A new entry in the Streets of Rage franchise is in development which is quite surprising, to put it mildly. This is because the last entry was released in 1994, making it almost 25 years between Streets of Rage 3 and the reveal of the new one, simply called Streets of Rage 4.
The first Streets of Rage, called Bare Knuckle in Japan, was released in 1990 for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. The game was Sega’s attempt at a 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up, a genre of games that was extremely popular during the late 80s and early 90s. These type of games put players up against a large group of enemies in unarmed combat, although some games would feature a variety of melee weapons. Levels would end with a boss after which you would advance to the next level.
The Street of Rage games did extremely well within the overpopulated genre despite being released towards the end of the genre’s lifespan. The series slowly faded from popularity alongside the entire genre disappeared towards the mid-90s as arcades were starting to become less popular and game developers started experimenting with 3D games.
Nowadays a lot of old genre’s and retro games are making a comeback due to crowdfunding efforts. This also led to a revival of the beat-em-up genre and we even saw a new entry in the Double Dragon series, although this attempt at reviving the popular beat-em-up was less than stellar. However, the genre is somewhat back in the spotlight and Sega is taking advantage of it.
Despite being a game that is being revealed almost 25 years after the original, it will feature the exact same main characters that it featured 15 years ago, called Alex Stone and Blaze Fielding. Besides this, not much is known about the new game. Sega has said that it will feature new mechanics, new enemies, various stages, and a fresh story but that really doesn’t give us a lot to go on. The only thing we saw in the trailer was the lady with snake wh0 appears to be an antagonist.
Streets of Rage 4 is being developed Lizardcube and is being published by Dotemu that have both worked on a game called Wonderboy that also featured gorgeous hand-drawn visuals, just like Streets of Rage 4 will have. There is no release date announced yet and it has also not been revealed on which platforms the game will be available.
