27 Years Ago, ‘Streets of Rage’ Changed the Game

The year was 1991. August: Dead of summer. Graffiti still ramped throughout the South Bronx. The streets were rife with crime and violence, a new generation of consumers were coming of age, Sega was becoming the console king of the gaming world and kids all throughout the land began gravitating toward a Beat Em Up style game that allowed our fragile minds to stay in the streets, while not actually allowing us the opportunity to catch the fade in these concrete streets. Streets of Rage was Born “Wait you tellin me there’s a game where you and your boy walk thru the streets putting the absolute BEATS on thugs and big bad bosses? And dat joint is called STREETS OF RAGE?!? That’s the dopest!” Yea that was 6 year old me upon hearing this baffling yet fire concept.

Paying Homage

We can’t give props to one of the most genre influencing games in history without a little OG history now can we? I’d say we gotta show respect to a handful of extremely dope games that set up the opportunity for Rage to flourish. First up is Double Dragon. It dropped in ’87 and is widely considered the OG Beat Em Up style game. Being created so early in the video game era, the game had its fair share of technical issues and was quite basic in the graphics department but the positive reception it received was far more telling than the handful of things you couldn’t do in the game (like fight more than two enemies on the screen or whatever).

Next we have games like Altered Beast and Golden Axe which reall…