Some will insist there are more challenging games, longer games, more varied games, and less linear games than Streets of Rage 2- and they would be right on all accounts. Streets of Rage 2 was not revolutionary, but rather a well tuned classic from day 1, a work of casual arcade brilliance, meant to be played out in one sitting. While other designers were focusing on making games more accessible to players by adding save functions and level select screens, the Streets of Rage 2 team instead focused on making an accessible and re-playable arcade game without betraying the ethos of the genre.



The game itself is simple. So simple I’ll enumerate all of the moves below. For those of you who have never played a beat ‘em up, I’ll explain. You are a person. You have health. Other people want to kill you, but it’s not your fault. Your only recourse is to kill them first. You can do this in a variety of ways. If you are hit, you lose health, if you hit your enemies, they lose health. Your health can be restored, and you have multiple lives.

The game was developed for Sega, so it was played on one of those old Sega controllers with a directional pad and three buttons along a slight diagonal axis, A, B, and C.
I play now on a Mac with a USB Xbox 360 controller (which, in my opinion, is one of the best controllers ever made if you have large hands – along with the fantastic but non-USB gamecube controllers)

Directional Pad: Move left, right, up or down in the isometric 2D space.
A: Special attack that consumes your health when used.
B: Normal Attack.
C: Jump.
Hold Over (Left or Right) + A: Directional special attack – also consuming your health.
Hold B for a few seconds, then release: Alternative normal attack.
Over, Over, B: Strong normal attack.
Hold B + C: Reverse normal attack (hit behind you without turning around). Throws a weapon if you are holding one.
C, B: A jump attack.
Over + C, B: A directional jump attack.
Over + C, Hold Down + B: A downward air attack
Hold Up + Hold C: Land on your feet if you are thrown.
Directional Pad (Near enemy): Grab, if you walk up to an enemy without being hit

That may seem like a lot at first glance, but compare this to the dizzying array of moves for a combative game like Street Fighter and you’ll see why I call it a casual game. You can learn all the moves by playing in around 10 minutes. Also, the moves are equivalent for all of the characters, although each character has certain strengths and weaknesses.
Along similar lines, there are only a handful of power-ups. An apple for partial health, a turkey for full health, and a couple of weapons: the knife, the sword, the kunai, and the pipe. As an aside, few moments in modern video games compare with the thrill of acquiring the pipe in Streets of Rage 2.

The beat ‘em up generally utilized one core mechanic above all others to create a fun gameplay experience – cooperative play. Maybe this was because of limitations in hardware capability, or maybe it was simply a different mindset of the designers, encouraged by some sort of early 90′s zeitgeist, but cooperative games were designed around player – player interaction first. Compare that to the way co-op modes are developed on many current generation titles, where co-op is an added feature to the highly perfected single player game – and you’ll realize exactly how radical a cooperative game is from today’s perspective.
It might be argued that the mechanics of a video game circa 1992 are so simple, the differences between single player and multiplayer are trivial; however, the end result is that the cooperative gameplay in Streets of Rage 2 feels more complete than the single player mode. I can only imagine this is not an accident, but rather a design choice blossoming from the arcade tradition into the brilliant flower of head smashing, knife throwing and pipe wielding pleasure that is Streets of Rage 2.

The beauty is in the balance. By keeping the levels, enemies, and moves all very simple – strategy and action become a fluid stream of consciousness, directly from your brain, through your controller and enacted as the mayhem on screen.

In cooperative mode, each player must choose a different character, and while generally the moves are the same, the results are very different. Axel has a strong Over, Over, B attack, where Max has devastating grabs, Blaze has decent air attacks, and Skate is very agile and good at combos and grabbing. Each has enemies they can easily defeat, and some who are nearly impossible. Each zone gradually introduces new enemies with new abilities, and then the rest of the levels pair interesting combinations of enemies to create new tactical challenges. The designers were able to make a remarkably asymmetric game hidden within simple controls and mechanics.
This leaves players in a situation where they need each other to survive, or at least to thrive. Left4Dead has recently been revered for this very mechanic. It’s understandable why many studios aren’t willing to go this route anymore (it took Valve purchasing an indie to get us Left4Dead). Unless each character has a separate single player campaign, you end up with a great cooperative game that has a rotten single player mode thrown in.

Even on the most challenging difficulty setting, Mania, (unlockable by holding A + B on controller 2 while selecting the options menu with controller one) – Streets of Rage 2 is a challenging game, but not frustratingly so. The mode has been balanced well, although if you are aiming to beat it, I’d recommend giving yourself 9 lives, (also unlocked in the options menu with Mania). Most importantly, Streets of Rage 2 wasn’t embarrassed by it’s brevity – and therefore didn’t attempt to ‘make it last longer’ by increasing the difficulty ad absurdum and breaking the gameplay : read – Contra… up up down down left right left right b a
In fact, probably the best part is that the game can be completed in around an hour or two, and because of its relative simplicity, Streets of Rage 2 makes a great party game, even, and especially after you’ve had a few too many with some old friends.