Greenalink's mini review: Toaplan Arcade Shoot 'em up Collection Volume 1.

Disclaimer: The aim of this review is to focus on the games' quality of life features that were *officially* introduced in the 2023 release. 

Toaplan as a company has a reputation of high quality side scrolling shooters that were released from late 80s to early 90s and in 2023 some of these titles were given a re-release. 

The first volume contains four games and all share something in common, spray and pray your firearms and try to avoid getting hit.

The games from volume 1 include the following:

Twin Cobra (1987),
Truxton (1988),
Zero Wing (1989) and
Out Zone (1990)

Twin Cobra and Truxton are both vertical scrolling shooters, Zero Wing is a horizontal scrolling shooter and Out Zone is a top-down shooter, with the last not having automatic scrolling like the other three, it does encourage the player to keep on moving forward due to a draining energy meter that can kill the player when that energy bar reaches 0.

Now a fair amount of re-releases would just make a minimalistic effort by producing their own emulator to run the Toaplan roms and call it a day, but Bitwave Games decided to push it further.

For starters, it has a lot of visual options, including:
Frame size, scanlines, borders such as channel viz/music viz, tutorial and in-game stats.

There is also an extra bonus for two of the four games from volume one, a new widescreen option for both Twin Cobra and Truxton. With this option enabled, the player has more space to move around, but the enemies will appear instantly on-screen from the left/right side of the gameplay field rather than slowly appearing in-game by leaving the black border when using the standard aspect ratio method.

The third game: Zero Wing is a game that needs no introduction thanks to the infamous Engrish line "All your base are belong to us" that was first introduced in the Sega Mega Drive release to both Japan and Europe.

That's right, this meme cutscene doesn't appear in the arcade version and currently some users online were gutted to not see this in the original arcade version when the 2023 version was first released. 

But, the team Bitwave Games has updated the game as of March 2nd 2023 and added this remastered intro with better English translation ... other than that one line due to its old school meme legacy, I still prefer the Mega Drive version due to having a better music track as the tone of the melody changes the moment after the antagonist CATS leaves the conversation, still better than nothing.

All your memes are belong to me!!

One of the most notable changes when playing Zero Wing is the removal of the distracting red flash that occurs after destroying enemies, an adjustment I have no complaints about, giving it a notable advantage than say the Toaplan core on MiSTER FPGA for now.

So Twin Cobra, Truxton as base games have the optional widescreen support and Zero Wing "Arcade" version has a remastered meme intro based on the Sega Mega Drive release and the removal of the red flash after destroying enemies. What about Out Zone? After a quick look, there doesn't seem to be anything noteworthy. 

That's all the unique tweaks I've noticed so far. Now onto the general tweaks.

All four games from volume 1 have a very fast boot-up when launching the game via Steam that it makes you think it was a "quick boot rom from commercial emulator" but hitting the menu button brings up its own options in a flash without any animation delays, I already mentioned visual options earlier but there's a ton of gameplay options too.

New toggles for a very easy/less stressful playthrough can be done by reducing your character's vulnerability hitbox, giving it up to 2 extra HP before dying, rapid fire up to 30 presses per second, auto dodging where the character will automatically dodge most harmful objects by moving very slightly though it's not very useful in tight spaces, lite-bullet hell moments and non-projectile elements such as enemies.

Practising for a high score, 1CC, speedrun is very accessible, as the player can:
Create save states and then load them,
able to rewind gameplay up to 10-16 minutes which I tend to use if I just lost a life.
There is even a dedicated practice mode where you can select any level, spawn at any checkpoint with a selectable current weapon of your choice, weapon's power level and even a cycle counter which tracks how many times the player has cleared the game. While it doesn't sound like much, having the option to practice in nearly every segment in the game without resorting to save-state packs that were downloaded from the internet is a huge boon.

Assist toggles to make the playthroughs less stressful.

Practice menu to master every segment in the game.

The input latency is very good, while I don't have the tools to measure an accurate reading, it felt very instantaneous. This was tested on a PS5 controller wired, so your mileage may vary on the controller used to play this game.

That said, there are some possible improvements I would like to see in future patches.

1) Have visual arrows and buttons on highlighted menu options. Right now when you highlight them, you will have to read a text from the lower half of the screen to know what you can do to change its settings, but by having two arrows and a pushing button icon, should make it a lot clearer. It took me a while to figure out how to disable scanline/bloom effects in one of the games, but by using the D-Pad I was able to change it to a clean pixelated look as seen on emulators.

