You thought Sonic Mania was a surprise? Just announced, in collaboration with SEGA, Lizardcube, Dotemu and Guard Crush Games it’s Streets of Rage 4! Release date and platforms are to be announced.
Publisher Dotemu (Wonder Boy, Windjammers 1/2) and developers Lizardcube (Wonder Boy) and Guard Crush Games today revealed Streets of Rage 4, an all-new continuation of SEGA’s iconic arcade brawler series known for its radical fights, jammin’ ‘90s beats and dashing sparring gloves and bandanas.
- The comeback of the legendary Streets of Rage series.
- Beautiful graphics fully hand-drawn animated by the studio behind Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap.
- Classic gameplay enhanced with brand new mechanics.
- Braised chicken served on a pristine plate.
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This looks more Sonic 4 than Sonic Mania. I hope I’m wrong.
Nah. A more apt comparison is the recent remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap. Sonic 4 was a combination of pre-rendered 3D graphics and 3D objects. SoR4 is hand drawn.
Of course I wasn’t talking about the look, but what both games mean to the franchise.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
I mean, look at the trailer. This is “let’s make whatever game, people will buy it because of the name”. I was tricked by Sega with Sonic 4 bit never again.
How difficult is it to talk to Ancient to make this game?
Look at Sega Forever. A serious company wouldn’t have released so many great games in such a wrong way: bad emulator for months, no support for D-input controllers, bad scanline filter, ads that ruined games like Sonic 1 remastered (you see some Sega ads even if you get the paid version). It’s amazing how clueless Sega is about itself.
And let’s not talk about the Sonic movie coming soon. Sega is run by some useless businessmen.
I’ve actually never really played Streets of Rage. But I’m happy to hear it’s making a comeback!
First opinion, let’s see and hope for the best…….a long game (3hours) would be great, a high replay value, couch co-op, maybe arena-modus, in games like these I like collectable things and multible ways to choose
Comic stile is not what I prefer and I hope they take the charakters serios(simple is ok), good overall style and electric OST with tec-samples. We will see what kind of these wishes will come true.
I am happy about….
This looks like Sega milking a loved franchise and screwing it big time. Again.
Dotemu and LizardCube have solid track records. Also, how is this milking a franchise when it is the first new game since 1994?
Well, I’m not find of DotEmu games. They look a bit cheap to me.
And I didn’t mean Sega has been milking SOR, obviously. I mean Sega is good at either forgetting franchises or getting back to them with average products focused on nostalgia as key selling point, instead of quality. Sonic Mania has been an amazing exception to this.
Can I be a SOR fan that is really disappointed by this announcement, please? :-/
Great video, but the only question I’m left with is why is this on a Sega site when it’s technically not a true Sega game.
I only know about Lizardcube from the Wonderboy Dragons Trap they put on the X1 after snatching it from Sega and making a remake out of the classic Master System game.
Never heard of Guard Crush games or Dotemu before, I thought Dotemu was just a flash company or a type of graphical effect they use for the engine.
YES, I still play SoR 2 and 3 very often. Very good news for me. Thanks
G*E*I*L, da ich Teil zwei sowie drei noch immer gern und oft Spiele ist es eine große Ankündigung für mich.
P. S. Pushnachricht genau in dem Moment da ich es auf dem Mega-Drive starten wollte. Was ein Zufall….
My mind just exploded! Burn those knuckles!
Wow, why would anybody be grumpy about this announcement? Holy smokes — I’m so into this.
Beat em ups are hardly a genre for AAA production budgets. If we see something that’s of the caliber of Mother Russia Bleeds, then I’m 110% onboard. AMAZING!!
Even if Lizardcube and Guard Crush have a decent track record, that means this isn’t even a SEGA game either, just like Shenmue III and Bayonetta 2 and Bayonetta 3 aren’t Sega games either.
It doesn’t matter if Sega owns the IP names and will get their royalty cash ins, they are basically selling out their assets and heritage here slowly over time, even Sonic Mania wasn’t done internally at Sega so how can it be considered a SEGA game?
This looks like it will just be the latest Sega asset to be given away by Sega, just like they have given away their hardware rights to ATGames to destroy their image even more. It looks like a cheap flash game more than anything.
Sega is a lost company that has lost a sense of itself after the Dreamcast and have sunk even further down to the point of having to rely on studios that aren’t even their own.
More than anything it was the Sammy buyout and the mass firings/exodus of employees than the transition to a third party. Orta, VF4:E, JSRF, SMB, SC5 Part 2, and OutRun 2 in ’02-’03 could be argued to be their best work ever. It’s not so much a case of a group losing its way as it is that group being replaced with a different group almost entirely. Thankfully you have some remnants of WOW and AM3 (and AM2 until recently) kicking around making good games still. Sonic Team is the only Sega team that organically lost “it” through their own trajectory, I think.
