Thread 11963657

A fine game that Sega of America tried to ruin. Why were they like that?

>>11963657 (OP)
Pic related is a review for Streets of Rage II from a US magazine that specializes in Sega stuff, in other words: the core audiance.

SoR3 was made harder for the west because in the west there was a demand for harder games, especially on the Megadrive which was seen as the more "hardcore" and "arcade at home" system.

It was made harder because people wanted it hard. I know people are going to throw the "muh rental" card but they don't have any proof and rentals didn't suddenly appear with SoR3, while SoR1 and 2 were unchanged. Reviews like this happened though.

>>11963679
Forgot to mention but note how the SoR2 review complains that you can spam special attacks, and then SoR3 just so happens to have a gauge for that so you can't spam them.

>>11963679
Only try hards game reviewers wanted hard games, average kid just had to deal with it

>>11963679
It might be harder but it's badly balanced. It feels like a bad romhack at times, SoR3 even introduces glitches (never to the player's favor) that weren't present in BK3.

>>11963684
>average kid

Streets of Rage was aimed at teens and young adults. Which yes, wanted hard games, you can check old usenet posts for that.

Read up about the history of sor2 and you'll understand.
It's amazing how sor3 was even made considering all the fucking arguing between segaUSA and SegaJapan.

Long story short with sor2 was segaUS was arguing with SegaJap constantly.
Ever wondered why sor2 cover looks nothing like the characters?
That's because SegaUSA had already decided that blaze needed to look like Madonna because she was popular at that time. They wanted her in denim shorts and top with 80s perm hair.
They argued that Max looked too much like Hulk Hogan so made him bald and changed his face.
They wanted skates to look blacker because SegaJapan kept doing him with lighter skin tone.

SegaUSA had a lot of their ideas dropped for sor2 because japan refused to listen to a lot of their stupid demands.

We then get to sor3 were both sides are still arguing with each other.
Zan is meant to be a terrorist that creates a bomb that kills thousands of people in sor3 and then feels guilt for his actions.
segaUSA removed this even though the final boss and the building at the end are meant to blow up via the same type of bomb zan created.

They removed Ash because they were scared of homophobia stuff.
They changed some of the characters names to be more western.

I've played the usa and jap version and honestly cant tell any difference in difficulty. It's more sor3 changing the characters color scheme I dont understand

They changed a lot of random shit in 2 and 3 and for what reason? They had mortal kombat 2 have reptile eat someones head off with blood everywhere. Yet MRX smoking a cigar had to be censored?

I found the hardest part about SoRIII was the train level gimmick, and the last 2 levels which are full of sponge damage enemies. The final boss is surprisingly easy as you can cheese him.

>>11963708
>you can check old usenet posts for that.
Usenet wasn't representative really, considering the much smaller percentage of people actively posting online back then.

>>11963738
Yeah sure, hardcore gamers with money to spend aren't representative of who bought games... anyway here is a guy wondering if he should buy SoR2 or not, implying that he wouldn't buy it if it was too easy

>>11963764
Were people back then too dumb to use the options menu?

>>11963734
>cheesing the final boss
you didn't beat the game

>>11963776
Show us your non-cheesed last boss strategy, specially the one in which you finish it in time to get the good ending.

sor 3 becomes a cakewalk when you realize the 6 button controller allows you to do all the leveled up moves without having to level up

>>11963730
It's wild how much they were pushing that "we want her to wear denim, redesign her" thing with Blaze. Blaze is already extremely attractive in SOR2. Leave well enough alone.

>SOR3
Don't forget the whole "Gender Neutral" colors thing.

>>11963779
unc doesn't know how to look up a youtube playthrough

>>11963786
Show me the video.

>>11963783
And I believe this is the proposed cardboard "Stand-Up" in question.

>>11963790
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=streets+of+rage+3+final+boss

>>11963679
Dude could just have tried to play in Mania mode. No way he thinks it's too easy.

>>11963791
How horrifying
>>11963792
I asked you for a specific video. Proofs. Non-cheesed last boss strat. Non-TAS'd. Go on.

>>11963796
>take a significant amount of time out of your day to record a playthrough of a game because i (unc) am too old and retarded to know that a boss can be beaten without cheesing it
nah

>>11963791
Jesus christ why does skates look like a shaved chimpanze?
Wtf is going on with Axel. He looks like kid chameleons retarded older brother.
Blaze looks dreadful and max looks awful

Fire! Burn! Kill it with fire!

>>11963803
>Jesus christ why does skates look like a shaved chimpanze?
you ever seen a basketball-american irl?