2) Background frame bugs, when both screen backdrop and overlay are turned off, changing the overlay to tutorial and then to a different option will automatically set the screen backdrop to option 2 despite being currently set at 0. I have to go to screen background and hit right to re-select option 0 for a pure black screen background. This bug doesn't happen when the game has been booted up with all background options set to off, it's only when backdrop has selected to 2 at least once for the bug to occur.

Backdrop bugs, background stars still showing despite being set to "off".

3) Stat text colours. This issue occurs in some games where important data such as "Red" "Green" and "Blue" used the incorrect font colour on display. I don't think it occurs in Twin Cobra.

Red = Grey, Green = Red,  Blue = Brown ?????

4) On the current version, starting up a game by using the practice menu disables in-game sound effects and only has the music playing, the only way to restore this is to complete a stage, dying doesn't work because you only have 1 life and no continues which takes the player back to the title screen.

5) Hitbox viewer doesn't make 100% sense at times. For example, at the end of the first stage in Out Zone has four robots, yet the third robot has no visual yellow hitbox. Despite this, walking up to that enemy can still kill you.

The third one looks suspicious.

Overall this is a great way to play these side scrolling shooters, accessible options for the newer players, dedicated practice tools for the purists to master every checkpoint with nearly any option available just to make their future 1CC runs a reality. It's not perfect as I mentioned some issues did occur when ing the games.

That said, the filesize for each game is extremely tiny in 2023 standards, which is great for the customer as they can play these classic games as soon as possible, but for certain players hoping to have unlockable content as seen in many other retro collections will be disappointed with this one as there is only sound test option unlocked by default. Simply put, adding unlockable gallery images would have made the filesize bigger.

Cunning Toaplan

Quality of life features

Low latency

Great version for practising

Toaflop

For players expecting "flashy" presentations menus with galleries, history videos, interviews, etc. This is not it.

Some minor bugs that can be fixed in later patches if it happens.

Review codes provided by Bitwave Games

Lil Gator Game: Greenalink's Lil review

Game: Lil Gator Game
Developer: MegaWobble
Publisher: Playtonic Games
Release date: 14th December 2022
Price: £16.75 or US $19.99
Filesize: 252 MB

 Lil Gator Game is a late 2022 indie game developed by MegaWobble and published by Playtonic Games.

The story involves a gator who loves their big sister, playing adventure games during childhood but "millions" of years later, the big sister has adult responsibilities and the gator is struggling to get her to join in the fun again.

The gator is a young kid who wants nothing but fun and gets stressed out whenever there's grown up stuff involved such as studying materials, organising a restaurant or making your own hat, fortunately the NPCs twists their words after noticing the gator's initial response to make it sound more fun and encourage motivation.  One interesting small attention to detail is that the young ones tend to have all of their words in lowercase whereas the grown-ups have proper casing (with a notable exception from the screenshot below).

The gameplay is a 3D adventure Breath of the Wild-lite experience. It's not super massive, the weapons do not have a durability system and there's no labyrinths dungeons to explore but both games share the stamina wheel mechanic mainly used for climbing and certain items to a lesser extent. There is no health/death so the player is fully invincible and all of the breakable assets are stationary and made out of cardboard to have that imaginative play feel for the gator's quest.

At the start you have to find a sword, a shield and a hat. The shield isn't used for defending at all but for shield sliding instead, it even includes the shield front flip if initiated from mid-air.  The sword is a melee weapon used as a reliable way to break assets to earn currency which is junk. Junk is used to craft new items during the quest, there are a few identical ones with little differences, for example:
A dart gun and a shuriken, the former has an arc effect similar to a grenade launcher whereas the latter travels in a straight line, the ammo is unlimited so you can fire constantly to your heart's content.

After clearing the small island, you get a text message from Tom who has a "construction" site for a small town/playground by the radio tower from the big island. From there, you have to clear three main quests, one from each major NPC (known as Jill, Avery and Martin). Jill specialises in nature, Avery focuses on building a restaurant with a group of theatrics buddies including a spaceman, a western cowgirl and a bat. Lastly there's Martin who is hanging out with older friends... trying to stay cool. These main quests involves clearing tasks from the major NPC's friends and eventually motivating them to go to the playground, this can include trying to catch a hercules beetle. being a court judge to expose a liar or taking down a UFO.

Unlocking buildings to improve your playground requires "NPC Visitors" as currency, this is earnt by clearing quests.