Guys, tell me who is still at SEGA who’s capable of developing a proper follow-up and then I’ll believe your critiques. If the original staff have moved on, then why not shop it out? That’s the way the world works these days.
Thank you for proving my point.
At this stage, what exactly is Sega now?
What is the point of their existence?
As you said, no one at Sega is capable of doing anything for the franchise anymore, and that’s why they have to rely on external teams and other companies to publish their own IP.
My main critique is that Sega is not Sega anymore, so what are they? They are just a shell with the Sega name on it then yes?
They own tons of classic IPs and that’s about their only worth left, and they need other outside contractors to handle their own stuff.
So other than that they are next to obsolete because they don’t have a goal vision anymore, all they’ve said is they want to set up a road plan called Road to 2020 – which just !fans brining back old IPs but they don’t even make or publish it themselves.
” It looks like a cheap flash game more than anything”
Agreed. Can’t understand how a true fan of Streets of rage can be excited about those graphics and that music. Someone who really knows the franchise in depth knows this is wrong in so many ways. Yet people instantly call you “hater” for pointing out this is another error from Sega. Oh well…
Well it’s a big company, Sega have a lot of studios.
Yea it’s a big company, exactly why it has a lot of wasted potential and talent and resources and assets and have been decline for the past part of nearly two decades now.
SEGA has gone from having a promising future in the 90s to abandoning and suspending its hardware business to become a platform agnostic firm that said they would gain a massive 25% marketshare of the entire industry after the Dreamcast platform (what is their current marketshare now?) to being an independent third party, to having semi-dependent third party status to not making their own games (but still publishing them) to now not even publishing their own games or making them.
If that’s not a company in decline, I don’t know what is.
And this is what they have become – https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fr4j3nU7yhU
Can’t even get decent licence arrangements right with the right people.
Really, that’s what you think they’ve become? First off we don’t even know if it’s truly being developed by at games at all, besides that old news, and just an option from a youtber.
I can’t tell you how I know it, but AtGames won’t make the Mega Drive Mini because of the internet reaction. And it’s a shame, because even though AtGames have released average or very bad products for years, this year they finally have everything right on their soon to be announced Mega Drive Flashback 2018. Nobody knows if the official Mega Drive Mini is being developed or not.
I do wish the characters were bigger. The character sizes look more like SOR 1 and I hope a surprise musical return from Yuzo gets announced later. This makes me hopeful for a rebirth of the traditional Phantasy Star, Shining Force and Skies of Arcadia….
Why would Yuzo Koshiro be involved?
He doesn’t work with Sega anymore does he? He certainly doesn’t work for Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games who are making and publishing it.
Yuzo Koshiro has his own Sega studio called Ancient but this isn’t going to be made by Sega so even if he still is under Sega they have no involvement with this project other than just given the IP rights away to another developer and publisher.
Same reason he was involved in other Sega games even though he’s always had his own independent studio, Ancient. Because Sega contracts with him.
@Centrale
Yes that’s my point, he has his own Sega studio which is like a 2nd party Sega studio, whereas Segas 1st party studios were the AM series – i.e., AM1, AM2 up to AM8 (which later was renamed Sonic Team after Sonic became the Sega company mascot in the late 80s/early 90s).
But is he still at the studio? Is he on Segas payroll at all anywhere else at the company? And even if he was, Sega isn’t publishing this, so that suggests he has even less involvement with it, as Sega as a whole aren’t directly involved with it, they aren’t making or publishing, they are only ‘associated’ with it because they own the IP brand name.
Ancient is an independently owned and operated studio, not a Sega studio. Yuzo Koshiro is still there; it’s a family business with his sister and mother. And Yuzo Koshiro tweeted that he knows fans are excited about this game but he cannot yet comment on it.
Just the other day I was talking about how I wish the team behind Streets of Rage Remake had an official shot at the license like how Christian Whitehead had an official shot at the Sonic license. I’ll wait for more information to trickle down but first impressions are good so far.
Looks great! This game is in good hands.
I had my money on Altered Beast…but this is great, too. Maybe Altered Beast is next.
The Ryu GA gotoku team should have made it. They make great brawlers as shown with game like Yakuza.
I don’t think the Run Ga Gotoku team don’t own the IP to make it.
Even though Sega don’t want to be involved with it it is there IP.
The Ryu GA gotoku team is a Sega development studio.
Sega could just give them the project instead to these guys.
