Streets of Rage 4

I absolutely agree with this. It's the SoR equivalent of Classic Sonic physics. Do it wrong, and it's glaringly noticeable to the anybody with more than a passing familiarity with the original games.

 

Extensive behind the scenes feature from Nintendo Life here: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/09/feature_behind_the_scenes_on_streets_of_rage_4_the_sequel_we_thought_wed_never_see
New preview and impressions from US Gamer here: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/streets-of-rage-4-preview

Nintendo Life's feature in particular has loads of new info, such as them knowing how important the music for the game is, with an announcement coming "soon" in addition to more revelations like whether the police car assistance feature will return (it probably will) and whether Mr. X will be the nemesis (probably not by the sounds of it). Also to anyone having reservations about the engine those concerns seem unfounded as Guard Crush have been working for ten years on perfecting beat em up engines and it sounds like they intend to use that to create one hell of an engine for this game.

Might not have covered everything there so I highly recommend reading the full feature. US Gamer basically said "we were sceptical upon announcement, but we played it and it's awesome" and that's about it, outside of indicating the game is releasing in 2019 at the end of the article (could just be conjecture, rather than say hard confirmation of the actual release timeframe). Either way the game seems to be shaping up well. I'm still waiting on whether Koshiro will be coming back for the music, but it does seem like the perfect developers are making this and the game should turn out great. Hopefully.

Also there is one big revelation in the Nintendo Life feature that DotEmu wants to continue to work with Sega and resurrect more Sega franchises after this with games like Alex Kidd namedropped. They want to make SOR4 as awesome as possible so Sega agrees to work with them again. Sega fans have a bright future it seems.

 

Personally I want a 3D Bonanza Bros 2 using the classic late 80s Pixar style />

Easy way for Mr.X to come back: That wasn't his brain! :p Alive (full bodied) and staying in the shadows in BK3 is my personal headcanon there.

 

Isn't that Mr. X's face on those dollar bills in the wallpaper?

I'm sure he will at least have some relationship to the primary antagonist.

 

I think it's all down to their marketing master plan - as in they intentionally showed off a glimpse of the game and are withholding key details to keep the hype going up until release. For example, in that Nintendo Life behind the scenes feature they also noted that we're definitely getting more than just Axel and Blaze as characters, more than likely the traditional four, but that didn't stop endless speculation that they were the only ones that were going to be in the game. Same goes for the music. They intentionally withheld details including Yuzo Koshiro's strongly hinted potential involvement to save it for a later announcement (that's supposedly coming soon). When asked about the police car assistance they were coy, neither confirming nor denying it - and same goes for Mr. X. If he's on the dollar bills that heavily infers he's the prime nemesis - potentially in a far higher and scarier position than he ever was in the original series.

But again when directly asked about him they wouldn't reveal whether he's in the game or not - when odds are he probably is. It wouldn't be a Streets of Rage game without him and they are ardently adhering to the spirit of the original games here. They're intentionally being coy to catalyst hype and it's because of marketing. Evidently what they want to do is schedule a series of announcements for things like additional characters and the much-wanted confirmation of who's doing the music (God I hope it is Koshiro) to make sure interest stays there up until release. It's quite clever - and far more effective than just announcing everything instantly which could have led to the game being forgotten until release. Streets of Rage always had far greater sales potential than their last game, Wonder Boy, with Streets of Rage 2 in particular selling millions, so it appears they're trying to capitalise on that. They really want this game to be a huge success.

That said, everything I've read from people who have played the early build indicate the game's fucking awesome, even in these early stages. So I have faith it will turn out excellent, hopefully.

 

Wrote a very supportive and glowing feature/preview of the game that whilst holds no new revelations does serve as a decent summation of everything we know about the game so far. Wanted to support this awesome project and the developers, and keep the hype going as I'm beyond excited for the game, as a die-hard Sega fan from the old days. It's here for anyone that wants to read it:

https://www.pwrdown.com/gaming/streets-of-rage-4-is-beyond-awesome/

 

Yuzo Koshiro just did a Streets of Rage concert and confirmed in an interview he has been talking to the Streets of Rage 4 developers. So his soundtrack is almost confirmed!

