Streets of Rage/YMMV

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• Awesome Music: The soundtracks of the games are quite enjoyable. There's a good reason Yuzo Koshiro's name appears on the title screens of all three games directly under Sega's copyright. The soundtracks are so popular, Koshiro makes money on the side by remixing his own tracks and playing them at clubs.
  • The fan remake's soundtrack is entirely made of great remixes of the original tracks, along with some brand-new songs tossed in for good measure.
  • Now has its own page.
• Breather Boss: The robots in the second game's penultimate stage are easier than the insane elevator sequence beforehand, though they're still pretty challenging. On higher difficulties though, there are more of them, so this applies less.
• Contested Sequel: Streets of Rage 3, see They Changed It, Now It Sucks below.
• Demonic Spiders: Those Raven kickboxers have a lot of health, can block attacks and deliver powerful kicks.
  • Those jetpack mooks are not much weaker than their boss version (which is by all means That One Boss for some people). Very hard to hit, hit very hard with their flying kick, superman punch, and can grab you and drop you from the sky.
  • Ninjas in 2 and 3. They jump around, can hit you when you are jumping, toss shurikens at you, and they can throw you like bosses could. Even worse if they have swords or kunais.
• Even Better Sequel: Streets of Rage 2, with better graphics, better gameplay, more characters, more enemies, more stages, more weapons...
  • And then to top it off, the remake pretty much combines the best parts of all 3 games, and has even better music, while staying true to the original. Given the "quality" of recent Sega sequels (Beast Rider *shudders*), it's easy to see why they felt threatened.
• Evil Is Sexy: If you manage to replace Mr. X as crime boss while playing as Blaze, then in her "evil ending" cutscene she qualifies as an example of this.
  • Nora in Streets of Rage 1.
  • Electra in Streets of Rage 2.
• Game Breaker:
  • Axel's Grand Upper GRAND UPPA! attack in Streets of Rage 2. Toned down in power in Streets of Rage 3. To explain a little, all characters had three specials; a standing A, forward A, and forward-forward-B. The first took off some of your energy if it hit, the second regardless of whether you hit or not, and the latter was a power attack but didn't use energy. Axel's Grand Upper was more powerful than anyone's forward-A, his own included. Axel was invincible for the entire animation (it could be used to slide straight through projectiles), it scored a hit on every single frame, hit anyone who touched Axel's sprite from any direction at any time, and slid forward until Axel hit something if he did it away from someone. About the only enemies who could deal with it were those with long counter-moves that could wait it out (so that'd be Abadede, R. Bear, and absolutely nobody else), Shiva (who had roughly the same attack with the slide run out to most of the screen) and Mr. X.
  • Streets of Rage 3, however, has Shiva's "back attack". Unlike normal characters, he doesn't have the full range of attacks, so instead of a back attack, he does a short swinging elbow to the face. This move is fast enough that you can infinitely combo it, with only the edge of the screen (or other enemies) stopping you from comboing almost any enemy to death.
  • Shiva as a playable character in 3. His normal moves have a lot of range and are very fast. Instead of the back attack, he has a 2-hit punch that can combo infinitely, and his special attack takes half of one health bar and in completely invincible. It's not like he makes the game a cakewalk, but he outclasses everyone at everything.
    • Well that's the point, you know.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • For starters, there's those Signal dudes who are able to slide and the Garcia mooks who point their knifes at you.
  • In the first game, there are the kung fu mooks who will repeatedly kick you, jump back to avoid a counter attack, waltz up and repeat. Made worse in the remake where some will land on their feet if you try to knock them down and yes, they can avoid being knocked into/thrown into a pit by refusing to let themselves be inched towards the pit. The 2nd and 3rd games have the blue/yellow/orange/green ninjas that will always jump around and sidestep to avoid your attacks, then they will either jump and punch you to knock you down or do a kick to knock you off your ass. And then they become Demonic Spiders when they start to carry swords and kunais.
  • Those motorcycle-riding Fog mooks in some stages in 2 and 3. They have a habit of showing up in unexpected moments while you are running to the edge of the screen and run you over. The ones that aren't on the bikes also count, as they often punch you from a fair distance or grab you from behind. Other ones only appear in the background (and thus can't be hit) and throw grenades into the stage.
  • The Vices. Them holding you down for others to hit you is very annoying.
  • The remake presents Diesel, a trucker-like foe in the City Hall area that carries a bottle. If, when you first meet him, he throws the bottle and smashes it against your face, consider yourself very, very lucky. Outside of this extremely rare attack, his only strategy is using kicks that instantly knock you down, and the bottle he carries can be used to restore his health if he keeps drinking from it. Just to spite you further, if he gets knocked off screen, he will drink while off screen so you can't hit him! Oh, and he never drops the bottle until you kill him, which then causes the bottle to shatter.
• Good Bad Bugs: Max is full of them in 2, which is probably why they switched him out for Zan in 3. He slides faster than he walks, so expect expert Max players to Slide, not walk. His Thunder Tackle will DEMOLISH blocking opponents since they will take a huge amount of chip damage during his dash attack. Finally, Max's grapples work on any enemy who walks into range. This is true for all characters, but Max covers a lot of area and can jump while holding his opponent. Expect good Max players to backbreak about 4 enemies at once For Massive Damage.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The first ninja Hanzou from Streets of Rage 2 first appears on a pirate ship in the amusement park. Keep in mind this is from a 1992 game.