If Ryu Ga Gotoku is a SEGA studio why does it not just call itself Sega then or even have the Sega name attached to it?
It seems a bit confusing giving it it’s own name because it makes it look like it’s another company entirely.
I hate Blaze’s new arms.
Other than that, looks good.
It doesn’t look like my dream sequel, but it doesn’t look that bad. If the music is on point, then this is a winner.
It won’t be if it’s not a Sega game because Yuzo Koshiro can’t work on it.
Is that 100% accurate? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Yuzo work on titles that are not SEGA related at all, let alone ones that are associated by IP.
Yuzo Koshiro had his own studio under the Sega house called Ancient – which was a Sega studio – best known for the Master System version of the very first Sonic game ever and he did the soundtrack for that game as well, that was before Streets of Rage came along under Sega as well. Ancient is one of Segas oldest studios infact, it was run by his mother at first and he and his sister Ayano Koshiro all worked there under Ancient under Sega. Ancient probably isn’t as well known as the other Sega studios but it was the one that actually contributed the most to the Streets of Rage series, at least in terms of music, Ayano Koshiro also did the character design artwork for the game.
Here is the studio here in this video, you can see a tour of the office, some of his work and his sister talking g about how the new American staff at SOA decided to cancel the real original Streets of Rage 4 game for the Dreamcast because they didn’t understand it – https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AEGvc_6O1kU
And that right there gentlemen, is why Sega consistently failed in one sector so hard at the expense of any success they ever had in other sectors or territories, giving the Americans too much decentralized power, think about it the 32X, the Nomad – the 32X was a system that shouldn’t even have existed and so much money went into it for nothing and so much was lost from it, the Nomad was just a Genesis/MegaDrive portable (like the Switch of the 90s) and both these systems were American made, and that’s before you !mention the disastrous treatment of the Saturn in America despite doing better elsewhere and being a huge success in Japan. The only time Sega ever did well in America was with the Genesis and even then, Tom Kalinske still wanted Sega to work with Sony by going third party, which Sega of Japan saw right through.
Not only was it limited to hardware but software as well, it was the American subsidiary of Sega that ruined so many IPs chances of ever seeing the light of day on the Saturn (thanks Bernie Stolar), it was America that ruined the chances of Shenmue II ever seeing a localisation on the Dreamcast as well (thanks Peter Moore) yet another key IP dead in the water for Sega home hardware, because he wanted to sell it to Micro$oft to prepare for an eventual cosy transition to a future Microsoft job in his personal career (he was essentially jumping ship because he saw no point to supporting the Dreamcast).
It was Americans that also wanted to change the Sega mascot, much to Naoto Ohshima’s and Yuji Naka’s annoyance.
But the icing on the cake? Charles Bellfield and Peter Moore writing the ‘manifesto for the future’ in September 2000 to take with them to Sega HQ Japan to convince them they need to get out of hardware – prompting all Sega Japan staff to leave the room – a purposeful rude gesture of disgust at them.
Hmm, seems like they wanted to make room for Microsoft before they were even in, and Microsoft wanted in even earlier than that, that’s why they have a history of doing g things like they did with licensing Sega use of the Microsoft CE operation g system bios for the Dreamcast, to learn more about operating in the industry and one day replacing Sega in just a few years by taking their place as a player in hardware.
And yet we keep seeing Americans blame Sega of Japan for everything, they never wanted to become third party like SOA did.
Now look at the state of Sega America, at least Sega is still a relevant force in Japan and UK/Europe, they’ve always done better in these territories compared to America.
So yea, no surprise they even cancelled the ‘real’ Streets of Rage 4, that’s just like the sort of thing they would do.
Sega of America actually made Sega famous around the world in the 90s. If Sega had listened more to Tom Kalinske back in the day, we’d be seeing a very different company.
Tom Kalinske or his people asked NOT to launch 32x (he was forced to), suggested working with Sony on a new console (Sega of Japan declined, then Sony made the PlayStation), and then suggested working with Silicon Graphics for a new console as well (Sega declined and Silicon Graphics made the Nintendo 64).
The problem has always been Sega of Japan stubbornness and lack of big picture vision. Japan never appreciated Sega as much as Nintendo or other companies like the ones who made PC engine. Sega should have been smarter and trust the man who managed to make Sega a true rival for Nintendo outside of Japan.
They were lucky to have Sonic and Kalinske at the right place on the right moment, but after Mega Drive they were really bad at business.
@cinoS
America does not constitute the world.
I take it you are an American? And you like a lot of Americans have a very insular outlook on the world which is very American-centric a s if America is the world itself and so anything outside of America cannot possibly exist or be true.
