For a few months a little project relating to Bare Knuckle III has been going on. The project involves restoring the lost levels and features to the game. In the process of this, my hacking partner, Red Crimson and I have been discovering many interesting things with the game. This includes things already not known. We also messed with Streets of Rage 2 US a bit as well as the Bark Knuckle II beta but you already know most of this. Now regarding beta material in BKIII, this little page should help you brush up on what you may have missed: http://streetsofrage.net/sor3_beta.htm Anyways, the point of fact lies that there is quite a bit of new stuff you may or may not have knew about. So far, build 1.0 has been released for BKIII DX: The Director's Cut. (I just wanted to call it Director's Cut. It was Eidolon's idea to add the "DX" and "the" to the hack's title.) In Build 1.0, the game has the elevator in Round 6 working to show the extra areas that used to not be accessed unless you used a special PAR code to warp to these areas. The elevator goes up and down. The bug mentioned on SOR Online involving your Character disappearing in the lost areas when getting to these lost areas still exists. However, for some strange reason, if you destroy both switches and access the elevator this way, your character doesn't disappear. I have a theory that there may have been a small cutscene there at one time. My logic states that the character you're playing as disappears when a cutscene starts in a level. Even if they are in a spot on screen that wouldn't do something to obstruct the text. Also, the level is programmed after rescuing the General to warp you to hex slot 09 which is the roof top part of Round 6. (Round 6-3 to be precise.) Hex slot 00 is the start of the level. After you destroy the switches you can now go onto the hidden elevator of Round 6 without your character disappearing. Best of all, you can be like "Fuck you General Petrov. I don't care about rescuing you." and leave through the secret back door that way and kill the General because you left without rescuing him and he died in the gas. Also, the bike Sprites (for Axel only at this current point in time.) have been restored but the bike stages are still imperfect. Anyways, here's a video showing footage: Also, here's the download link for anyone who's interested. http://www.streetsofrage.net/Bare_Knuckle_III_DX_v1_0.rar Note: I didn't patch it with the translation patch. Eidolon did. (It's not the same Eidolon from Eidolon's Inn I don't think.)
It's sad that no matter how much you improve this game, it still plays like shit if you are able to 1cc Mania SOR2. The gameplay is just... lacking. I blame the level design.
I'd play the hell out of this game if it played more like SOR2(not a fan of the additions) and it had SOR2's soundtrack instead of the crappy headache-inducing soundtrack the third game had. Other than Spinning Machine, that song is amazing.
Eh, we all have our favourites. But all in all I'd say the soundtrack has 9 misses for every hit. Incidentally, I do like something about SOR3; the dashing and rolling. Stick those in SOR2 and a great (but relatively sedate) became more my sort of thing.
The biggest problem isn't the music, but the crappy sound effects. SOR2 had a jillion different sounds for hitting an opponent, BK3 had maybe three. And like I said: the level design was atrocious. There are about 6 default punks who swarm you over, and thats it. When you beat them, you get another bunch a second later. Then a third, and THEN the screen scrolls. SOR2 played it clever with 3 default punks and half a dozen semi-special enemies - and the screen scrolled much faster too, and not just left/right but up/down too. Dashing, upgraded blitz moves, ability to break free from holds, and the weapon specials are pretty damn awesome though. Specials were however near useless since the power bar system ate up too much life.
To me, SOR3 is one of those games that I wish had never been made. SOR was always my favourite, with SOR2 coming a very close second, but I find SOR3 very disappointing. The difficulty was ramped up a hell of a lot in comparison to the previous outings, the level design was poor, the storyline was pretty shit and the music is a trainwreck.
It's such a relief to find someone who prefers the first; usually I hear devout love for the second above all else. Personally I flip-flop between 1 and 2 depending on my mood; 3 would have been more tolerable had we got what the Japanese had - the "easier" difficulty (read: exactly the same with shorter enemy health bars) made it all over quicker.
Well, the difficulties between Jap releases and US/EU releases were always different. The japanese got an easier game, which is noticable if you start SOR3 on normal and then compare it to BK3 on normal. BK3 is a lot easier, even though it's the same game. Same applies to SOR2, and I think SOR also had this same difference.