  • Everyone I knew who had played the game back in the day referred to his enemy type as "pirate ninjas".
• Mary Sue: The remake introduces the all-new boss Rudra. She is a ninja assasin hired by the Syndicate, with a Dark and Troubled Past much needed in an otherwise Excuse Plot, toting bikini armor and a Badass Cape, throws shurikens, performs Doppelganger Attacks frequently once her health gets low, and is the only boss in the game that pulls off a "You beat me ingame, I beat you in cutscenes afterwards". As an unlockable, she can use the Police attack without location restrictions, her back throw is a extremely damaging Teleport Spam suplex, her attacks in general have insane damage and reach overall, and she has an exclusive, different ending. Moreover, looking into her bio on the shop menu reveals that she has mastery of no less than 6 different martial arts.
  • Which is probably why she's the most expensive unlockable character.
  • Ironically enough, some fans actually wish that she would be Shiva's sister (due to their similarities).
• Memetic Mutation: "It's like BOO!"
  • "GRAND UPPA!"
  • YOU BECAME THE BOSS! YOU ARE GREAT!
• Most Annoying Sound: In Streets of Rage 2, Mr. X's "DAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!" every single time you get knocked down. You'll get knocked down a lot facing him. Another variant, "HUHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!", is let off by the Streets of Rage 3 Bongo-type enemies and Robo-X, also when knocked down. You'll hear this a lot when Robo-X or one of his mooks knocks you down.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • "GRAND UPPA!"
  • When playing as Max, ramming your knee into the enemy's spine produces that oh-so-wonderful cracking sound.
• Non Sequitur Scene: Several sub-areas seem rather out-of-place, specifically the creepy Alien-themed area in the middle of a fairground, complete with entertaining lethal exploding alien eggs and a giant lethal monstrous swingy thingy.
  • In the third game, there's the oddly placed Japanese styled building that comes after a tunnel level, complete with a boss fight that looks like a samurai and he can split into two other copies. Luckily, you only fight one of them at a time.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Streets of Rage 2's "Under Logic" bears more than a passing resemblance to The Shamen's "Move Any Mountain". Also, it is sweet as hell. The main theme (S.O.R. Super Mix) does sound much like Enigma's Sadness.
  • Streets of Rage 1's "Fighting In The Street" has a few elements from Technotronic's "Pump Up The Jam". The remake gives an overt nod to this, even using the same instrumentation in a few places.
  • Here is a video that notes above examples and lot of others. Apparently, Black Box was a major influence on the soundtracks of the first and second games.
• That One Boss:
  • The clawed twins in the original, Mona and Lisa, Abadede and Shiva. Most players are guaranteed to lose at least one life against these bastards.
    • The clawed twins. Fighting one of them's no big deal for an experienced player: just approach them from the top or bottom of the stage, grab them and attack. Try doing that when there's another one to deal with.
  • In 2 on Mania, Mr. X is practically impossible due to moving roughly as fast as Skate and every attack slashing away a significant part of your entire health bar.
  • R.Bear in Stage 5 of Streets of Rage 2. JUST R.Bear. The bugger beats out pretty much ALL your attacks with his ridiculous range from his punches and his ability to counter. And you fight him AGAIN in Stage 8 (as a palette swap named Bear Jr.). Granted, using a katana or a pipe makes him easier, but still.
  • Jet and the Rocket Mooks at the end of Stage 6 in Streets of Rage 3.
  • Version 4 of Streets of Rage Remake introduced Super Shiva, who, along with palette swaps of some earlier bosses, had to be beaten within a certain time limit. If the time runs out? No retries, no continues, Bad Ending, smashed keyboard. Version 5 excised him, although another path you can take in the game, based off of Streets of Rage 3's bomb situation from Stage 6, has you fight SOR3 Shiva, who is even MORE aggravating than SOR2 Shiva, whom Super Shiva was a sprite edit of. Super Shiva was also playable in version 4, and was quite the Game Breaker (he had a Hadoken, for God's sake).
  • Rudra in the remake. Moves extremely fast, throws ninja stars to attack from a distance, can hit you several times in place, and lands on her feet if you toss her backwards. Once her life bar is down to half, she'll start creating illusions of herself where they all can do the same attacks but die in a single hit. Oh and every time she sends out the clones, they all come crashing down, hitting you every time unless you can see when they are going to appear and either dodge or use a special attack to cut through the attack. When Rudra's life bar is nearly gone, the clones increase in numbers and THEY EXPLODE when killed.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some fans have expressed disappointment over how Streets of Rage 3's levels have been implemented in the remake, as they were scattered over several paths instead of having their own straight one, like those for 1 and 2.
• Vindicated by History: The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 3 received a mixed reception at the time of release, due to its more experimental approach. Nowadays, it got better received and was considered ahead of its time. The Mean Machines magazine went to say that "ironically it pre-dated the 'trance' era that came a short while after release."