The new tracks actually hurt my ear drums, especially the tune from the god awful (but thankfully short) disco stage and one of the later stages where I swear Yuzo Koshiro has just mashed the keyboard or lined up completely random notes, results in a horrible blurry mess.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when the best music in the game was remixed from SOR2. n fact, I think it’s probably up there with Street Fighter 2 as the best gaming soundtrack ever. The score from SOR2 was from a different planet. Well fine, at least it’ll sound good right? Wrong! Blocky sprites on blocky stages does not a work of art make. The backdrops have suffered just as much and are unnecessarily cluttered. By trying to add more detail, Sega have made everything look worse. The first thing I noticed about SOR3 is how much blockier the sprites look, and that includes our protagonists as well as their foe. Good to see Blaze back, not so good to see Skate.

In Max’s place is Zan but more on him later. But what’s this? Where’s crowd favourite Max? And where on earth is Adam? As it turns out, Adam was just too goddamn busy so he leant Streets of Rage 2 Axel his Streets of Rage outfit and thus we have Streets of Rage 3 Axel. The title screen is a little bare but the options screen has been ported from SOR2, as too the character select. Where shall we start? On first loading Streets of Rage 3, everything looks as it should.

Okay, that’s a bit harsh but the good points are certainly outweighed by the bad. Where does my anger stem from? The disbelief that they haven’t managed to improve on SOR2 in any way. Why? Streets of Rage 3 is why! Two years after the legendary Streets of Rage 2 graced our television sets, Sega finally released the sequel and it ain’t pretty. Let’s not beat around the bush (pardon the pun), I’m angry, borderline pissed off even.

Streets of rage 3 genesis rom