THE MAKING OF... STREETS OF RAGE 4

How a team of French Japanophiles cashed in their credits to revive a classic Sega series

- ALAN WEN

Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

Developer Dotemu, Lizardcube, Guard Crush Games

Publisher Dotemu

Origin France

Release 2020

Walk down a city street you haven’t visited in a couple of decades and it’s unlikely that everything will be as you remember it. Businesses may have come and gone. The road might have fallen into disrepair. Regeneration may be attracting a new crowd these days. It’s not dissimilar to playing Streets Of Rage 4, a continuation of Sega’s 16bit beat’em-up series, which sees its vigilante heroes and a couple of new allies return to deliver their particular brand of street justice more than a quarter of a century on from the previous game.

In the meantime, Wood Oak City has fallen back into urban decay. Buildings are boarded up, pavement tiles cracked or missing altogether, and even the neon signs don’t blaze the way they used to. But entering from the left side of the screen onto the same stage layout that kicked off Streets Of Rage 2, complete with a soundtrack callback to Yuzo Koshiro’s ‘Go Straight’ theme – composed by the man himself – we know which streets we’re back on.

Still, things have changed around here, most noticeably in terms of visual design. Returning characters haven’t only grown older (or, in Axel’s case, chunkier), they’ve also been given a new lease of life thanks to vibrant, hand-drawn art. Lizardcube’s art director, Ben Fiquet, began drawing concepts for a modern Streets Of Rage shortly after finishing work on Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap