Streets of Rage is a 2 player beat-em-up game for Sega Genesis that was released in 1991 as a response to Capcom's Final Fight and it's SNES port, following the same formula of core gameplay: grappling and such. Final Fight on SNES was 1 player only, so it wasn't hard to be cool despite having smaller less impressive sprites. SoR is known as Bare Knuckle in Japan and it was developed by Sega AM7 team in Sega of Japan. At least it's probably same people who made Revenge of Shinobi, since it reuses some sounds from there. Released on 4 Megabit ROM, quite standard for it's time.
Sega also made Game Gear and Master System versions back in time. They are nothing to talk about, just worsened/cut around. On other hand, quite recently they released 3D Streets of Rage for 3DS, which adds 3D and some easy modes. That one is superior version.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "STREETS_W.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "08 SOR1_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_v6.pdf".
Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.
Not unlike Final Fight, the plot is about people on revenge going to beat up punks and criminal syndicate that have taken over the city. Adam Hunter, Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding, who are around ~22 age old ex-cops, are ready to put order back in. While being helped by a cop who has access to heavy equipment, who can be called as a special screen-clearing attack, making him shoot from bazooka at the area. And yea, you have limited amount of usage for that. Actually, it seems that they reused the sprite for police car from ESWAT ending. So in my headcanon these games are related!
Setting is kinda similar to Final Fight, but it's seems to be, well, how do I say, romantized. The action always takes at night, you see lights in background of the nameless city that you don't even know the edges of or the full picture of it. And the music is absolutely top-notch. It's club music, written by Yuzo Koshiro, proving that sound chip in Sega Genesis really rocked. Screams are sweet.
You can select between three characters. They are set up so Axel isn't as good at jumping, Adam is slower and Blaze has lesser attack power. They all have the same playstyle, at least there is no difference in moves that they can pull off, unlike later games. However, you will still will notice some other differences, such as Adam having the most range with pipe weapons or Axel not being able to throw away enemies as far.
The gameplay is, of course, a beat-em-up. As usual, you can move up-down, as in, deeper into camera direction or opposite, while being able to attack only left and right. It's pretty much a beat-em-up of Final Fight school. Moving in/out-depth for avoiding isn't as important as it would be in previous games of this genre, for example. It's all due to attack collision being this much wider, but the AI of enemies allows a more straight-forward approach as well. Not to say that it such avoiding doesn't work, just comparing. AI of enemies in SoR1 isn't too simple, but possible annoying, as they often keep distance out of your range, taking some time before approaching you. Don't bother trying to get them outside of the edge of a screen, the attack collision doesn't work there.
Oh yea, and of course when you get close to the enemy you automatically grab them. After that you can punch them few times. Or throw them back with back+punch, even though this one sometimes just makes you ungrab and walk away. Or you can smash their head against ground from behind, the most powerful move. And thrown enemies knock others, which does good damage.
Also, all yay for some levels having pits. Pre-last level is just an open lift. It's a blast!
There aren't any much of special moves otherwise.
And yea, and there are weapons that you can pick up. What I love about the first Streets of Rage is that unlike the second one you don't lose them when you try to grab somebody and unlike the third one their “health” consists of “you can drop them from being knocked out 2 times before they disappear” instead of being limited by usage amount. It feels so awesome to be good enough to bring weapons all the way to the boss fight!
Oh yea, and there is no way to throw weapon. There is a knife, which does great damage and it can be thrown, but the game decides when to do it by itself. I think you need either to be not directly in same line as enemy or be far away.
If anything, I feel that the main difficulty of this game comes not from regular encounters but from tricky bosses. Regular encounters are usually not too bad, aside from control issues where you want to punch enemy but you are standing over the weapon and pick it instead. Or just grab the enemy due to having too many around. It's all about the bosses .
Protip 1: Press Up+Jump when thrown as you are about to land. You will land on your feet without taking damage.
Protip 2: Pay attention to shadows of Level 5 bosses as well. It's easier to tell how deep away from camera they are.
There are also options menu. There are usual controls and sound test. Don't get too addicted to sound test, you still should play the game. And there is difficulty level, which impacts the amount of health that enemies have, damage they do as well. Their amount is also changed slightly. Though the amount of score you get at the end of the level is increased on higher difficulty, which is pretty nice as you get lives for scores.
The game also has 2 player coop mode. It's one of the beat-em-up where you have friendly fire in coop, so be careful. Actually, the game also adds more enemies and even stationary objects that you can break for goodies. It makes you always fight two copies of bosses instead of one, something that not even difficulty setting does.
It even has team attacks. They are related to grabbing your teammate. You either have to throw him away or jump over him forward. These moves aren't easy to hit with, but they do a huge damage on regular enemies.
There is also a bad ending that you can get only in two player mode. At final boss, where he asks you a question, both players have to choose different replies. After that players will be forced to fight each other, which is fancy. And then the winner still has to answer “no” as per usual about joining organization. And then win the game.
Also, never answer “yes” to final boss otherwise, you are just going to be dropped two levels back. Which isn't fun. At all.
Overall, it sure was an awesome game for it's time. And I still love it to this day.
