Streets of Rage for the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis is one of those games that illicits a strange perverse reaction in a small and marginalized portion of the gaming community. Sadly, on December 6th, 1991- I became one a member of said outcasts.

You see, once upon a time I was addicted to the little Capcom game that could: I'm talkin' about Final Fight. I pumped quarters into that baby so fast I probably financed a portion of Street Fighter II development (uncredited), thus ensuring my ultimate submission to hardcore gamer-dom. Soon after its release, I spent an entire lunch hour beating it singlehandedly. It was an exhilarating experience and I won't ever forget how empty I felt inside once I had done it. I needed to beat up some more gang-members.

Back to that faithful day... This guy who had a Sega Genesis at his house invited me over. I thought he was an asshole. *I* was holding out for a Super Nintendo for Christmas and no Altered Beast was going to convince me otherwise. But he had something I wanted: A fresh side-scrolling beat-em-up. At the time, I had no idea who Yuzo Koshiro was or did I care that I was playing a Sega Genesis- all I knew was that at face value, Streets of Rage delivered. I had a fantastic time, and furthermore, managed to bond with some jerk that owned a Sega Genesis.

History aside, time has not been good to Streets of Rage.

Graphics were never this game's strong suit. It might have been able to hide behind the feeble RF signal, but these days, on the Wii the extra sharpness of the Virtual Console emulation reveals a muddy and washed out look that can only be created by a perfectly emulated Genesis color palette. Each sprite is recreated in horrifying detail and graphical elements are re-used constantly. There's not much graphical variety here, and 15 years later I'm still pretty disappointed.

There are 8 levels and some of the bosses are pretty weak. If you've been to Double Dragon and Final Fight school, you will barely take a hit in some boss-fights. I even believe some first-timers would be bored stiff by level 3. The pace of the game is rarely frantic and seems to have a slower pace than other beat-em-ups. Maybe its just the trippy music.

Which reminds me, let's talk about the good things.

The music in Streets of Rage is quite enjoyable, demonstrating fine quality and a techno soundtrack that still sounds great today. At a time when most video games featured rudimentary and mostly annoying music, Yuzo Koshiro had amazingly created a soundtrack worthy of a CD purchase! Let me tell you, busting heads and breaking bones is all the more intensified by the warm techno playing in the background. The music in Streets of Rage is pure joy, in stark contrast to whiny synthetic musical efforts of other beat-em-ups.

Streets of Rage plays really well. The Wii-mote is responsive, although I find the placement of the 'A' button makes it awkward to use your special move. Otherwise, my memory returned rather quickly after a few early scraps in the first level, and soon I was pulling all the moves again, intuitively getting it as I went. Trust me, I wouldn't bother busting out a Classic Controller on this one.

Game Breakdown

Ingredients

Execution

It doesn't get any better than that folks, but for good measure the game doses out a healthy supply of auxiliary weapons for a little virtual violence. This is a small diversion for a game that has almost no replay value. In the end its nothing more than a lame Final Fight clone that manages to transcend its twisted inception and play it cool enough to be endearing- 15 years ago.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend blowing 8 smackers on this slightly above-average VC-ROM. There's just not much here for the 21st century gamer. However, in you're into nostalgia like me, you might want to look into this game- but personally I'm going to regret my purchase right up until Streets of Rage 2 is re-released.