AtheistPreacher
Well-Known Member
This is actually a bit of a story.
Streets of Rage (or Bare Knuckle in Japan) is a series of side-scrolling beat 'em up games that originally appeared on Game Gear and Sega Genesis in 1991. The games were considered some of the best of their kind -- particularly Streets of Rage 2. In fact, SOR2 has aged well enough to see re-release as a downloadable game for the Wii and X-Box Live. It's still fun to this day.
Then... enter one crazed fan, Eduard Bolano, alias Bomberlink. His idea was to remake Streets of Rage, taking elements from all three games and polishing it all in order to make a totally new and superior experience to the already-excellent originals. To eliminate any appearance of impropriety, he informed Sega of the project, who gave him permission to move forward. With that, he began working on a remake of the game in March 2003. Along the way, he picked up various other programmers, artists, and musicians who were interested in the project, and the group eventually came to consist of 27 people. The team used no reverse engineering, as there is not a single line of code from the original game in the now-finished remake's 80,000 lines of code -- a product of 8 years of work.
The finished version has now been released as freeware. The original games all had between 3-5 playable characters... this game has 19, including 6 characters who were never playable before. As if that weren't good enough, all characters have been given new attacks in addition to their old ones. Multiple routes through the game's eight levels have been included, so that it's possible to play through multiple times and never see the same stages (there are, in total, 98 actual stages). All the music from the original games has been remixed and new music added, totalling 76 songs. There are also survival and boss rush modes, a volleyball mode, cheats which can be toggled on and off, and entirely new and improved game mechanics governing the use of special attacks. There are also all sorts of gameplay options which change the game mechanics to the rules of one or the other of the previous games, so there's lots of room to customize the experience. There's even a tool included for creating your own new levels.
In short, this is the definitive (albeit unofficial) version of an all-time great game. I highly recommend downloading it and giving it a try:
https://www.megaupload.com/?d=AJT87312 (230 megs)
A few things to note:
1. I've included a cleared game save file, which means all the extra characters are unlocked, stage select is available, and all cheats are unlocked and can be toggled on and off. If you wish to unlock everything for yourself, simply delete the save file.
2. There is an html manual included. It can be found in the main folder (NOT in the "manual" folder, which is the individual pieces of the manual).
3. The game has joystick support, and is obviously a much better experience playing with a joystick rather than a keyboard. Any USB gamepad will work... for example, the wired 360 controller (but NOT the plug-and-play wireless, for which you'll need a receiver).
Enjoy.
EDIT:
Here's the official trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF2WjhuWPhE
EDIT 2:
I have updated the main file (above) to include the "Prototype" levels package, which includes four custom-made stages, and is good to have as an example of what can be done with "SOR Maker," the level creation tool. If you have already downloaded from the old link (which was 218mb vs the new one, which is 230mb), then you can download the Prototype levels package separately, here (12mb). Unzip the folder and place it in "SORRv5" --> "mod" --> "games". The levels can then be played after starting the main game and selecting "SORMAKER," while the levels can be edited by clicking on "SorMaker.exe" in the main game folder.
The video below shows a complete playthrough of all four prototype levels (they're fairly short).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMd1ZAYJnGM
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