Quests are usually bitesize tasks that can be cleared in 1-5 minutes depending on the challenge. One slightly tough challenge for example was trying to find 5 ninjas themed targets thanks to a time limit but it did involve looking around the area as the targets were both high and low from the starting point and there were loads of bushes so try and cut those down first should make it easier.

Without spoiling the end game, there is an interesting sequence and a strong conclusion that sends an important message to the player(s).

After clearing the game, you're given a megaphone which is used to find any other NPCs that haven't had their problem(s) solved, this is an interesting way to find uncompleted tasks as with most modern games, you're given a map with loads of icons on screen to complete your todo list, the other item is the ability to text message Jill to help you find every breakable enemy/chest in the game as that is required along with the quests from the NPCs to unlock the second ending.

This game doesn't have a map and while it would have been nice, it does encourage more exploration. 

In fact, some of the NPCs will give you clues to find certain locations, one key advantage on the lack of fast travel is that you'll find other junk and quests along the way to help you get closer to 100% completion.

Did you know this game has a mini trampoline as a sliding item? Using that to land right after jumping from a high place never gets old. 

The music is light-hearted up beat music with a warm feel probably comparable to life sims games such as Animal Crossing and one part has an eerie tone that occurs when going inside a bat's home turf. The big island is notably dynamic as it changes the instruments based on the gator's current location.

Overall, the game is surprisingly enjoyable for nearly anyone, it's accessible for young ones to complete and older gamers would love its witty writing, the entertaining in-game mechanics if you ever wanted to speedrun it and the message at the end of the story. It's not a super long game to beat, for some.... it's at an acceptable length without overstaying its welcome.

Time to complete story ~4 hours

Time to complete everything ~6 hours.

Score: B+

Lil Gator Greatness:

Heartwarming/Charming tone with an important message.

No frustrating mechanics to rely on realism such as ammo/duratabilty and HP.

You can Naruto Dash

Cheeky references with semi-frequent nods to The Legend of Zelda.

Lil Gator Flops:

Not much to do after reaching second ending other than getting faster times on mini-time trials found  in some locations, a New Game + would have been fun to see how fast you can beat the game with best gear.

The ragdoll demonstration was pretty dark as the NPC was almost being MTV's Jackass worthy, none of the characters can die but still.... I was "uhmmm" for a second thinking don't try that at home.

Key provided by Playtonic Friends from Pressengine online.

Official tournament event tours hampering the day one quality of the product - Part 1.

Quality day one releases were quite the norm for a long time and still is today to a slightly lesser extent but that usually depends on the game's genre and long-term support. 

Big franchises also have big events to help promote the game in the longer run.

But not everything can go to plan.

In this series I will cover two games that had lacklustre day one releases thanks to other big marketing shenanigans that made it "easier said than done" to delay the main game 

The first one is a juggernaut entry that from 2016 perspective.... what could possibly go wrong after the amazing Street Fighter IV series?

Capcom Pro Tour x Street Fighter V

Street Fighter is Capcom's flagship 1V1 franchise which caused a global phenomenon in 1991 thanks to Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.

Part way through early 2010 when Street Fighter IV era was its main game, Capcom introduced a pro tour series known as the Capcom Pro Tour, a series of official tournaments where the highest ranked players (+1 from last chance qualifier) gets a chance to win a whopping six figure cash prize.  The Capcom Cup finals before the pandemic era were held around mid-December, a few weeks before the end of the year, Capcom Cup in December 2015 was the last BIG tournament to focus on Ultra Street Fighter IV and interests after that event were shifted to its sequel that was coming out a few months later.

The problem:
The start of a new tour series happens in March and the new Street Fighter V game came out in February 2016 so practically a month to practice., the impressions of the day one build was clearly underwhelming in content as it lacked both:

a Story mode and even the obligatory Arcade mode which nearly every good to average fighting game has.

Pre-release trailers clearly focused on the esport player base thanks to the real-life tournament footage used in the trailers, but not everyone plays "For Glory" as a fair number of players play games "For Fun". Survival mode, the only true single player mode at the time was tedious in higher difficulties thanks to cheating psychic A.I being able counter react to the player's input and the early days there were no in-game items to use in order to turn the tables, so you only had one life. This was the only way to unlock extra colours so... good luck getting the harder colours with an hard to win character. 

Did you know that Extreme difficulty used to be called Hell difficulty? That name change happened around the first DLC release featuring Street Fighter 3's Alex.

Before Extreme there was Hell.

