Streets of Rage (Genesis)

Sega's take on Final Fight (before they got an actual version on the Sega CD), featuring a rocking soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro. Until Streets of Rage 4 (via the unlockable "retro" characters and Estel), this was the only one in the series where players could call a police back up and shoot a rocket launcher at the bad guys. It's called Bare Knuckle in Japan, which is weird because the main characters clearly are not fighting with bare knuckles.

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Prerelease Info Notes

Obscured Graphics#

All three characters on the title screen are fully sprited, but obscured by overlapping behind Axel who stays center in the front. Adam and Blaze are rendered on the same background layer, so not even disabling them will show the full sprites. Adam's sprite is also lowered off-screen by 4 pixels, presumably so he doesn't cut into the title logo.

Unused Souther Palette#

Souther has three palettes, but the second one is unused. It makes his hair red, his shirt green, and his overalls yellow. This can be seen by adding the Game Genie code PMBT-DK6A and battling Souther at the end of Round 2. Most likely it was supposed to be used for his double reappearance in Round 6, where the default colors are used instead.

Extra Options#

At the title screen, hold A + B + C + Right on the second controller and select Options to add settings for lives and a level select. The 3DS port has these options enabled by default.

Unused Text#

The Options screen's sound test has an unused "SE 47" table entry, which doesn't play anything. Normally the game would loop around from "SE 46" to "ROUND1", meaning this cannot be seen without some memory modifications.

Unused Voice#

There is an unused, higher-pitched version of Adam's voice clip. This can be heard by enabling the Game Genie code: 4EKA-BDE4 and selecting "VOICE1" in the sound test. Whilst it is a separate sample from the "VOICE1" sample used in game, it consists of the same audio data but is played at a higher sampling rate.

Unseen Boss Behaviour#

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The Pepper Shaker is a single use item used to briefly stun enemies hit by it in a small area. However, getting to use it against the bosses is extremely unlikely due to how it works and in some other cases straight up impossible, since some stages completely lack the item. By modifying the game and/or using cheats, it's possible to carry one with you and use it against them, revealing way different behaviors compared to the regular enemies.

• Antonio, Souther, Bongo and Mona/Lisa (Round 1, 2, 4 and 5, respectively) behave with it in the same way. Getting stunned for a very brief time window when touching the pepper puff, and knocked back when hit directly by it (the latter never happens with the regular enemies).
• Mr. X (Round 8) is always knocked back, regardless if it hits him directly or only the puff.
• Abadede (Round 3) surprisingly has a nearly unique behaviour! Always gets stunned when hit by the shaker, has the longest duration of all the bosses and can "hit" him up to 3 times. It's also very prone to visually glitch out. By being probably one of first enemies to be developed (as some pre-release material may suggest, since Abadede was initially the Round 1 boss), he was likely programmed in a different way from the rest of the enemies.

Regional Differences#

Japan	US	Europe

A simple logo change. As stated earlier, the game is called Bare Knuckle in Japan and Streets of Rage internationally. In the European version, the rest of Adam's legs can be seen, but the layered graphics draw attention to the other characters missing parts of their limbs.

In addition to logo differences, when region is set to Japanese, the intro as well as Mr. X asking if the player wishes to join him in Round 8, are in Japanese. All other text (Options, menus, HUD, and etc) remains in English regardless of region setting.

Revisional Differences#

A couple of voice samples were altered for some reason for the re-release on the 6-Pak cartridge. The version on the Sega Classics 5-in-1 compilation for the SEGA CD had all of the voice samples replaced with "high-quality" ones to take advantage of CD capabilities (alongside the other games in it).

References#