While old-school gaming just seemingly gets more and more popular with every YouTube play-through video that gets uploaded, the classic side-scrolling beat-em genre mostly died off with the 16-bit era consoles. Double Dragon has seen a couple of revivals as of late, but today publisher DotEmu has announced the sequel to Streets of Rage.
Streets of Rage is a classic beat-em trilogy of games that first hit store shelves back in 1991. The Sega franchise, known as Bare Knuckle (I, II and III) in Japan, follows the story of three protagonists, Axel, Blaze, and Adam, as they attempt to beat up every goon in the city to loosen the stronghold of a dangerous crime syndicate. It’s basically mindless, walk to the right and smash everything in your way kind of gameplay, and is widely celebrated for just that.
After the what seemed like the final entry in the series released in 1994 with Streets of Rage 3, DotEmu and Sega are now officially readying a brand new fourth title.
Feast your eyes on the new reveal trailer right here:
DotEmu and Sega have brought on developers Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games to bring the new Streets of Rage 4 to life. Likely best known for its work on the Sega classic Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, Lizardcube is looking to tap into Guard Crush Games’ expertise in the genre as it just recently finished up development on something known as Streets of Fury. For the record, that’s a very similar, but completely separate project from Streets of Rage 4.
Not a whole lot is known about the game at this point including the plot itself. Although we do know we are getting full hand-drawn visuals here (as you can see in the trailer), and an expansion of the core gameplay mechanics that the series has always been known for.
According to DotEmu, we are getting “new mechanics, a fresh story and a gauntlet of dangerous stages with a serious crime problem.”
Featuring the series’ mainstays Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding, Streets of Rage 4 “stands as an entirely original arcade-style romp thanks to the expertise of Guard Crush Games and Dotemu”. It does sound as though there will be co-op multiplayer in some way or other as well along with a banging 90’s inspired soundtrack.
DotEmu has been quiet so far regarding a release date and platform details. It would be easy to see this thing at least getting a digital release just about everywhere, but only time will tell at this point.
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