "Chief Burning Lard".

All these fights take place in eight glorious stages of 16-bit action. The backgrounds are always full of detail... sort of. Stage one is a city with neon signs (OF RAGE!) flashing in the background, and each sign is a bundle of Engrish goodness. The first sign you pass says "Pine Pot". What is that? Is it a bar that features the titular Pine Pot as their signature cocktail, garnished with pine needles? Is it a small, Mom-and-Pop restaurant that serves traditional Southern fried food? We shall never know. While you are on your journey of rage, you can break open objects like telephone booths and oil barrels to find healing items like apples and standard 16-bit pot roast as well as various melee weapons. Maybe if we sent fragile phone booths full of apples and lead pipes to third world countries, we could solve war and hunger at the same time. The natives could eat the apples and use the lead pipe of rage, undoubtedly the best weapon in the game, to defeat their nation's oppressive dictator. What a forward-thinking game Streets of Rage is!

Arguably, the best part of this game is the soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro. I just can't say enough good things about Yuzo Koshiro. He is a musical genius. If we lived in medieval times, kings and queens would invite Yuzo Koshiro to their court so he could play epic synthesized symphonies for them. If you can't play this game, at least look up the soundtrack on Youtube. My favorites are the songs for stage one, stage five, stage eight, and the boss theme. If you like those, and you will, just dig in to the whole thing. Put the music on your iPod. Play it as loud as you can, but try to resist the urge to turn into one of those douches that drives around with his windows down and his bass turned up. It will be hard, but you can do it.

After you have cleaned up the streets, smashed phone booths, listened to Yuzo Koshiro's awesome soundtrack, defeated the kneepad men and Chief Burning Lard; you may do the unthinkable and attempt to pass the gauntlet that is stage seven. Seven is my favorite video game cliche of all time, one that just might have originated with Streets of Rage but I'm not sure- stage seven is the elevator battle. If you don't know what the elevator battle is, I'll run it by you: your character starts on an elevator on the first floor. The elevator moves up the building, but at every stop a wave of powerful enemies gets on. Despite the gratuitous palette swapping of old enemies (Mr. Kneepads is a lot stronger in red), this level is great. After you reach the top floor, you feel like you've really accomplished something- but you haven't, not yet.

There is still stage eight, the penthouse of Mr. X, the mysterious leader of the crime syndicate that rules the streets. In this stage, you must fight palette swaps of all the previous bosses, even Chief Burning Lard. I recall that when I was young, I thought I might save all my special attacks for this stage so that I could use my full strength on Mr. X. This wasn't a ridiculous notion, either. Throughout the game, you have the opportunity to call a police car that can kill all enemies on screen with the grenade launcher of rage mounted to its roof. The number of times you can do this is limited, but this special attack can be used regardless of where you are. When I say regardless of where you are, I mean regardless of where you are. The beach on stage 3? No problem, it just steamrolls over those palm trees. The freight ship on stage 5? It drives across the ship's deck as if it was always there. The underground factory in stage 6? Yup, it just bulldozes over all the conveyor belts and trash compactors like nothing's there. Imagine my horror when I discovered that on stage eight, the final stage, the place where this attack is needed the most, it cannot be used at all. I had to fight through the stage the hard way, knowing that all the caution I had when going through the first seven stages was for nothing.

At the end, you get to punch the door to Mr. X's office off its hinges. He rises from his throne, cigar in his mouth, and draws a machine gun on you. You must kill a Steven Seagal lookalike wielding an AK-47 and you have to kill him with just your bare knuckles... of rage! I don't want to spoil the ending because I hate spoilers, but let's just say justice was served and the heroes celebrated by having a nice dinner at the Pine Pot.

So, the bottom line is that every gamer should play this game. Even if you don't have a Sega Genesis, Streets of Rage is available for download on the Wii's virtual console and it is bundled with Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. Even if you don't have one of those consoles, check out the soundtrack! It is available for download on iTunes for just six dollars, just look up Yuzo Koshiro's name and you should be able to find it. You can sample the music and watch playthroughs on Youtube if you're on the fence.

And the moral of this story? If the government invested its revenue more wisely, we would have grenade firing all terrain police cars. The meth problem would be solved in less than a week.

-AnchorCrab