Streets of Rage 4 Wiki – Everything You Need To Know About The Game

Streets of Rage 4 is a 2D sidescrolling beat ’em up developed by DotEmu, Lizardcube, and Guard Crush Games, and published by DotEmu. It is the first entry in the Streets of Rage series in 26 years, with the last one, Streets of Rage 3, having released in 1994.

Development

Before Streets of Rage 4, the last entry in the series was Streets of Rage 3, which came out for the Sega Genesis in 1994. Rumours of a fourth game in the series started emerging not long after the third game’s release, but did not materialize into an official announcement.

In 2017,  DotEmu released developer Lizardcube’s Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, a remake of the 1997 title that had been published by Sega. Following its success, DotEmu, alongside developer Lizardcube, approached Sega about a sequel in the Streets of Rage series, to which Sega agreed. Development on Streets of Rage 4 thus started in 2018, and the game was officially unveiled in August of the year.

Developer Guard Crush Games was also brought on to assists with Streets of Rage 4’s developmet. Guard Crush Games had previously developed Streets of Fury, a beat ’em up that was called a spiritual successor to Sega’s Street of Rage series. The engine that Guard Crush Games created and used for the development of Streets of Fury was also used for the development of Streets of Rage 4. Overall, DotEmu were responsible for game design, Lizarcube focused on animations and artwork, while Guard Crush Games focused on tech and programming.

Streets of Rage 4’s soundtrack is primarily composed by French composer Olivier Deriviere, with contribution from various guest composers, including Yoko Shimomura, Keiji Yamagishi, and Harumi Fujita, as well as composers of the original Streets of Rage trilogy Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima. Hideki Naganuma was originally also supposed to be brought on as a guest composer, but when that could not happen due to scheduling conflicts, Fujita was brought on as a replacement. Each guest composer for the game has composed a track for one of the game’s bosses, while the primary soundtrack is composed by Deriviere.

Yuzo Koshiro, who co-composed the soundtracks of Streets of Rage 2 and 3 with Kawashima and was the sole composer of the first game in the series, was not originally a part of the project. After playing a demo of the game at indie game showcase BitSummit in Japan in 2019 and being impressed with how it was shaping up, and due to requests from fans of the series, Koshiro decided to agree to being involved in the project.

On 17th April, it was announced that Streets of Rage 4 would release for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on April 30. Prior to that, it had been confirmed that the game would also get a physical release, which would be handled by Limited Run Games, and would have options for a standard release (with a reversible cover art) and a special edition release (with a steelbook case and a Genesis style clamshell case design).

The developers have said that they plan on supporting the game after its release for as long as possible. Total playtime of the campaign is said to be between 3-5 hours.

Story

Streets of Rage 4 takes place 10 years after the conclusion of the story in Streets of Rage 3. After a decade of peace, a new crime syndicate has emerged, led by the Y twins, children of previous antagonist Mr. X, who seek vengeance by disrupting the city’s peace once again. Various returning characters and newcomers join forces to take on this new threat.

Gameplay

Similar to previous games in the series, Streets of Rage 4 is a 2D sidescrolling beat ’em up game. Players progress through stages by fighting waves of enemies through attacks, special attacks, and combos. Each stage ends with a boss fight. Characters can pick up various weapons – such as lead pipes and knives – and use them in combat.

Streets of Rage 4 also introduces some new gameplay mechanics to the series, such as being able to juggle enemies against each other or against walls, or being able to recover health, which is done by performing a special attack by performing successive attacks. Stars can also be found in the environment, which allow characters to unleash a special, extremely powerful move. The game also allows players to switch to retro soundtracks from Streets of Rage 2 and Streets of Rage 3.

Players are rewarded a score and grade at the end of each stage, while there is also a total lifetime score. Through total lifetime score, players can unlock sprite based 16 bit character models of cast from previous games. These unlockable characters are: Axel, Blaze, and Adam from the first Streets of Rage, Axel, Blaze, Skate, and Max from Streets of Rage 2, and Blaze, Skate, Zan, and Shiva from Streets of Rage 3.

There are a total of twelve stages in the game, and each ends with a unique boss encounter. These stages are The Streets (boss encounter against Diva), Police Precinct (boss encounter against Commissioner), Cargo Ship (boss encounter against returning character Nora), Old Pier (boss encounter against Estel Aguirre), Underground (boss encounter against Barbon), Chinatown (boss encounter against returning character Shiva), Skytrain (boss encounter against returning characters from previous stages, Commissioner and Estel Aguirre), Art Gallery (boss encounter against Beyo and Riha), Y Tower (boss encounter against Possessed Max), To the Concert (boss encounter against DJ K Washi), Airplane (boss encounter against Mr. Y), Y Island (this stage has two boss fights- one against Ms. Y, and one against both Mr. Y and Ms. Y at the same time).

Streets of Rage 4 features five playable characters. Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding – who have been featured as primary playable characters in every game in the series – make a return. Also returning is Adam Hunter, who features as a playable character for the first time since his first and only appearance in that capacity in the first Streets of Rage.

The game also features two new characters. The first is Cherry Hunter, the daughter of Adam Hunter and niece of Skate Hunter. She is mobile and fast, but is also weaker as a result. Her attacks are centred around quick strikes, and she uses her guitar for her special moves. The second new character is Flloyd Iraya, an apprentice of Dr. Gilbert Zan. Flloyd lost both his arms in an accident, and now sports two bionic arms as replacements. His attacks specialize in wrestling and grappling moves. His bionic arms allow him to grab enemies from greater distances than other characters, smash them against each other, and use electrical discharges.

Streets of Rage 4 also features multiplayer options. Local multiplayer allows upto four players to play together, while online multiplayer allows a maximum of two players to tackle stages co-operatively. For the first time in series history, Streets of Rage 4 also has competitive multiplayer, with a Battle Mode that allows players to fight against each other, which has both Versus and Team modes, and has a total of 8 arenas.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.