Streets of Rage (1991) by Sega
Anyhow one Christmas in the early 90's my older brother Will, managed to convince my Mom and Dad to buy a second hand Megadrive for him, me and my little brother Pete as a joint present. I don't know how he persuaded them as I think they were dead set against the idea, and my sister, Mariah, was protesting all the while that the fighting games would encourage our persistent 'rough-housing'. Well she is still like that today and has said that her children will never be allowed to play games.
The Megadrive my mom found was a second hand one from the free ads in the local paper. Will later told me that when he went with Mom to buy the thing it turned out to be the house of a guy he knew from school. It seems this kid's mom was selling his Megadrive as some sort of punishment. One month before Christmas too, harsh. While that guy may not have had such a good holiday, we certainly did. The games that came with it were Altered Beast (I think this was bundled with the system at launch), Sonic the Hedgehog and our favorite, Streets of Rage.
It might have been me being five or the state of games back then, but I had never played anything so violent before. In Alex the Kid you could sort of punch enemies, and in Sonic you could jump on them but these were clearly kids games, in Streets of Rage you could leather the stuffing out of everyone on the street. To my brothers and I, at that age, that was bliss. Unlike most of the games I had played up until that point, we could also play two player. I think Pete and I must have finished the game around a hundred times together, it probably is the single thing that we have spent the most amount of time ever doing together.
There was a choice of 3 characters Axel (the white guy), Adam (the black guy) and Blaze (the girl). In our house everyone always wanted to play as Blaze for some reason, I think we thought she was faster or something. But the more we played the game the more I came to focus on the details. Every detail in this game was brilliant.
I remember thinking that I liked the music on this game better than anything I heard on Top of the Pops, the team up attacks where one player could throw another tumbling into the enemies, the pepper pot which could be smashed and cause mass sneezing fits, the special attack where on pressing the A button everything would freeze then a police car rush up 100 feet behind you and a guy would fire an RPG into the air, raining down flaming lava onto the helpless punks surrounding you, the boss with claws that went mental if you jumped, that fat guys that breathed curry breath, being able to punch a phone booth over to find a whole roast chicken underneath then eating the whole chicken and the plate it was sitting on in one gulp (this is still how I eat my food now) and possibly the best part of the game...
When you reached the end of the final level, having battled all the way through 8 stages of a hard game with your little brother, once you reach the final boss 'Mr. X' he offers you a choice. Each player may choose to join or not, if they disagree then they must fight to the death. Truly an ending of Shakespearean proportions.
After a couple of months playing this I think my brother Will got tired of us on it all the time and so one Saturday he took it into town without telling us and traded it in for Dick Tracy... which sucked.
Streets of Rage was clearly a product of its time and certainly would not work the same way or have the same impact if it were released today, I generally believe that games should have moved passed brawny guys hitting each other with lead pipes, at least in a non-ironic way, but then again you only have to look at Gears of War to see how little things have changed. What makes Streets of Rage stick in my mind was the charm of its finer details.
Appendix (for those that know the games well)
Yeah, the second one had nicer graphics and a better variation of enemies and wasn't so clunky, but they stripped out all of the good special attacks, the pepper pot, the boomerangs, the shameless asset re-using of the 'Blaze twin' bosses and the ending. The brilliant ending, my brother and I would always try to fool each other over which choice we were planning to make. Skate is tedious and Max is too macho.
No, I didn't like the 3rd one much, Axel looked retarded, they had too many guns in it, Zan had a weird mustache, fuck that kangaroo and the weird cut scenes highlighted the ridiculousness of the story, just don't draw attention to it and people are less likely to be bothered about why three ex-cops are walking through the city beating up everyone in their way. Its one saving grace was perhaps making Shiva grumble something that sounded like "fido grass" in a gravelly farmer's accent when you did a slide kick.
There are various fan made squeals and other bits and bobs around. If you are interested you can find more here:
http://www.bombergames.net
http://www.streetsofrage.net/
