At the risk of saying 'they don't make them like this anymore'....They DON'T make them like this anymore-they don't!

User Rating: 9.8 | Bare Knuckle II: Shitou no Chinkon Uta GEN
Streets of Rage 2

The Specs-
Platform: Megadrive\Genesis
Publisher: SEGA
Developer: AM7 (Overworks)
Battery Back-up Save: No
6-Buttton Support: No
Players: 2 (Versus\Co-op)

Genre: Side-Scrolling Beat ‘em-up
Learning Curve: 10-15 Minutes
Completion time: 1-2 Hours

Over a decade ago Streets of Rage appeared on the Megadrive as well as on the Master System and Gamegear, albeit in less flattering incarnations. What this game did that won over so many people was it got people easily hooked, made itself accessible and then had the same people go through the game multiple times exposing them to depth that was before the luxery of arcade gamers. Streets of Rage was different from the likes of Double Dragon and Final Fight though, it was a console game; it was meant to be completed. Then a year or so later Streets of Rage 2 surfaced (Bare Knuckle 2 in Japan) and it added greatly to the formula in dozens of ways.

Story
In the first SOR a city fell to its knees after a criminal Syndicate led by Mr. X took over, the police were too afraid to stand up to him. In the midst of this lawless land our heroes (Axel Stone, Adam Hunter and Blaze Fielding), perhaps ironically being 3 ex-cops , stepped up to the plate and attempted to eradicate the menace. They successfully did this but Mr. X wasn’t really defeated. Now he rises up again and kidnaps Adam. This forces Axel and Blaze into acting before the syndicate can get its grip around the city again. Joining them is the Adams speedy younger brother Skate Hunter (Sammy in the Japanese version), and a pro-wrestler called Max who happens to be Axel's friend.

Graphics
SOR2 is beautiful to look at, the first stage alone shows of brilliant display of colour, in spite of the Megadrives limited colour palette. The old cartoon type characters from the prequel are gone in favor of larger more realistic characters which are all well animated. The enemies also come in greater varieties this time, not only in appearance but in terms but in terms of strategies. The stages used to be simple affairs of progressing across a long horizontal street until the inevitable boss at the end, when you beat him you progressed to the next stage. SOR2 is different in that the stage shape is more varied, sometimes you’ll be required to go round corners of demented U-shaped streets or to move down a beach and then across an abandoned highway. On top of this single stages have now been separated into several subsections or acts. This has allowed AM7 to make the stages more varied within themselves; the 4th stage for instance starts on a pier, changes into a baseball field, then into a plummeting elevator and finally ends in a gladiatorial arena. There’re even some nice visual flourishes, like the way the overhead lights of a seedy bar illuminate you. Standard fare perhaps, but this was over a decade ago and it’s still astonishing to see such an old game looking this good. Previously Megadrive owners had to hang their heads in shame at their inferior versions of arcade brawlers, but now they had champion to make the bland locales of games like Captain Commando blush.

Sound
I feel sorry for Megadrive 2 owners I really do, as they won’t be able to sample the score of this game from the original models headphone port. The score itself is very impressive, the main theme tune recurs often in the game in various guises, the mark of a true theme tune is that it can be remixed to suit any emotion, here Yuzo Koshiro has outdone himself. He continues the trend of the first game with peppy but atmospheric tunes. As with the graphics the soundtrack is still surprisingly strong, the 2nd stage shows off a techno-industrial beat which when heard through headphones has background sounds flitting quickly between different speakers, the whole thing is just so ambient. The music even suits the mood impeccably, the music near the end of the game takes on a lower tone that makes you feel the fatigue of having battled as far as you have, makes you feel that you’ve come a long way, come so far that you can’t fail now.

Another little thing I’d like to mention how cleverly scripted the soundtrack is; normally when you clear an act the music continues until the next act is in play and then the music changes seamlessly via fade out. However when the next act is a boss battle the music fades out before the next act engages, leaving an ominous pocket of silence during transition. This game was as I have demonstrated so much beyond it’s time span that it still impresses today. The way a limited number of sound channels is used to full effect without making the soundtrack feel like it’s been strangled is truly remarkable.

