Poverty Game Night: Streets of Rage Remake

I should first say that Streets of Rage 2 is easily one of my favorite games of all time. The first Streets of Rage was okay for the time, and 3 was great even with Sega's seeming concentrated effort to destroy ruin the American version of the game. When I first heard about Streets of Rage Remake, I was interested, but having played quite a few fan-made beat'em ups like Beats of Rage, I wasn't particularly optimistic. I first played remake with version 4, which was pretty good. It was definitely the best fan-made beat'em up, but as a hardcore fan of the original series, I was annoyed by little details that were off. The newly released version 5, the final version, fixes pretty much every problem I had with it, and added a bunch of cool stuff.

My main problem with version 4 was the hit detection. The vertical size of hitboxes were too small, giving the enemies the ability to side step your attacks way too easily. While it was cool that the motorcycle stages, which were originally cut from Streets of Rage 3, were finished and put in the game, in version 4 they were too easy and kind of boring. The cool star system and X moves from 3 were missing. One thing that may have irked some people was the move re-balancing, making some characters better and toning other down, but I'm okay with this because we don't need another game where Axel is the only character that matters.

In the final version hit detection is spot on, the motorcycle (and now jet ski) levels are more interesting and difficult, and the star system and X moves have returned. The moves are still don't have the exact properties of the 2 or 3, but with the vast variety of characters, I'm okay with this. You can play as any playable character from the first three games including separate versions for characters that appeared in more than one of them, as well as some that are new and you'd never expect to play as, but I won't spoil it.

There are tons of levels. Every level from the original three games, including remastered versions of the original Streets of Rage, and brand new ones are available in a massive branching format. There are tons of great remixed songs for the different levels. There are tons of neat bonus things to unlock. Basically, I'm saying that the Bomber Games has created the ultimate version of Streets of Rage, and I want them to know that I love them. This post may seem to be glowing, but I can't help it. Sega may never give us Streets of Rage 4, but now we have this, and it's pretty much the best game in the best series of 2D beat'em ups ever.