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[ Streets of Rage Menu ]

The game was welcomed by critics and gamers alike. It had good graphics for the time and showcased what the Megadrive was capable of. It also had superb sound, with the music provided by Yuzo Koshiro (who is a household name in Japan for his work in videogames). The music was and still is incredible, despite the fact that the Megadrive sound chip was infamously awful and very much inferior to that of the SNES.

The gameplay was nothing new; Streets of Rage is in many ways simply a Final Fight clone, although the game did introduce enough new elements into the usual beat 'em up formula to make it stand out. At the time however, it was easily the best side-scrolling beat 'em up on the system and was only surpassed by it's own sequels.

Streets of Rage more than made up for the absence of a Megadrive version of Final Fight (in fact it had a major advantage over the SNES conversion in that it had simultaneous 2 player) and performed well enough for Sega to start development on a sequel for release the following year...

• Streets of Rage was developed by many of the people from Team Shinobi, who were responsible for Revenge of Shinobi (which is one of the finest platformers ever made).

• Yuzo Koshiro was also responsible for music in Revenge of Shinobi (Genesis/Megadrive), Actraiser (SNES) and more recently Shenmue (Dreamcast).

• Yuzo Koshiro (or someone else on the team) was quite lazy with the SFX in Streets of Rage, as numerous sounds, such as the extra life sound, and also the game's font, are lifted directly from Revenge of Shinobi!

• Long-time gamers out there may remember E-SWAT (Enhanced Special Weapons And Tactics), an older Sega arcade title that was also converted to Megadrive. The police car that drives in & fires the rockets when a special attack is used is in fact the cyber-police from E-SWAT! Thanks to Joe Talledo for sending me this screenshot from the ending of the Megadrive conversion that proves this.

• Streets of Rage is rumoured to use a tweaked version of the engine used by the Genesis/Megadrive version of Golden Axe.

• Streets of Rage, along with fellow Sega classics Golden Axe & Revenge of Shinobi, was later put onto Mega Games 2; a three-in-one cartridge that was included with Megadrives in around 1993.

• The box art for the US/Euro release features the Empire State Building in the background. Thanks to Nestor J. Galeano for this.

• All versions of SOR/BK are multi-language and are not chiplocked to prevent use on machines from different territories. Change the country setting on your Megadrive (by fiddling with the insides) or your emulator to do this. Bare Knuckle 2 also does this, but the US/Euro versions of SOR2 are chiplocked (unless you have a hacked ROM like me...). Thanks to Azathoth for this.