What happened to beat em' ups?

[Exhuminator]

Besides the OSTs that everybody raves about, what makes Streets of Rage better than Final Fight? Like break it down technically or something. I never see anybody go into details about why they think it's the better series.

[nightrnr]

Gosh, I can't exactly put my finger on it, but SOR just plays better IMHO. It's a feel thing, like hit detection and combo flow. Plus, can't you do more in SOR, like hit an enemy a few times, then grab them, somersault over them, then suplex 'em.
SOR2/3 also had super moves and character variations of moves with weapons (I think, it's been awhile and I play SOR1 more than the others).
Just seems more satisfying.

I too, would love to hear a proper breakdown compare contrast of the 2 series.

Just preordered Paprium. Not sure that I needed to splurg for the limited packaging, but I do like the red US option.

[alienjesus]

Besides the OSTs that everybody raves about, what makes Streets of Rage better than Final Fight? Like break it down technically or something. I never see anybody go into details about why they think it's the better series.

I'll give you a few things off the top of my head. Bear in mind most of these things apply to 2 and 3, rather than 1.

1. Better enemy variety. Neither is overflowing with different enemies, but Streets of Rage 2 and 3 definitely have a selection of enemies that all feel really different, and more importantly, that often feel different to fight. Don't jump kick the bald guys, watch out for sliding kicks from the punks, the bikers will pick up pipes etc. I haven't played Final Fight 2 or 3, so no idea if those games are better than the first in that regard.

2. The characters feel more distinct. Not only to their stats feel more noticeably different than the rather similar feeling Cody, Haggar and Guy, but they also have very distinct movesets. The characters can do things the others can't, even in terms of controls. Only Max can jump whilst grappling an enemy, only Skate can throw enemies out of a vault or dash (at least in 2). Blaze uses the knife differently to everyone else, Max's weapon swings hit behind him too... there just feels like more distinction between characters.

3, Moveset variety. The list of moves you can pull off in Streets of Rage 2 onwards is more expansive than the basic attacks of Final Fight. There's dash attacks, throws, grapple combos, different grapple moves if you pause before attacking, different grapple moves from front and back, charge attacks, 2 special attacks, a backwards attack, a forward, forward B attack, you can throw weapons, there are 3 different jumping attacks, plus some characters have even more as mentioned. Streets of Rage gives you lots of options for crowd control, so it never feels too overwhelming or unfair when you're ganged up on. Speaking of which...

4. Streets of Rage enemies do reasonable amounts of damage because it's not an arcade quarter muncher. This is probably personal preference to some, but the enemies in Final Fight to ridiculous amounts of damage and I never felt truly able to deal with them in a fair way, especially single player. Streets of Rage 3 has the opposite problems of you not dealing enough damage so everything takes forever to kill, but thats stupid localisation decisions mainly - the original one was fairer in this regard.

5. Level diversity. Again, judging based on FF1 here, but I just feel like the levels in that game all merged together for me. Everything looked the same, even when the game did something different. I liked the Subway, but the rest all merge together for me, even the industrial level. Streets of Rage always manages to offer diverse environments that feel more memorable to me, and often have hazards to watch out for unique to those stages. Stages like the boat, the bridge and the elevator in Streets of Rage 1, the funfair, stadium and island in 2, and the underground railway and nightclub in 3 all feel much more memorable as environments in my eyes.

6. This one is obviously based on the console ports, so doesn't necessarily apply to the Arcade version of Final Fight, but Streets of Rage offering 2 player gameplay is obviously a major part of it's popularity compared to Final Fight. Final Fight's home may be the arcade, but most people who experience it will have played one of the home versions. Even on the versions where you could do 2 player (the lesser played Sega CD game, and the impractical GBA one), you still had that arcade difficulty which could put people off. In addition, from Streets of Rage 2 and 3 onwards, the games really looked impressive for their system. I consider this one a minor reason for me, but theres no doubt it will have influenced the series popularity.

