time and it certainly worth playing more than once. The visuals are surprisingly vibrant. Most importantly, it's fun. But the online portion of SOR2 is executed poorly. And, once again, Backbone Entertainment presents a classic SEGA title with absolutely no extras.

70

Who needs some new socks and belts?

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, the beat em up genre was highly popular with Sega bringing out arcade games like Golden Axe and Alien Storm to compete with others like Final Fight and Double Dragon. While they ported their games to the consoles, it seems they decided they also needed a game just for the home systems, and so Bare Knuckle / Streets of Rage was born. This trilogy of games was highly popular on the Mega Drive andside-scrolling brawlers with multiple endings (later seen in Splatterhouse 3), and was one of the first to feature a playable female character.

In terms of mechanics, Sega improved upon the formula set in Golden Axe by adding a fun system based on grabs, throws, and flips in addition to punching your enemy's face into paste with your fists or weapons. While the special attacks were simplified, in return you have more enemy variety, though by the last levels you see an unfortunate amount of recycling with palette swaps of the same enemies until the final boss.

The graphics are decent, and while the later games highly improve on the environments, the first does an serviceable job of portraying a gritty city, while showing off a great amount of colors. The