The reason:
Giving the game one month of playtime was enough for pro players to get familiar with their mains and having a 9 month pro tour season allows more countries to host their Capcom Pro Tour Tournaments, if it lasted for 6 months (say starting in June) then fewer countries would have been able to host it as some locations may have their venues occupied by other events not related to Street Fighter.

The anti-influence:
Tekken 7 was out for arcades in February 2015 and had a few delays before its console launch in June 2017, they took notes at Street Fighter V's disappointing start to avoid the same mistakes, fortunately for Bandai Namco, Tekken didn't have an official pro tour until a few years after launch, so its day one build was downright superior to Street Fighter V's launch edition thanks to having actual content for any type of player to enjoy and as of 2022 it's currently one of the most popular entries of the franchise thanks to long term DLC support and a very strong tournament showcase, even for spectators who've never played Tekken can appreciate the now iconic slow-mo moments when both players land their final blows at a (potentially) game ending round.

Ken Masters, another factor for SFV's plague thanks to his banana hair design.

In 2022, the upcoming Street Fighter VI had a much stronger beta testing reception thanks to many quality-of-life features to training, "bad online connection" mercy quits, accessibility to different control styles, a proper single player mode, gimmicky gameplay modes that were very reminiscent to 90s fighting games in a era when pro tournaments were an extra instead of a priority.

Capcom Cup 2022-2023 season aka the last BIG Street Fighter V tournament will end on February so Street Fighter VI make its debut spotlight a few weeks/months later.  Knowing that Capcom Cup finals can start a few weeks after the new year and not before during pre-pandemic days, Street Fighter VI could be out in April time so that it has one month of exposure for players to experiment before the first Capcom Pro Tour in May which will take 9 months to reach to the end of the 2023-2024 Season... February 2024, the question is... will all of the content teased in past trailers be available on day one?

Next time... will be covering a series where they tend to release new games in a pair because why not.

Greenalink reviews: Streets of Rage 4!!!!

Developer: Lizardcube/Guard Crush Games/DotEMU

Publisher:DotEMU

Price: Roughly £23/$25, different platforms and regions may vary on exact price.

Website: https://www.streets4rage.com/

The Streets of Rage series at one point played a huge role of being part of Sega’s 3 key franchises during the early 90s along with Sonic and Shinobi.  After the release of Streets of Rage 3 in 1994, the franchise went very quiet. Along the way, multiple 3D attempts of making a sequel were made but eventually scrapped for Sega Dreamcast and even Xbox 360. The long drought finally ended in August 2018 thanks to a reveal trailer posted online to YouTube that guess what didn't get cancelled, making it one the longest real life gap for a sequel entry in video game history.

So it has been a whopping 26 years since Streets of Rage 3. Now developed by Lizardcube (Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap Remake), Guard Crush games (Streets of Fury) and DotEMU (Windjammers 2), the series finally has an official 4^th entry.

Does it succeed or will it struggle and be trapped in the world of the 90s along with other relics like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and Duke Nukem 3D?

Features:
12 levels

17 playable characters

1 challenging arcade mode

An all star group of music composers

Editor's note: SoR will be used as a shortened way to say "Streets of Rage".
For example:
SoR1 = Street of Rage 1.

SoR2 = Street of Rage 2.
SoR3 = Street of Rage 3.

Graphics:

This one is being handled mostly by Lizardcube who did an excellent job with Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap that I personally called it one the best remakes in recent years.  Now tackling a much bigger project, the amount of work involved is staggering with roughly 1,000 frames for playable characters to roughly 300-400 frames for basic enemies. That alone would have been good enough but they pushed it even further with the rich detailed environments, visual effects like reflections from the puddle at the street to even beams of light covering over the main characters. These effects are also applied to the nostalgic pixels characters too.  The pixel characters sprites are mostly 1:1 to their original source but SoR 3 Shiva is a notable character who had a slightly altered movepool which requires reusing the lesser seen sprites in somewhat creative ways, even if it looks off.
The in-game text is a a higher definition version of the Streets of Rage 2/3 font which is a neat touch to diehard fans.

29 years after the very first game, things don't change.

Sound:

The main sound effects are mostly brand new with probably one or two being mostly near direct rips from the 90s trilogy. The exception would be playing as 12 of the retro characters as they use the respective sound effect from their respective games. I did notice that both SoR2/SoR3 Blaze and SoR3 Skate were using voice clips from prequel entries too, overlooked or intentional I cannot say for sure.

The voices are pretty simple and standard stuff as they are used to say a line after being selected as a character to a series of battle related grunts and shouting out special moves. What stood out to me the most is that every enemy class now have their own set of battle cries after being defeated which is a massive improvement over Streets of Rage 3 where there was only 1 death cry for every common male enemy in the game.

