SEGA’s classic Streets of Rage trilogy of beat-em-ups is getting a fourth game after 23 years, courtesy of the team behind the recent remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap.
Streets of Rage 4, which is the official title, was announced via a reveal trailer by publisher DotEmu. The game is being developed by Lizardcube, who were the ones behind the well-received Wonder Boy remake, and Guard Crush Games – makers of the very familiar-sounding side-scrolling beat-em-up Streets of Fury.
Streets of Rage’s original publisher SEGA do not seem to be involved. Funnily enough they were also the original publisher of Wonder Boy, and yet aren’t mentioned at all on the game’s Steam page.
The trailer shows a mix of animation and short snippets of gameplay. The gameplay parts show that Streets of Rage 4 will be 2D with comic book-style characters and highly detailed backgrounds. Several of the enemies from past games are shown, including the whip-wielding lady in red Nora. The game itself looks like it will play much like previous games – an arcade-style side-scrolling beat-em-up.
At the moment DotEmu is only showing two playable characters – the now-bearded Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding. Traditionally the Streets of Rage games have at least one other character to choose from, so they may get a reveal at a later date. Unless, of course, the mysterious lady with a giant snake at the end of the trailer isn’t the game’s villain and is actually a new player character.
“Streets of Rage 4 builds upon the classic trilogy’s gameplay with new mechanics, a fresh story and a gauntlet of dangerous stages with a serious crime problem,” goes the game’s description on DotEmu’s page.
The Streets of Rage games, also known as Bare Knuckle, all came out on the SEGA MegaDrive/Genesis in the early ’90s and are very well regarded – especially for their incredible soundtracks. Streets of Rage 3 was released in 1994. There have been attempts to bring the series back, including a version being internally developed by SEGA for the Dreamcast, but it got scrapped after just a technical demo. Streets of Rage 4 will consequently be the first game in the series in over two decades.