>>11963794
tbf, sor2 is really fucking easy at the default, you'll end up with 9+ lives easily

>>11963798
So no proofs then

>>11963807
>>11963792
i already gave you the link, do some footwork and stop raging unc lol

>>11963756
Yes a bunch of try hard needs aren't the whole market

>>11963756
>Yeah sure, hardcore gamers with money to spend aren't representative of who bought games
Most hardcore gamers weren't posting online

>>11963776
If the game allows it...

I think the censored US versions sucks, BUT I'm too autistic and love the yellow/black Axel clothes so I keep playing it over BKIII

>>11963738
>>11963813
I'm not even disagreeing with you that gamers enjoyed challenging games back then. I'm just questioning how representative usenet users were of normal people in general.

>>11963810
If it's so easy to find a non-cheese strat for the western version of SoR3's final boss, why don't you provide it? making me watch several videos (of which you are not sure if they cheese it or not) is unreasonable. The burden of proof is on you.

I'm gonna tell you, since you clicked on a thread of a game you haven't played by mistake: you can't beat 5 lifebars (or 9 on hard mode) under 3 minutes without cheese. I've already watched several SoR3 videos. It's cheese or bad ending. The boss is designed in a way that it's hard to hit, and the only reliable way is with cheese.

Call me unc again and I'm filtering that word forever and I'll never read a single post of yours ever again, fucking larper.

>>11963819
>Call me unc again and I'm filtering that word forever and I'll never read a single post of yours ever again, fucking larper.
uncs gonna flip!

filtered.

The saddest thing about all of this is how Sega allowed some frogs to ruin sor characters and history in sor4

Axel becomes a homeless bum eating half eaten kfc left overs from a bin.
Gives up his job and his home and life to be a bum.

Blaze quits the force to become a ballet dancer teacher....because of course that pays the same salary and im sure she had never disagreed with her boss before.

Forced black G floyd character shoehorned in to replace max.
Max gets put back in as a paid dlc after everyone complained.

The rumours of cherry originally going to be skates but that had transitioned which was dropped because they feared the backlash

>>11963819
unc gonna get a hernia

>>11963826
the most atrocious thing about sor4 was its gimmick last boss fight, what a shit finale

>>11963816
Why not play the superior sorRemake?
You can change the characters colors + play as sor 1 2 3 versions of each character

>>11963817
What do you mean "normal people"? They're dedicated players with money, precisely the target audiance. Anyway, it's not just usenet, and not just streets of rage. It was the entire mentality at the time especially in the west since the west played action games primarly.

>>11963829
That and the constant super armor on enemies

>>11963835
i kneel

>>11963805
I mean, no way he thinks it's too easy then, after switching to mania mode. If I remember correctly the first time someone beat it with no deaths was back in 2018

>>11963837
Yes. Giving just about every boss super armor is a band aid for shit boss design. It means they couldn't come up with anything good and just let the the super armor be the difficulty.

New sor gaming coming out.
Sega America have outsourced it to indians.
It looks woke.
Shitty 3D.

Sega always make retarded decisions but holy shit

>>11963851
>Sega America have outsourced it to indians.

>>11963851
>>>/v/

Fuck off retard

>>11963858
SARS you dont understand my friend!
New streets on Age game will be very good! Respect indian devs you bloody bastard

>>11963826
>ruin
You're being too dramatic

>Axel becomes a homeless bum
His profile says he became a hermit to train. If he's a bum so is Ryu from SF, to me that just makes him cooler. Also he no longer looks like a discount Cody from FF so that's a plus.

>Blaze
Yeah, that one was weird. But her profile did say that she liked dancing, and people would understandably want to retire after dealing with nuclear bomb threats and evil cyborgs. Not my favorite change but understandable when the story takes place something like 10 years after sor3.

>Floyd
Literally just Jax from MK even copying his trademark "gotcha!" grab, even says the line too. I don't think he's replacing Max, he's replacing Zan and in that sense he's way better.

>Cherry
Shit character, worse than Skate in everyway when Skate himself was already not the best. Her guitar also makes it harder to listen to the soundtrack. Avoid.

>>11963835
The idea was that the market in Japan was primarily kids, but hardcore players wanted hard games. Devs chose to aim for kids or hardcore players. In the West, the main demo was seen as teens and adults, so they made the games harder, regardless even when not necessarily aiming for hardcore players. Most mainstream games for the kid market in Japan also had ways to create or impose challenge for hardcore players. Sometimes, the Western release was delayed so after the JP release they had more time to tweak the balance of the game and add content like superbosses. They also had the opportunity to respond to the immediate reception of games.

>>11963865
Talk about video games on a video game board.
Retard gets upset.

>>11963872
Floyd is fucking terrible. The devs forcing this character and cherry into it deserve more hate than they get.
This might have been the last sor game ever made. Instead of adding characters from the series that mattered they added these 2.