The main soundtrack focuses on recent music styles that were introduced from YouTube ranging from mid 2000s to the 2010s. Some of the tracks have a fusion of retro chiptune and new instruments which is most notably true when playing through both Stages 3 and 9. Olivier Deriviere the main composer of the game, composed nearly every regular area in the game with the very first part being an exception. The tracks Olivier composed implemented a dynamic effect that changes the melody when entering a different part of the level which does impact the feel of the game by a huge margin.

Guest composers were responsible for the themes of nearly all of the boss battles and they are pretty unique too but they don't have the dynamic effect when progressing through the battle.

"Rock on!"

If the style of the newer tracks are not your cup of tea, there is also the option to play the classic soundtrack which plays music from Streets of Rage 1 and 2 but there's some oddities with the design choices.
All of the tracks from Streets of Rage 1 are from the 8-bit Game Gear/Master System versions and yes Back to the Industry, the factory theme from SoR 2 was used in the 8-bit version of the first game, they even used the intro themes and ending themes (yes really) of 8-bit Streets of Rage 1 as well. I don't know if this is a nod to Master System fans who played Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap remake 3 years ago or it ticks the obligatory 8-bit music for retro nostalgia. I still would have preferred the 16-bit tracks when using Streets of Rage 1 as the 8-bit versions are usually abridged/cutted down and don't cover the entire melody per loop, at least a bigger playerbase will get to hear official 8-bit renditions I guess....

The Streets of Rage 2 tracks are from the 16-bit Genesis/Mega Drive versions which is good but where they use these key tracks could have been improved. Streets of Rage 4 has a bar area but it doesn't play Bar Hopping but Under Logic (baseball stage from SoR2) instead. Dreamer one of my personal favourites is used in a lift section in the later half of the game, not bad. Max Man the theme used against Shiva back in SoR2 days isn't used against Shiva in SoR4 a missed opportunity.

A sample of the dynamic music effect in play. Take a listen.

Gameplay:

The quality of the gameplay is the very definition of 90s design ranging from the fun to frustration factor. The latter really depends on the character you are playing and playstyle you want to achieve. To make the game feel modern is the introduction of extended combo options. This allows a lot of creativity depending on the situation the player is in; aerial juggles are now a thing as previously hitting an aerial opponent will force a knockdown with invincibility effect until s/he wakes up, this can go against the player as well when dealing with enemies who have good anti-air moves.

Speaking of juggles, the camera borders have a new rule that forces the enemies to stay in the fighting arena at all times, the borders are treated as invisible walls too which can be used to extend combos. Great for characters who have good launch power moves because it can lead to wall bounce follow-ups for massive damage .

Veterans of the series will get to mess around with a few new tools including the aerial special and vault jump. One additional feature Star Moves actually originated from the Game Gear version of Streets of Rage 2 that allow characters to pull off a very powerful move at a cost of a star. Each character has one and nearly all of them have different uses.

The special moves got revamped and instead will drain temporary life that can be refilled by attacking the enemies with normal moves, the catch is that the refill will stop if the player takes a single hit from an enemy. The HP drain happens a lot sooner too, the moment when the move is executed and not right after the move ends like in previous games. These adjustments will put these moves as a higher risk tool to use than in previous games because you could lose a lot of health by taking a simple hit right after using a (non-)invincible move at the wrong time.

There are 5 HD characters to play as, 3 of them who were introduced from the first game and share similar combat flowchart techniques. Cherry and Floyd are two newcomers and both have notable changes to their combat flowchart techniques .

Axel one of the two characters who have been in every game so far is a bit lacklustre in his SoR4 attire at the moment, most of his specials lack range and slow movement speed makes it hard for him to escape tough situations. Though I do appreciate the attention of detail the team tried to do in one of their official behind the scene videos by recreating the frame/attack data of his famous grand upper attack. According to Guard Crush Game's discord, they are planning to make him better in one of their upcoming patches.

Blaze the other character who has been in every game so far plays a lot better, her specials have good  pokes for knockback, her blitz attack can hit a downed opponent (aka OTG) and she has a Bayonetta style After Burner kick to not only boost her forward jump speed but to extend her combos in the air. She also makes good use of her charged attack which has good knockback distance and can even used as a wall bounce juggle tool.

