Final Streets of Fight

This isn't really a post about one game over the other.

Its a stealth post. It is really about the perception of Genesis vs SNES on newer gamers.

This is the perfect example of what I'm talking about. If you don't know, Final Fight was a Beat'em up by Capcom between Street Fighter and Street Fighter 2. Its graphics are very close to Street Fighter 2's graphics. You take one of 3 characters(in the arcade, 2 characters in the SNES version) and you walk through the game beating up characters. Similar to Double Dragon, River City Rampage, etc. The SNES got its port rights.

Streets of Rage was made by an in house Sega team. It was done in a similar fashion, a beat'em up starring 3 characters as they proceeded to take down a criminal organization. Each character could call in the Police to shoot various cannons and guns at the enemy. It featured multi-path decisions.

Here's the thing.

People that never played these games might go to Youtube and look at videos to compare and contrast these games. Doing this, with today's mentality, its obvious that Final Fight wins. The characters are huge, the graphics are crisp, the characters look like they play different.

And I say this is a falsity. As anyone I know that has PLAYED these games, almost always chooses Streets of Rage, especially when you bring part 2 into the equation. Why? The music of Streets of Rage was done by obvious early techno junkies, and it layed the ground work for other highly acclaimed music tracks. It actually revolutionized game music in Japan. You can hear its influence in the Soul Caliber games even today. Then, especially when you look at Final Fight 2 and Streets of Rage 2, the characters are EXTREMELY varied in Streets of Rage. Lets talk about the small characters... this allows there to be nearly 20 characters on screen at once in Streets of Rage. This allows for vehicles and all sorts of things to fit on the screen. You don't run out of nice looking things and NEW things to see during the game in Streets of Rage. Final Fight pretty much stays the same.

So, Final Fight wins on visuals. There is no doubt. THAT is why it wins today. Youtube and screenshots ARE only visuals. Tiny clips of music doesn't show the audio very well. So you say to someone that's only watched the 2 on Youtube "which was the better game?" and they will always pick Final Fight.

I owned them all, except Final Fight Guy. I had Final Fight, Final Fight 2 and Final Fight 3. Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3 also. Beat'em ups were good for co-op play where it didn't matter if I owned the game, it didn't give the disadvantage to my friends.

Which did my friends, my family, and myself always seem to pick? I was always asked to hook up the Genesis for Streets of Rage.