>If he's a bum so is Ryu from SF, to me that just makes him cooler. Also he no longer looks like a discount Cody from FF so that's a plus

Axel was always seen better than cody. FFS capcom left Cody to rot for almost 15 years before doing anything with him. More people knew who axel was before cody.

Also you dont get to be a homeless bum and train yet have a body like that. You get hungry and have no money, hes eating left overs from a bin, smells like shit and doesn't even have a toilet anymore nor bathes.
I'm expected to believe everyone meets back up and no one asks axel why he threw his life and career away or that no one feels like being sick because of the stench homeless people give off.

Axel would be weak and begging for change if he was homeless

>>11963679
>less power and more technique
which IS what they did, and its why 3 is the GOAT
when howard speaks, its time to listen

>>11963812
tryhard nerds were at LEAST half the vidya market back then
normalfaggots didnt play vidya yet because they were afraid of getting called gay

>>11963835
>What do you mean "normal people"? They're dedicated players with money, precisely the target audiance.
They're dedicated players with money, but they're specifically dedicated players with money that went on the internet and posted about games back then, which was a small demographic. Normal people and normal hardcore players weren't posting online back then. I'm most just emphasizing how rare internet usage was back then compared to now.
>Anyway, it's not just usenet, and not just streets of rage. It was the entire mentality at the time especially in the west since the west played action games primarly.
Yeah I agree.

>>11963907
>normalfaggots didnt play vidya yet because they were afraid of getting called gay
Not really. There wasn't much of any stigma attached to just playing games even in the early 90s.

>>11963895
About Axel, the first time I saw SoR I just thought it was a bootleg Final Fight because Axel was clearly Cody, maybe because I grew up with a SNES, but his redesign is a massive improvement. Anyway I opened the game again to look at Axel's profile and this is what it says:

>After the fall of Mr. X, Axel retired from the police force and moved out of the city. Desperate to find true strength beyond his fists, he went to live in the wilderness. He spend his days training, meditating, and studying.

>However, despite his love for this simpler life, a call from Blaze was all it took for him to return to the city once more.

This is basically Ryu just without the whole traveling and competing in martial arts tournaments aspect. I've seen many characters like this before and they're cool. Dunno where you got this smelly bum thing from, dude is more like the "meditating under a waterfall trying to find enlightenment" kinda character.

>Floyd
You're talking about adding new characters as "forcing", but don't people expect sequels to add new characters? Were you just as mad that Adam never came back or that they replaced Max with Zan? They already announced a new game anyway, making a game under the assumption that it has to have everything ever since it might be the last is stupid. I also forgot to mention about Max that I doubt they added him as DLC because of the backlash, it's probably more about them already having all the assets since he was a boss, adding a playable Max was the most effortless DLC content they could make.

>>11963923
>This is basically Ryu just without the whole traveling and competing in martial arts tournaments aspect

So again. A bum that lives in the woods.
Has no money, no toilet paper, will stink to high heaven and will be begging for change.

Have you actually met a homeless person before or seen most of the people in the state of California?

I'm expected to believe adam and blaze just let axel fuck his own life up and no intervention was done. He just quit his job and started living in the woods eating peoples trash and not one of his friends thourght that maybe he had suffered a nervous breakdown

>>11963935
They're all retired after saving the city, they probably got enough money to not be eating trash. Especially since unlike Blaze, Axel isn't spending much. He is also studying and training, will probably end up stronger than the others, how is that "ruining your life"?

>>11963916
depends entirely on the game
>SoR?
highly respected
>SF2 or MK?
universally allowed, and even maybe cool (as long as its not the SNES ver)
>some jarpig?
stfu get in the fucking locker you gay nerd

despite its popularity, id say by the mid/late 90s, nintendo was already firmly seen as some kiddie-shit by most kids of the day. and thus: gay. at least in the states, sega was the only one that managed to successfully market itself as "cool".
and then there was PC, which was instantly some geek shit, despite having a lot of way better and cooler games than most of the consoles

>>11963916
>There wasn't much of any stigma attached to just playing games even in the early 90s.
wrong
t. unc

>>11963992
Also unc here. Depended on where you lived too I'm sure. Never got shit for playing games once in the 90s.
>>11963962
Even jarpigs were no big deal. In my experience, nobody cared enough to single them out before FFVII came out. And then JRPGs were popular for a while when it did. Even more so after Pokemon came out, if you count that.

It's true the type of game you were playing was considered cool or lame by other kids though, like anything. Like I remember someone in 4th grade saying Croc was lame and that you should own Time Crisis instead. But it's not like you got shoved into lockers for liking Croc. If you did it wasn't because of the game.

>>11963679
>a US magazine that specializes in Sega stuff, in other words: the core audiance
>the core audience
More like shills

>>11963708
Why didn’t they just abstain from spamming the special attack? Were self imposed challenges not a concept yet?