Floyd fills in the heavy character archetype in this game. He does have a lot of differences compared to classic Streets of Rage 2 Max that makes him more defensive, for starters he doesn't have a slide to increase his movement speed, instead he lunges out both of his arms that is a good poking tool for defensive play and can hit some enemies in the air.
He is the first character in the series to move around when picking up an enemy similar to what Mika Haggar can do in Capcom's Final Fight and is the first character who has a special grab by electrocuting them, he even has a unique move that involves grabbing 2 enemies for Floyd to smash like toy action figures.

Cherry is the speedy but weak character archetype, she is the only HD character who can properly run and has some tools that is unique to her. Her grab flowchart is also unusual as she doesn't technically throw enemies but either pummel, pogo bounce off from one or just a pummel to slam. She is a character that has quite a learning curve on how to use certain moves effectively if you're familiar to the series for nearly 30 years.

Adam is the only HD character who is unlockable and feels like a superior version to Axel in almost every way. He has a mini-dash that works very identical to 2D Fighting games. The development team on Playstation Blog mentioned before launch that Adam is considered to be more offensive orientated than Axel so all of his HP draining specials used his legs instead of his arms and his Star Move has better reach and damage but doesn't cover his rear as well as Axel and has limited juggle followups after using one. Saying that, his jab combo has a nice ender which is very useful to send enemies into the pits.

Even after criticising Axel, I can sense that the different playstyles are infact there and every section has a different strategy, Axel is the definition of pre-dash mechanics of side scrolling beat em' ups like Final Fight and Streets of Rage 2 whereas Adam's mini-dash feels more modern, I got to admit that it does feel rewarding after figuring out a deathless or even a no damage strategy in tougher sections of the game.

The 12 retro characters are playable too ranging from super old school characters from Streets of Rage 1 to the not so super old school characters from Streets of Rage 3. Most of their moves are intact but their properties for some of their moves have been altered by Guard Crush to make sure they feel right in the game's engine. Zan's throwing distance for example have been toned down significantly to make it less effective as a pseudo projectile against enemies but it allows follow-up combos that he couldn't do before if he throws an enemy towards a wall for a wall bounce effect. Streets of Rage 3 Skate was terrible in his original game but is amazing in Streets of Rage 4 due to a mixture of indirect buffs (common enemies having  under 1 and a half bar length of HP at the most) to direct buffs (blitz attack dealing 2 powerful hits, and has a great throw bread and butter combo) I am comparing this buff to how Pichu rose from the bottom tiers of Super Smash Brothers Melee to high/top tier status in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. The Streets of Rage 1 characters are as basic as ever, slightly adjusted to implement the new juggle mechanics and they even have the classic cop car backup special which is counted as a star move.

Colour palettes differences on enemies are not just for show. The one wearing red dungarees can breathe fire from his mouth whereas the one in dark purple can perform a flying body slam.

Level design:
The game does have a quite a lot of variety when it comes to the sizes of each section, a combination of certain enemy types and even interactive traps. One section has electric traps that can harm anyone if caught, later on there's pits that can be used to instantly KO your enemies, stage 5 has poison ponds that drain the character's HP and even poison vents which can be used to lure enemies in for extra damage. For some areas, it's even possible to backtrack slightly to have some breathing room or picking up extra items. All of these are show rather than tell which is great.  Enemies different palettes are not just for show but also difficulty, some of them have the same A.I level with higher HP, some may use different attack patterns and some may have enhanced properties.

The difficulty of the boss battles is a mixed bag. The first few bosses are quite intimidating at first with attacks that have super armour properties and it's not always straight forward when to get in to deal some damage and actually flinch the boss, especially if you play aggressive which usually works well in previous games. Later on in the game they become somewhat easier because they have huge weaknesses or easy to punish playstyles. One boss has super armour throughout but if you recognise his charging poses, you should be able to dodge his attacks, another boss would rather fight from a distance and you can figure out the projectile attack by looking at the colour of its body glowing before it fires a shot.

The changes in difficulty are as follows:
* Number of starting lives
* HP amount for regular enemies (very minor difference in this one)
* HP drained for using a special move (very small penalty for easy to 1/6th of entire bar for higher difficulties).
* AI aggression (Mania will have some enemies move faster)
* Enemy spawns (obviously more enemies to face when playing higher difficulties).

This section is going to be a total wreck for some.

Useful features:
The team added button mapping which should be mandatory in every game, options to disable certain button combos for moves and even an option to enable 3 button legacy layout for players using the 3rd party Genesis 3 button controller via bluetooth. The game has a level select to help players practice the levels in higher difficulties

More control options are a good thing.

