Mr Fist, meet Mr Face
It may well be considered one of the greatest beat-em ups ever but, like an elderly donkey, that doesn't really carry as much weight as it used to. Like the dinosaur, side scrolling kick-em-in-the-face-ups went extinct almost over night. And with good reason. As a genre, beat-em ups were prone to over repetition, punishing difficulty, and supremely shallow gameplay. Streets of Rage 2 is one of the greats because it manages to avoid those pitfalls, mostly because it was designed for home consoles first and foremost, not as a money eating arcade machine.
It may dodge the gameplay hazards that waylaid other brawlers, but Streets of Rage 2 wanders straight into the one signposted 'god awful plot'. Mr X, the tommy-gun wielding dirtbag from the first game, is back! This means that Axel & co a) forgot to hand him over to the police after kicking the crap out of him and b) didn't bother to dismantle his massive crime syndicate. Those absent minded knuckle heads. In true Double Dragon style, Mr X has also played the kidnap a loved one card; in this case it's Adam, one of the heroes from the first game, who's on bound and gagged duty.
But then, when did a beat-em up plot do anything more than give a bare bones context to the impending face-breaking? The lack of Adam introduces two new characters to the fray: Max, a pro-wrestler who, rather marvellously has decided to clean up the streets in his tights; and Skate, the younger brother of Adam, who kicks people in the head while wearing roller blades. Axel and Blaze return from the first game, to round out the quartet. The characters have very obvious differences, with Max being the lumbering powerhouse, Skate being speedy yet quite feeble, and the other two falling somewhere in between.
One character notable by their absence is the bazooka wielding, cruiser driving back up guy. Gone is the ability to call down fiery death from the sky; now each character has a pair of special moves. As per beat-em up tradition, the special moves wreck havoc on groups of enemies but drain the character's life bar. Throwing in the 'semi-special' moves activated by tapping either left or right twice then hitting the attack button, grapple moves, throws, and flying kicks, gives you a lengthy moves set. At least for a side scrolling beat-em up.
Having a decent number of attacks available helps keep things interesting, but what really helps stave off tedium are the varied levels and the healthy mix of scumbags you'll face within them. The stages and baddies are where Streets of Rage 2 hints at a knowing sense of humour. Before you'll finally get to loosen Mr X's teeth, you'll fight through a theme park complete with a pirate ship ride (filled with ninjas, in a nice piece of Internet pop culture foreshadowing) and Aliens inspired haunted house, a baseball stadium that boasts a lift down to an underground fighting ring, and a full blown munitions plant. The goons filling the levels take the wacky baton and run with it: you'll be bruising your knuckles on guys with jet packs; obese, halitosis suffering trucker cap wearers; bikers with black metal shoulder pads; boxers in Victorian bathing costumes, and over muscled Ultimate Warrior clones. Inevitable the same enemies will crop up again and again – it's the nature of the beast- but new enemies are introduced at a steady enough pace to keep things from getting tiresome.
The Live Arcade release doesn't mess around with the core Streets of Rage 2 experience, but does modernise it slightly. While Streets of Rage 2 still looks pretty decent, you can opt to smooth out the graphics, which does take off the rougher edges but makes the characters look as if they're made from some particularly shiny pieces of plasticine. The Megadrive version had some of the best audio of the 16-bit era and the Live Arcade release retains it all, from the dreadful yet paradoxically marvellous midi music to the incredibly satisfying cracks and thumps of combat.
Like most side scrolling beat-em ups, cracking skulls with a friend is where the real fun is. The 360 version of Streets of Rage 2 offers on and offline co-op. Obviously you're at the mercy of the quality of the connection but the online co-op is smooth and relatively lag free. The versus mode has also gone online but suffers from a huge amount of lag. Not that it's a big problem: the versus mode wasn't particularly fun in 1993, and it's even less entertaining now.
Time has been kind to Streets of Rage 2. It was one of the finest beat-em ups to grace the 16-bit era and it still holds up fourteen years on. With side scrolling punchers enjoying a bit of a renaissance on Xbox Live Arcade, it's only right that one of the greats should make its way onto the service.