7. The music's pretty great. So is the overall presentation, even in the graphically weaker first game. Stuff blowing in the wind, rain showers, the bobbing up and down of the boat. It all felt special. And, This is me being biased against Final Fight, probably from playing it later, but Final Fight's animation sucks. It feels like there's loads of frames missing from every animation as your characters go from standing to lying down in a piledriver motion or whatever instantly. Streets of Rage felt smoother for sure.

Just some of my thoughts. I'm an enormous SoR fan, and not much of a Final Fight one, so I'm sure people could dispute some of my points, but I feel I at least put the case forward.

[BogusMeatFactory]

@AJ

You summed this up perfectly. The unique movesets of characters from SoR 2 and on make the game a blast to play. I personally like SoR the most but nostalgia and music really factor into that splitting of hairs.

The feeling of impact is a big deal for me in games and streets of Rage does such a better job at presenting that impact.

Only gripe I have is the series needed more Adam! Adam 4 lyfe!!!!

[marurun]

Even the SOR1 characters have more moves than the FF1 guys.

The SOR series on the whole just features more varied combat, with more tools at your disposal to wield against a more diverse cast of enemies.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Even the SOR1 characters have more moves than the FF1 guys.

Yes they do! They have police car backup! Bazookas for the win!!

[Tanooki]

That whole list of reasons seems to fit Final Fight 3 quite well, but then again more people are less aware of that compared to the first which was an arcade hit. I never got anything out of SOR that FF3 didn't do as well if not better.

[Xeogred]

aj summed it all up perfectly. And since some of you are going on about nostalgia or whatever, like I've said I grew up a Nintendo kid and owned Final Fight, but always felt like I had the poor mans beat em up when many of my friends or uncle had SoR2-3. Everything about those games felt so much better, no arcade feels, etc. I've also talked around here about my love for smaller sprites and character sprites, I vastly prefer SoR's scaling to FF's huge sprites and look, you get to look at so much more of the awesome levels in SoR. The enemy and player variety, level variety, controls, the music, the graphics, being longer than FF2-3's super short length, some branching paths making replays more fun, etc... the difference is completely clear to me. SoR is sublime. And Streets of Rage Remake is one of the best fangames ever made, it's basically SoR4 with an insane amount of content and everything about it feels like an authentic release.

[marurun]

That whole list of reasons seems to fit Final Fight 3 quite well, but then again more people are less aware of that compared to the first which was an arcade hit. I never got anything out of SOR that FF3 didn't do as well if not better.

FF1 and FF2 were overly simplistic. FF1 was mostly notable in the arcade for the large characters, multiple enemies on screen, and the soundtrack, and the SNES version couldn't do the multiple enemies well at all (or even 2 players). SOR came along and while the characters were smaller, there were more enemies to contend with and you could have 2 players, the music was also great, if very different from Final Fight, and you had a larger, more varied move set.

When SOR2 came out it featured larger characters, still allowed for large numbers of enemies on screen, still allowed for 2 players, still had a great soundtrack, and expanded the move set and enemy variety greatly. Final Fight 2 came out a year later and did very little to improve upon the original Final Fight and was incredibly simplistic compared to the much more diverse SOR2.

Final Fight 3 came out the same year as Final Fight 2 and remedied most of what was lacking in Final Fight 1 and 2, but I would say at best the game managed to be about on-par with SOR2, which came out a year and a half earlier. When SOR3 came out in '94 it was only an incremental improvement on SOR2, but SOR2 had pushed the standard so far that SOR3 didn't really need to do much to still be fantastic.

tldr; I think Final Fight 3 is almost as good as SOR2 and SOR3, and Capcom certainly learned a lot from the SOR series, but Final Fight and Final Fight 2 are overly simplistic and simply don't hold up to the standard SOR set.

[Ack]

Is it really fair to compare only the first Final Fight to Streets of Rage 1, 2, and 3? Could anyone do comparisons of both full series?