So it was announced today there'll be no Naganuma on the soundtrack after all due to schedule complications. There goes my dream of seeing two of my favourite SEGA franchises collide in some small way. On the plus side, they announced their full sound team in addition to the composers mentioned previously, including Final Fight veteran Harumi Fujita among others.
Entire composers cast and tracklist has been unveiled (careful about some spoilerific titles) : http://www.bravewave.net/streetsofrage4/ost Out of the 35 tracks, Olivier Deriviere composed 17, Yuzo Koshiro composed 5, Motohiro Kawashima composed 5 too, the rest is all made by the various guests. You can also listen to some on that Soundcloud account : https://soundcloud.com/dotemu-games/ You can also hear other tracks on that video:
That's awesome but... I think I'll wait until the game is out until I listen to the music. No need to spoil any of it in advance.
Trophies have appeared online, which generally means the game is close to gold state and release. I do not recommend watching them though as they have 2 big spoilers. Game has 38 trophies, they are mainly related to how many hits you can do in a combo, S ranks and also beat the game with each character individually.
Seeing as the retro characters come with the SoR2 sound effects and voices, I hope the option is there to use them for the normal versions too. I'm not too keen on the way the retro characters seem to play though, a bit MUGEN-y chop-and-paste-animations-to-make-something-else for my liking, especially Shiva. They seem to have re-done SoR4 Axel's GRAND UPPAH voice too, right at the start of the video. Also, the release date got leaked: April 23rd. Which means this old standard reply to everyone on the Bombergames forum asking when Remake would be released is now relevant again:
While I think it's awesome that we're able to play as many different characters, the sprites just look out of place from the game's art style. :S I love the option to change the music to SoR 1 and 2's soundtrack though! I'm debating on getting a physical copy or digital... It really comes down to what console I want to play it on, and unfortunately I was kind of wanting to get the game on Xbox One, but of course there isn't a physical copy of that version. >_> So I might get it for the PS4...
This. As nice as the new art is, it just doesn't fit the style of the originals. The retro mode feels more like 'proper' SoR, but I wish they have pixel versions of all the background and enemies (like they did in Wonderboy).
Wonder Boy is a bit of a different case, though, since that was a remake of an existing game with existing pixel art for pretty much all of the sprites/backgrounds - I think Wonder Girl was the only "new" element in pixel-art form, and even then she's a sprite edit of the hero from the original. By contrast, these unlockable characters are very much an extra in what's otherwise a brand-new entry in the series, featuring brand-new stages, characters etc. To do what you're suggesting would have involved creating brand-new pixel-art versions of all the stage backgrounds, plus any new enemies/bosses and all five of the main SoR4 characters - basically doing most of the art in the game twice in two different styles, which isn't really feasible in the same way Wonder Boy was. The other alternative would have involved drawing any additional characters in the same hand-drawn art style as the rest of the game, but the amount of additional artwork this would have required probably means it would have been unfeasible to include most of the different variants of Axel/Blaze etc. I am wondering if we'll see Ash or Roo/Victy appear as well, though - it's interesting that, if they were included, it'd make the character select perfectly symmetrical by adding two more slots to the SoR3 side. Wonder if that's just coincidence, or if they're saving them as a surprise for people to discover once the game's released...?
I could see Victy getting added but I can't see Ash getting the same treatment. Aside from anything else he has a limited moveset and they don't seem to have created new sprite frames for the old characters (just repurposing what already exists, like Max's special for his Big Swing). I reckon a SoR2 version of Shiva is more likely.
They should have added the SoR3 music just for completion's sake. It wasn't all that bad, clearly listening to the wrong people who would rather discard it all than keep it in for some select track usage...
The retro sprites have appropriate lighting applied to them. Spoiler Also, since I looked up the trophy/achievement list...there might be more to come.
I like the new art style for this game, but I understand the reservations people have about it. It's objectively a very different style to the Mega Drive games, which seemed to going for as much of a realistic depiction as was possible on the 16-bit hardware of the day. It certainly would have been nice to see this game either continue with the same art style as the originals or modernise it without any of the Mega Drive limitations. But as I said before, it's not the most important thing to me and what we've ended up with looks grand anyway, so I'm good. The addition of the retro-sprite characters looks a little odd, but again I'm just happy to see them there as a bonus. It doesn't feel lazy or like short-changing, especially considering that there are already 5 playable characters for this game. And as Ashura96 said, some degree of work has gone into giving them accurate lighting effects here which looks nice. For a bonus feature that's really there just for the hell of it, it's really awesome. Went ahead and pre-ordered the Special Edition on Switch myself. Definitely looking forward to that. Shame that it looks like I'm not going to be able to play this with my brother when it's new though thanks to the lock-down. He doesn't play games, but as we played the first game so much as children it would have been great to sit down with him for this. I don't want to have to wait to play it when I've bought it!
Furthermore, there are some details in a Tweet from Lizardcube. (Unsure if any of this information is new, but posting just in case.) https://twitter.com/lizardcube/status/1251133307988869128
I think the 2 player online, 4 player local distinction is new. Considering the original trilogy is all 2 player, I'm not too miffed. A way better Sega-related birthday present than last year, the first Sonic movie trailer.