Gameplay
This being a retro game means this was where the sales were, the fact that it was (and still is) an audio-visual marvel was just the icing on the cake. It’s no understatement to say that SOR2 is yet to be matched, games like Viewtiful Joe and to a lesser extent Ninja Gaiden rival it, but we’re talking direct comparison! When put up against games of similar ilk by proportional comparison there isn’t a game in existence that could come within 200 square miles of it. SOR2 sports many gameplay devices over its older brother (heck, it makes its older brother look like its younger sister). You use the A button the do special moves at the cost of some of your life meter, the B button is for your main attacks and the C button allows you to jump. The sheer number of moves that can be pulled off from 3 buttons makes modern button layouts seem wasteful, actions include; throwing weapons, flying kicks, back-attacks, throws, melee attacks and recovery landings. Some new additions include the ability for enemies to be able to pick up weapons, so you can use the new throw feature to dispose of any weapons you don’t want to use, and if you do want to use them you might want to use the shiny new samurai sword while you’re at it.

As I’ve mentioned the A button allows you to pull off special attacks, these replace the blitz attack that could only be used once per life in the original. These moves are very helpful as they can help you out should you get surrounded, they can also allow you to lay extensive amounts of damage onto single targets. Every character has a special move performed by pressing forward x2 + B which don’t cost energy but they have weaknesses, such as Blazes falling somersault smash which leaves her in the air vulnerable to uppercut attacks. What this does it that it encourages different strategies for different characters; the characters themselves are varied (variety would probably be the best way to sum up SOR2 over its predecessor) Axel is an all rounder, Blaze is orientated toward making multiple enemy attacks such as throwing enemies into eachother in a domino effect, Max is a slow power character whose best left waiting for his opponents to come to him, and Skate is the only character in the that can run and is well designed for hit-and-run guerilla strategies. The only thing that has really been changed is the partner vault, where once you could throw your partner at the enemies like a cannonball, this is no longer the case though as this will count as a real throw, but, your partner can still land the throw so this does encourage trust.

It looks like I started talking about the co-op mode, well I have to say that it really needs you to co-operate with each other and be able to gauge each others abilities as well as co-ordinate attacks, after all, throwing enemies around is good and all but not if you’re inadvertently throwing them into your partner. Unlike SOR1 the co-op mode isn’t an alternate mode where the game doubles its opponents to compensate for being at a disadvantage, the co-op mode works advantageously so the enemy count and difficulty is the same.

The only weakness here is the 2 player versus mode which just doesn’t work at all well, probably because when facing each-other the moves list seems limited, but this hardly damages the overall package and at least it acts as a good team practice mode.

Final Thoughts
I’ve left any negative points till here because to be frank there really aren’t any serious issues. The game doesn’t support the 6 button controller set-up (the controller may not have even existed at the time) and it lacks the option to reconfigure the controls, but the controls are so economically put together without sacrificing ease that the criticisms can be ignored (probably to the disgust of jealous SNES owners). The only other thing I can think of is that the scoreboard resets when the game it turned off due to lack of battery-back up (this is where SNES owners laugh) but your unlikely to be playing to achieve a higher score, rather just to do the game on the hardest difficulty with one life. This game really is about as good gaming gets; it even has an unlockable set of difficulty settings and has the usual level select.

Graphics-
If SOR3 hadn’t come along you wouldn’t have thought it could look any better.

Sound
SOR3 did come along here and obviously the composer must’ve had a mental breakdown as the 3rd games’ soundtrack sucked.

Gameplay-
Again SOR3 came along and added some great mechanics; shame SOR3 was so bloody hard though

Longevity-
Its been over 6 years for me and still going, retro games aren’t meant to completed once, they are supposed to be done until they pose no challenge whatsoever, SOR2 can hold you interest long enough to do this and is noteworthy for it. Given that the game is now only a few quid its hard to see how it isn't worth the money.

Overall-
This is about as good as it gets, and anyone who says different is either hell-spawn or a spoilt-brat.