>>11963791
Holy fuck it's Gary Coleman

>>11965064
>Were self imposed challenges not a concept yet?

It was, some magazines had self imposed challenges they'd propose to players. But reviews aren't how it works.

>>11963657 (OP)
The story in the American one makes more sense.

>>11965656
How? it's the same with removed scenes

>>11963826
>The rumours of cherry originally going to be skates but that had transitioned which was dropped because they feared the backlash

>>11963829
>>11963837
The bad parts in SOR4 was that they did not understand the game logic properly. They thought that the fight system was all about using specials to not get hit. It took several patches to make it so you can use specials to break out of stunlock, in the initial version if an enemy did a combo you had to eat the entire thing.

But even worse is that you can only use specials to break out of stuns. In SOR2 different enemies have different stun durations, with heroes and some bosses having very short stuns and other mooks having very long ones. The implication of this is that when a Donovan does a jab,jab, uppercut combo, you can punch back against him because your stun ends before he does the next second attack. It's also why you can't combo some bosses; they have shorter stun periods and will hit back or block between your punches (Bear and Shiva comes to mind).
This logic is COMPLETELY MISSING in SOR4.

Feels like all of SOR4 is designed around "do not get hit, ever", which also works together with the combo bonus system. I'll admit that getting through an entire level with a combo carried from beginning to end is cathartic (especially when it gives you like 6 extra lives), but it doesn't make for a good beat'em up.

the presentation in SOR4 was all sorts of awesome though, you even had a Galsia turning Super Saiyan, and the Y twins idolizing their dad and had stained glass murals of him etc.

>>11963841
SOR2 had bosses turn invincible too, SOR4 just made it more visible. I did dislike how they go "enraged" and get a bunch of annoying extra attacks, Barbon was especially bad with his quadriple swinging kick.
The final boss was fine IMO, and you can cheese it super easily since weapons don't break on him for some reason, so if you brought over a mace from the castle section you can kill it in seconds.
Or for extra fun use the SOR1 characters super while it has both legs on the ground, it nearly one shots the thing.

>>11963872
Axel was great in SOR4. I just wish they didn't go back on him being a bruiser. His attacks being slow and heavy made him extremely satisfying, but they sped him up considerably in one of the patches.
Like, trying doing his strong kick kara cancel to standing special. He turned super slow and punched away everyone hard. It was awesome.
On the other hand they toned down his grand upper so much, it was a joke, even after multiple patches it wasn't as good.

Blaze was fine, other than the gypsy earrings.

Floyd was crap but after a lot of patches they made him suck less. Personally I would've had Zan instead, but for some reason the devs absolutely hated SOR3. They even omitted the entire soundtrack and most of its characters.

Cherry was awful. Even after playing the game every day for 3 years, I haven't seen nearly anyone using her. Maybe only 2 people in 3 years.

Also in the DLC, Max had extremely crap throws. Just more proof that the devs did not understand the game properly. And they never got to add a proper SOR2 Shiva. I don't think any SOR game ever had him playable with the moveset he uses as the CPU.

>>11963895
>FFS capcom left Cody to rot for almost 15 years before doing anything with him.

He appears in one of the SF Alpha games, didn't he? The third one? So that was only 8 or 9 years between Final Fight and SFA3.

>>11963895
>Also you dont get to be a homeless bum and train yet have a body like that.

SOR4 Axel looked more like a trucker than a hobo to me.

>>11966125
>>11966140
>>11966147
>>>/v/

>removed the cracked wall for no reason
I will never forgive them for butchering SoR3 so much. Don't play SoR3, play Bare Knuckle III.

>>11965064
There's no need to self impose a challenge when increasing the in-game difficulty in the options menu will address his complaint

>>11966125
A lot of it can just be attributed to "fighting game" people trying to make beat 'em ups, and forcing fighting game design philosophies into their games.
You can see it with older stuff like Sengoku 3, or more recent stuff like Fight N Rage. Combo heavy, enemies having lots of health, "just don't get hit lol". etc.
Capcom were about the only devs (I think anyway) that could find that happy balance, with games like AVP, and Final Fight 3.

Like you, I like SOR4 quite a bit presentation wise, but the damn game just ain't all that fun to play past the first couple of stages.

>>11963791
Horror and moral terror. Sega USA shouldn't have been given the keys to the wash closet let alone game design or aesthetic decisions.

>>11966415
It would be really easy to fix SOR4 though. Make each character have different stun durations. Weak enemies get stunned for long time so they are only dangerous in masses. More dangerous enemies can have shorter stun, making them harder to do combos on. Remove the bosses having the enraged cutscenes. Enemies only have invincibility on stand up, and only bosses have them, or mid bosses on their first appearance. Remove or heavily tone down the juggle system, so you can't just lock down bosses for the entire fight.

And remove the fucked combo system.