Value:
Side scrolling beat em ups is a tough one to execute. Normally multiplayer works best with local friends but due to the recent Covid-19 setting up a local session is riskier than ever. It does have official online play which is limited to 2 players. PC Steam supports remote play together which means 4 player online. Besides the multiplayer component, there's stage select to practice individual levels, a 1 credit clear arcade mode which does require a different set of strategies if you want to get through the higher difficulties, heck you can feel the sense of satisfaction when making it to the end. The starting lives are fixed and can only get an extra 1up after every 30,000 points.

There's also 2 kind of players goals as well. People who casually play it and don't touch it for a while or people who want to grind it out, execute S rank in either Arcade or Individual Levels, master arcade mode deathless even. I've been getting S ranks for individual level runs but not in Arcade Mode. Still the 'grand master' status would be trying to get S rank on 1CC Arcade Mode in Mania difficulty and pulling it off would be no easy feat at all as it involves playing excellent for roughly an hour to an hour and a half long, not under 10 minutes like single level runs.


Overall:

Streets of Rage 4 is finally here and it's one of my favourite games released in 2020 so far. I've been playing it again and again to learn something new. For a genre that is harder to produce in this generation than other genres, this game nearly ticks all of the boxes. Some may love the changes, some may hate it. For me personally I get why some parts can be annoying but overall, the good things really outshine the bad parts for this game.

Sword Strikes:
+ Nearly everyone from is playable with Ash and Roo being non-playable at the moment.
+ Adding features going beyond fans exceptions.
+ Unlockables that isn't paid DLC.
+ Has the best of 90s brawler design with easy to play and tough to master game design..
+ 1CC Arcade mode on higher difficulties feels very rewarding when completed.

+ Expanded movepool and properties to make it fresh for diehard veterans.
+ A great modern soundtrack.

Sword Yikes:
- 90s design for having limited defensive tools, you cannot block, duck nor parry.
- Enemies with super armour are the biggest jerks.
- Difficulty spike for the bosses when going in order (late game bosses feel a lot easier than earlier ones).
- 1CC Arcade on the highest difficulty is a very long playthrough to 1 Credit Clear than other beat em ups of the genre.
- Needs a training mode to practice juggles and situational combos like having more than 1 star.
- Retro Soundtrack needs better use of when to play tracks and ideally replace SoR1 8-bit tracks with SoR1 16-bit tracks..
- If you're not a person who wants to get S ranks or complete/master 1CC Arcade Mania, replay value is limited.

Rating:
Excellent: A

Review code provided by DotEmu.

Ideal links to check out!
Streets of Rage 4 - Behind the Gameplay video
Streets of Rage 4 - Behind the Music
Streets of Rage 4 - Behind the Art
Streets of Rage 4 - Behind the Tracks
Streets of Rage 4 - PS4 Blog post - Why retro characters are not 1:1 faithful

8 Bit Mini review: Streets of Rage 1 for Master System

To celebrate the launch of Streets of Rage 4.
I might as well post a series of quick reviews on all of the 8-bit Streets of Rage games that were released in the 1990s.

Now the Streets of Rage games are mostly known for its 16-bit trilogy on the Genesis/Mega Drive and not a lot of people know the existence of both the Master System and Game Gear versions.

UK, Europe and Brazil still had Master System consoles in the market a few years longer than Japan and America thanks to its stronger support. Along the way, various 8-bit ports of 16-bit games came to the system. One of them was Streets of Rage.

Streets of Rage 1 for the Master System came out sometime in 1993, very likely after the groundbreaking Streets of Rage 2 game for the 16-bit console, priced at around £32, the system didn't have many side-scrolling beat em ups other than Renegade, Double Dragon and Golden Axe. Could this be the system seller for the budget console? Read on to find out.

I can't believe it's not Genesis.

Presentation:
Fragments of a SEGA Logo collide to the middle and form into 1 logo. Not bad.
The game starts off with a difficulty select: Normal and Hard.
That is it.
No options, no sound test, no lives modifier.
You do get the option to play as all 3 characters and all of them are statistically unique, although saying that, most of their attack sequences are identical to each other. The ending is a series of still shots and a lack of staff credits with Yuzo Koshiro being the only member to get an in-game mention for his music at the title screen.


Graphics:
This is probably the most impressive element of the port, the quality is surprisingly good. Most of the sprites look faithful but with less options on the depth of colours, the animation did lose a couple of frames here and there and would have been a bit better if the keyframe animation loops for walking were a bit faster.  The gameplay framerate runs at a higher 60 frames (compared to 30 frames for its 16-bit counterpart) and the evil twins are not simple palette swaps as their hair designs have been altered too..

