Streets of Rage III

Bare Knuckle III / Streets of Rage 3
Publisher: SEGA
Developer: SEGA AM7
Platform: Mega Drive / Genesis, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, GameCube, Xbox 360, iOS
Year: 1994 (MD), 2005 (JP PS2/GCN), 2009 (NA/EU/AUS PS3/360), 2011 (iOS)

Streets of Rage III was the last in the original trilogy of Streets of Rage side-scrolling beat-em-up games for the Genesis and the last to be released for 25 years. The first Streets of Rage had been released in 1991 and the second in 1992. This was an extremely popular series despite the massive gap in releases after the third game.

Streets of Rage 3 included several changes from the previous two games in the series. It had a more complex plot including more character dialog and cut scenes, not that I think those things are especially important to this type of game. It also featured longer levels and faster gameplay. There were also additional complexities such as unique moves with certain weapons, hidden characters and more.

Speaking of the plot, Mr. X, the series protagonist is back again and has started a research company called RoboCy as a sort of shell company for his criminal empire. His secret goal is to create an army of robot replacements for key city officials and then control them. His henchmen also plants bombs around the city to distract the police. The key researcher, Dr. Zan, brought in to develop the robots finds out about their intended nefarious use and contacts Blaze Fielding who contacts Axel Stone and Adam Hunter, the heroes of the series.

Though there are some improvements and changes, game play is similar to the previous games in the series. Up to two players can play at a time, battling waves of enemies. Every playable character can now run and perform a dodge roll and blitz attacks can be upgraded. Weapons an be picked up and some have special attacks but their use is limited before they break.

All of the Streets of Rage games were generally well received, including this one. It has also been re-released in various collections over the years so there are a varieties of ways to play it. It was included in the Japanese version of Sonic Gems Collection for the GameCube and PS2, it was included as part of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for the PS3 and Xbox as well as Sega Genesis Classics for Windows, Linux, MacOS, PS4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch. It also appeared on Steam both as a standalone game and as part of Sega Genesis Classics Pack 5. It was also included as part of the Genesis Mini 2 released just a couple of months ago. If you are a fan of the genre then this is definitely worth playing and there are plenty of ways to play it. The same goes for the first two games as well.

After 25+ years, a new sequel, Streets of Rage 4, was finally released in 2020 for a wide variety of platforms. I haven’t played it but reviews indicate that it has done a pretty good job of both updating the game for newer systems and maintaining the same general feel as the older games.