The devs also tweeted about his concert so something is happening: https://twitter.com/lizardcube/status/1045415161870393344

 

I recorded the Twitch stream of the concert + interview, and I'm currently in the process of uploading it to YouTube.

It's a fantastic show and more people need to be able to watch it.

Upload:

[video]http://youtu.be/mW03QgubN0M[/video]

 

Thanks for posting this. Wouldn't have seen it otherwise! The soundtrack question and answer is here:

Reading between the lines it sounds like multiple composers with potentially Koshiro among them. Perhaps they're still in negotiations as Koshiro himself hinted at his concert? They do also say they'll be showing more of the game soon and the soundtrack announcement is also near on the horizon - so guess we should all stay tuned.

 

The silence has been broken and the marketing seems to have restarted. "More to come very soon":

https://twitter.com/lizardcube/status/1077234351455248384

Presumably more at the dawn of the new year. That promised soundtrack announcement (Koshiro?) should be coming soon also.

 

New screenshots via IGN here including a new snippet of the game in action that looks right out of Streets of Rage 1.

More screens at the link. Game is looking much better. Seems to echo those neon night streets that are signature Streets of Rage much more now. Love these. Thoughts?

 

I... think there's something off about the animations. They look great in general but then there's these super slow frames that look really choppy.

Regarding the backgrounds, it's probably due to it being a work in progress, but there's some very odd contrast between the decayed/destroyed store fronts and the Photoshop-clean signs.

 

Guard Crush have somewhat of a juggle fetish. That's pretty obvious from their previous output.

I only hope it's not too much and doesn't ruin things

I can't put my finger on what's making look a bit off, but I think it might be how the hits impact... SoR II had a far crunchier impact with a bit of a pause to every hit, whilst SoRIII had next to none and often it felt like you were hitting things with a wet fish - this seems to be taking a cue from the latter, which is a shame as I always thought SoR II had it nailed in that respect.

EDIT: The 60fps gif on Twitter does make it look a whole lot better, actually...

https://twitter.com/Dotemu/status/1078703021167656960

 

This is looking gorgeous. Really can't wait to hear the accompanying tunes.

 

While I do like the look of things I can't help but think I've seen it all before with the same enemies from previous games. This is fine as a remake but this is Streets of Rage 4. I would like to see new stuff for the sequel please.

 

I wouldn't mind if they just stuck with tradition and gave the old punks some new moves, and added a bunch of new enemies to the roster. It's pretty much what the sequels did anyway.

I'm guessing the SWAT guy is a mid boss of some kind and the snake lady is an end of level boss. I'm also hoping they take their cue from 1 and 2 and have the bosses turn up as regular enemies in later stages, something that was missing in 3 (apart from the flock of Robo.X's in the lab stage but that doesn't really count).

 

It does run the risk of looking more like "Streets of Rage HD Remix" than "Streets of Rage 4".

I mean I suppose you could argue it's the same "streets" so you're not going to get wildly different scenery, but if Axel has changed his clothes and grown a beard, you'd think some of the enemies would too.


But then again I guess it depends what you want from a sequel. My feeling is that the reason Streets of Rage was successful, is because it looked at all the established beat-'em-ups of the time (or at the very least, Final Fight) and said "we can do better". And then they did. I'm not convinced this iteration is following the same mindset.



You know what would be sweet and innovative and something all games with reasonable budgets should be trying to do? Not have two enemies look the same. You can give them the same movesets and have them look similar for sure, but there's no reason in 2018 why everyone should have the same hairdo and wear the same clothes. Particularly if you're going to give each one a name anyway.

(this isn't unique to SoR4 btw - I was annoyed when Assassin's Creed Syndicate (which is the latest one I've played) pulled the "all brutes are fat and bald, all snipers are thin women with top hats" card. Get a bit of rand()/RAND_MAX in there)

 

A great example of this would be Cadillac's and Dinosaurs as that game does exactly this.