Not everything is perfect.
For example, there's some alterations to the palettes with Garcias that made green ones easy and blue ones medium in rank, the background for the ship level is completely static which lacks a sense of realism and during walking animations I can see a few glitch sprites that would last a frame but it does stand out if you focus on the playable character.

Sound:
Technically this one came out after the Game Gear release which shares similar components. This made porting the music a breeze. One problem was that the Game Gear version only had 5 stages whereas the Master System had all 8 stages.
The solution was to use the character select theme as the track for stage 2 and a brand new track for both stages 6 and 7 (yes 2 stages in a row will use the same track) oh and stage 3 (beachfront area) is using the 8-bit rendition of the Factory stage 1st area from 16-Bit Streets of Rage 2.
They all sound pretty standard but most of the loops of familiar tracks have been cut down due to possible limitations on space after making those impressive looking sprites.

Sound effects are pretty standard stuff, the most notable omission is the lack of voices so players will have to figure out slightly longer whether or not an enemy has been KO'd.

I still can't believe this is NOT Genesis.

Gameplay:
The first entry was the most basic in the series which does give it an easier time to translate a 3 button system to a 2 button system. Unfortunately, the method to call police backup requires pressing the START button followed by pressing either button 1 or 2. This problem is only severe for people who are playing it on an authentic system or more specifically a cart converter that has the START button on it which could be prone to crashes if pushed too hard.

The system's weaker power also points out a key weakness, the maximum number of enemies on the screen at one time.
For comparison sake, the 16-bit original can have nearly 15 enemies on the screen at once, the Master System version is limited to just 2 and to make things worse, it's limited to the same enemy type or as I call it, Noah's Ark Syndrome. This does lower the challenge significantly and the only real difference hard mode makes besides having more enemies to knockout per section is taking extra damage to the point it's possible to die in a single from Mr.X's tackle attack.

The game also has some weird quirks with the A.I. and most of the bosses.
The whipping girl called Nora has the annoying mercy beg mechanic that is applied to every single one from Rounds 5 to 8, The weapon juggler Jack's projectiles only have hitboxes for the actual throws, the juggling sprites don't have hitboxes so players can just grab + pummel loop against them.

One of the most bizarre game design choices I've seen is how most the bosses turn around....
The boss will only turn around by first going off-screen.  This does lead to some hilarious moments where Souther (claw boss) will perform backwards dash claw attacks as a reaction to the player's jumping after walking past him/her.
Abadede and Bongo are somewhat tad more threatening as Abadede will stop and side step as a reaction to the player's jumps forcing a more head-on approach by timing the punch button at the right time. Bongo starts to accelerate and use his flame breath a lot faster but if you're familiar with grab loops, it's not a huge problem. The evil twins are not as hard to hit but their jump kick attack's hitbox is way off to the point the player will take damage before the boss's leg sticks right out.

The biggest crime is the lack of multiplayer, a console where 2 player setup isn't a problem... doesn't have the option to play 2 players at all, a stupid idea or an greedy incentive to encourage customers to buy a Genesis/Mega Drive console and play the 16-bit version?



What Master System has that Genesis don't?
To avoid being an absolute inferior version, the team added a brand new boss that is exclusive to the Master System release. He doesn't have an official name and most of the official design documents you probably have seen online are mostly 16-bit focused  Anyway, this new boss doesn't have the weird boss A.I.quirk when it comes to turning around and attacks with a limited seeking missile as it tracks the player's position when s/he is on the ground.  This extra boss does somewhat make stage 8 more complete as previously, the 16-bit version had no refight at the end of the first section, now with this new boss, every end of section has a boss refight.

The new boss exclusive to the Master System

Overall the game does do a good job as a Master System game but some questionable cuts holds it back as a must have classic for the system. It's okay to play a few times but the moment you play its 16-bit counterpart, you wish you spent more time with that version instead.


Grand Uppers
+ Great looking visuals that are on par with NES Super Mario Bros 3
+ All 8 stages are in the game
+ Classic SoR tunes with one that is Master System exclusive
+ A boss that is exclusive to the Master System


Grand Downers
- Lack of proper options
- No 2 player
- Lack of properly mixing up enemies due to limitations
- If you don't know the safe landing trick, you will hate the Signals a lot.
- It takes longer to beat the game but for the wrong game design reasons

Grade: C.