That’s why when you watch so many American people talk about the gaming industry, they talk about the 1983 crash as being something that affected all videogaming.
I’ll give you a bit of non-American perspective here, SEGA was a MASSIVE success in UK/Europe, and for two successive generations in a row, which is why Nintendo still to this day has a weaker European presence compared to in America (the reverse is true in America, Sega has always been weakest in America) for the Master System and Mega Drive and even the Saturn did a bit better initially compared to the train wreak that was Sega in America, even the fetus equivalent of the Master System – the SG-1000 got some support in Europe where it had absolutely none and wasn’t even released anywhere in America at any place.
Sega even had to use Tonka – a toy company in America because it was that badly handled in America and they did an even worse job of distributing the Master System.
Sega has also had a long heritage in Japan and is a culturally still a strong market, with the Arcade sector, Seagai resort and Joypolis ect, yes the Mega Drive was weakest in Japan compared to Europe and even America but it was an astronomical failure like Sega was in America at everything else they did, when you realise that the Mega Drive was more successful in Japan than the Saturn was in America, this is what you are really comparing here?
You talk about Sega being lucky for Kalinske and Sonic for Sega as a whole when really you should say Sega of America, because SOA effectively might as well have been a different company from the real main Segas, the 32X was rejected by Sega of Japan so that it wouldn’t spoil the Saturn in Japan and look at the results – the Sega Saturn was huge in Japan and still is a cultural phenomenon today there and it could have continued if only Sega and it’s key developers hadn’t moved on by 1997 to become looking at a successor – leaving Sony and Nintendo to finally close the gap the Saturn has over them there. The Saturn was still so successful that it actually even beat Nintendo – who had usually always been successful in Japan since the Famicon.
As for Sonic, you do realise that Sega of America tried to dumb down Sonic and change him to be more accepted in an American culture? Think about that for a moment, the Sega mascot had to be changed to fit American sensibilities, yes, America, not the whole world, just America, it was never a problem in the UK/Europe and Japan. Naoto Ohshima and Yuji Naka at Sega weren’t happy with the changes that Madeline Schoroeder and Kalinski and the team had made to ‘soften’ him up.
Speaking of Kalinske, while he did well at changing the marketing structure at Sega of America with Al Nilson and Micheal Katz, he actually wanted Sega to be a third party partner to Segas rivals, so he was also closet sell out as well, and failed where Bernie Stolar, Peter Moore and Charles Bellfield at Sega of America later succeeded.with their ‘manifesto pledge’ to make Sega third party.
Which all of Sega of Japan including Yuji Naka were very against to the very end.
So while the Genesis was a huge success, it wasn’t even for a full generation in America as Nintendo still later caught up while Sega of America wanted to focus on footballing the Saturn after launching the 32X.
Sega of Japan had good reason to reject these American proposals but a lot of Americans there don’t understand it. You have to remember also, America has no significant presence in the videogame industry after crashing it in 1983, the last time was with Atari but they couldn’t compete with the Japanese like Sega, Nintendo and then Sony later so there was probably some bitterness there in America (more so than in Japan) about this particular fact and why there was this concerted move to have Microsoft take Segas place as a hardware player.
Well, I’m Spanish, I’ve read lots of books and blogs about videogames history for decades, you look a bit unnecessarily aggressive and your wall of text is so big that you’ll understand I’m not replying to it despite having so many wrong or deliberately twisted facts 😉
@cinoS
Fair enough, though I would be interested to see where I could possibly be wrong.
I probably come across like that because of disappointment, but it’s just annoyance rather than outright aggression, because I honestly just really genuinely want Sega to succeed and do well.
Yuzo Koshiro is the SOUL of Streets of Rage, without then… I don’t wanna buy or play this game.
Unfortunately, it will likely sell well. The IP is fondly remembered and so many people buy games without caring to much for the quality. Remember Sonic 4? Marketing rules if people let it rule.
I don’t understand why Sega keeps doing this, they let other companies butcher their IP and it no longer spiritually feels like a Sega game/series, look what happened to the Sonic 4 series when they just gave it to Dimps, Sonic Boom suffered when it went to BigRedButton and Sanbaru, Streets of Rage is now the latest classic Sega series to lose the original Sega charm, and it’s going to happen to the Shenmue franchise next year now that they’ve just given it to Deep Silver. They led AtGames destroy the legacy and representation of Sega hardware.
It doesn’t seem like Sega has any pride in itself when it treats it’s own property and creations this way.
Streets of Rage is meant to be a SEGA game and Yuzo Koshiro doesn’t work for Sega so he could he be the soul of it now?