Well, Eventually Director's Cut will have a character select with Ash and Shiva added to it and they can be enabled with the same code as Victy/Roo or their in game cheat code. Ash made even the highest difficulty setting in both SOR 3 and BKIII child's play. He's even fucking stronger than Shiva as hard as it is to believe. Mainly due to the way he combos. There are plans to eventually port it to Sega CD as well as create a much better version of the soundtrack with fanmade remixes. There's also a plan for a mania mode as well. Also, Red Crimson found an unused animation script for the playable version of Shiva. You can probably guess what that animation is. The spinning fire kick. He implemented it into a hack but Bare Knuckle III is heavily hard coded so hacking is somewhat difficult at the moment. The end result of doing this made it come out even more acidic than Atomic Sonic. Plus it was already based on a very terrible hack. The Chinese translation Terry Bogard Bare Knuckle III hack which was even worse. Ear rape gone wrong. I have plans to add Max Thunder to the game as a bonus character. Possibly also Adam but he'd need a new sprite set and the creator of the custom Adam Sprite set for SORR V5 won't grant permission as of right now due to SORR V5 not being released yet. As a result, somebody with spare time would have to make one from scratch. To be honest with you, the BKIII soundtrack isn't that bad. It sounds strange at first and takes a bit of getting used to. It took me a while to warm up to it so I know for a fact. Even so, there are still quite a few tracks from the soundtrack that still suck. Shinobi Reverse is awesome as it seems to be a reference to the Shinobi series. Dub Slash actually fits. The music track itself reminds me of a city in turmoil. Both Poet themes are awesome. Especially The Poets II. Bulldozer is cool and sounds awesome. The Ending theme is kind of like a happier sounding remix of SOR Super Mix from SOR 2 Inga Rasen, I'll admit gives me a huge migraine now but I used to actually like this track. Both Cycle themes suck. Fuze is a great track IMO. Probably one of the few where the weird sounding parts actually work. Crazy Train (not the Ozzy Osborn one, the Yuzo Koshiro one XD) sucks. Kamedecoco (Ash's Theme) is kind of vibrant and fits the appearance of Ash well. It sounds upbeat and is one of the few good Koshiro tracks in the game. Most of the other tracks are shitty though beyond these. It's like taking a vat of acid and dumping it down your ear canals. Oh and also, I plan to port SOR 2 to Sega CD in the future as well and make SOR 2 Shiva fully playable. I might also implement Mr.X as well but due to lack of animations and the fact he doesn't use the main character's pallete line very well. Shiva, on the other hand does.
I agree with those who view BKIII as a poor sequel, albeit with a few good ideas (some of which are included in Streets of Rage Remake; I'm looking forward to v5). The English localisation team then proved you can't polish a turd, but can do various things to make it smell even worse. I may be a vegetarian, but these are all good points! :v: I think there's only one death SFX; the other games at least had two. And yeah, the absence of enemies that were intermediate between grunts and bosses, and/or in-level versions of past bosses, was a major omission that made things very boring. Yeah, SOR3's difficulty levels correspond to the one below in BKIII. First make the game worse, then make it ridiculously difficult! Inspired. I don't recall reading that the first two games were affected, though.
BKIII is actually my favourite game in the series, mainly because the others are just far too slow. I like being able to do the special move whenever I like, as there are times when I'm perfectly willing to trade some of my health to get the thugs off my back. As for the soundtrack... again, I think it's the best in the series. The main problem with it is the instrumentation, there are some dubious choices of voices. I'll be happy to remaster any or all of the soundtrack if somebody can provide them in MIDI format (most of them are on VGMusic, but not all).
It's not really possible to add them to the game yet since the game uses the Ancient Sound Driver 1.0. As I said, I might be porting this hack with the help of Red Crimson to Sega CD. As a result, there will be room for better sounding instrumentation if I enable redbook and have someone do remixes for it. I also wouldn't say the BKIII soundtrack is the best in the series. I also wouldn't say it's the worst either.
I meant that I'm happy to create CD-quality remasters of the soundtrack if you'd like me to. If you've already got someone else in mind, then that's fine.
Oh okay, go right ahead. Though, I might hold off on it for a while if I were you because we haven't got to that point in production of the hack yet. Anyways, I'm not sure how many of the tracks are there but there are a few MIDIs here: http://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/sega/...s/index-sz.html Oh my god, this Dub Slash MIDI sounds awesome: http://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/sega/...R3-Downtown.mid I just checked most of them out. A lot of them aren't very good but that's about all of the MIDIs that I know of as far as BKIII/SOR 3 go.
Doesn't Adam have a "Streets of Rage 2" sprite sheet in that official mobile phone remake, along with SoR1 Blaze?
Technically, the Bare Knuckle Mobile sprites are slightly enhanced SOR 1 and 2 sprites. Adam being a slightly enhanced SOR 1 sprite set. The creators of BKM were lazy. Look at the sprites and compare them to the ones from the first game and you'll see what I mean.
Don't mean to butt in or swipe any thunder, but if any flavor of SOR3 doesn't do it for you, you can also wait for this (and it will be a short wait).
Unfortunately there are some retards on these boards that think SORR is a piece of shit. This is not true and they only think that because they are retarded. You know who you are that said this on #retro a while back. I didn't want to be a dick about it but I think this will do. How would you like me to insult the S2HD project SORR Bashers? You wouldn't right? So shut the fuck up and let those of us who actually like this project enjoy it, okay?
SORR is much more impressive than S2HD. The Sonic equivalent of SORR would be making a Sonic 4 5, and combining Sonic 1, 2, 3K, 4, and 5 together with unused items and levels, all abilities from all games in the series, as well as some new stuff too. Also, SORR actually has an accurate engine *cough*. Anyway, to make this post simultaneously more on- and off-topic, here's my remaster of Happy Paradise for you to consider.
Wow, you've immensely improved one of what I think is one of the worst tracks in the game. Congrats! *downloads* Technically, that's kind of on topic because it has to do with the Redbook audio of the possible future Sega CD port. I might have to invite you over to the SOR Online forums some time. Edit: Well If I can download the track anyways. Fucking internet connection of mine ruins everything. Edit 2: Got it!