Streets Of Rage 1 2 and 3

[ApolloBoy]

In fact, remove the amazing soundtrack from SOR1 and I'd rate ALL of the final fight games as better, especially 3

Even the incredibly-gimped SNES port of the first game?

[Krejlooc]

Nobody ever gives the sms port of streets of rage 1 any love. It gets lumped in with the awful game gear port, except its an entirely different port made especially for the sms. It is one of the finest downports ive ever played and by far the best 8-bit beat em up on any console. A true sms gem that gets no love,

[Luke]

You guys are crazy calling SOR1 better than the rest. It's the weakest in the series by a country mile. Aside from the music, and that cool little cop car special, it's got NOTHING on the sequels.

That's what all arcade style games are about, the one life run.

What SOR has is being a better game. More characters? Heh. More moves? heh. More megs? Heh. A gamer does not crave these things.

Nonsense on the one life run. If the SOR series was meant to be played with only one life, that's what they would have given you or at least make it an option.

[TheRev]

that's a cop out. Try clearing the last 4 stages of Streets of Rage 2 with either

A) 1 life
B) No Continues

Go do it NOW NOW NOW!

[TheSegaSaturnGuy]

I am a die hard fan of the Streets of Rage series. My favorite being Streets of Rage 1 for the Game Gear. When I was growing up I was a Sega boy so I played Streets of Rage diligently. As far as console versions go I actually liked SoR2 the best. I owned this one for a good while before I got the first. As far as im concerned the SoR series is one of the best side scrolling beat em' ups ever released. I liked it well enough to purchase SoR 2 on the Xbox Live Arcade and I still play it many times a week.

[TheRev]

I plan to get the Sega Classics collection of Streets of Rage on XBLA, and I already have Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection AND Streets of Rage 2 on XBLA

[Gamerforlife]

You guys are crazy calling SOR1 better than the rest. It's the weakest in the series by a country mile. Aside from the music, and that cool little cop car special, it's got NOTHING on the sequels.

That's what all arcade style games are about, the one life run.

What SOR has is being a better game. More characters? Heh. More moves? heh. More megs? Heh. A gamer does not crave these things.

Nonsense on the one life run. If the SOR series was meant to be played with only one life, that's what they would have given you or at least make it an option.

I'm not sure if you're joking about the "a gamer does not crave these things." part. If it's not what YOU crave. Fair enough, I never found myself wanting to replay SOR, but I've played through SOR2 dozens of times, and it's not even one of my favorite beat 'em ups, but it was good enough to invest lots of time into

ALL beat 'em ups are meant to be played with one life, or at the very least one credit i.e. no continues. Nobody wants to say this because honestly, most people are too lazy to learn the game well enough to do that. It's just easier to burn through all your extra lives and continues and then hypocritically criticize the game for being too easy. As if anyone who couldn't beat the game on one life can truthfully claim to have easily overcome the game's challenges. Most console beat 'em ups can be beaten by ANYONE simply because they can just burn through extra lives and continues and rely on instant respawns to get them through the game. Anybody can do that. It's the scrubs path to victory, and that's the truth, even though I know it'll probably piss off some people who read this.

That's why I get annoyed when reviewers bash a beat 'em up for being too easy, when they just play through with infinite credits. Those same people say the games are repetitive. Well sure, if you're just mashing the same buttons all day rather than learn to play skillfully because you know you can just rely on all your extra lives and continues to win. Of course, it will seem repetitive. Reviewers who do that always annoy me because it's like they never really played the game. A ten year old kid who beats an arcade game in the 90s after spending ten bucks on it certainly isn't good at the game. He basically bribed his way to victory by continuously giving the game more money to let him respawn infinitely. It's victory by attrition.

Now I know I'll get some disagreement on that, but I firmly believe it. If you can't one life a beat 'em up, you didn't really beat it. This is why the genre typically doesn't get more respect, because you never really learn how to play it properly if you don't put that restriction on yourself, and thus you never appreciate its depth or the level of skill it requires. One of my favorite past times is watching skillful players do this very thing in various beat 'em ups on youtube using different strategies that I didn't even know about.

[BogusMeatFactory]

This is why the genre typically doesn't get more respect, because you never really learn how to play it properly if you don't put that restriction on yourself, and thus you never appreciate its depth or the level of skill it requires.

Not to completely derail the thread, but this statement right here rings true, not only for the beat-em-up genre, but for every single videogame out there. There was a rhyme and reason for the way things were built and if players failed to recognize it, they could never fully grasp the enjoyment or point of the game in the first place.

That is the problem with a lot of modern games; they hold your hand and homogenize the gameplay to make it as simple and easy as possible and it gets eaten up voraciously. I am a fan of challenge. Call me old fashioned.

[Gamerforlife]

In fact, remove the amazing soundtrack from SOR1 and I'd rate ALL of the final fight games as better, especially 3

Even the incredibly-gimped SNES port of the first game?

That's a fair point. I forgot how they removed Guy as well as co-op. The game still had better sound and graphics than SOR1 though. Plus bonus stages, but it's still roughly on par with SOR1 overall. The original arcade version of FF is better than SOR1 in my opinion though, which is a point worth making when you consider that SOR1 was eventually released into arcades.

SOR2 is when the series really started kicking the Final Fight series' ass in my opinion. It was a total overhaul of the first game and one of the most ambitious sequels ever, while Final Fight 2 was just a safe, comfortable rehash of the first game.