Hands down one of my favorite video games of the past couple years is Streets of Rage 4, which was a collaborative effort between Dotemu, Lizardcube, and Guard Crush Games. Growing up I was huge fan of the original Streets of Rage games on the SEGA Genesis, and seeing a brand new sequel coming more than 2 decades later by the same group of folks who lovingly remastered another childhood favorite of mine, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, meant that I couldn’t have been more excited for its release. I nabbed it on Switch the moment it came out and it was everything I hoped it would be and more.
The developers remained extremely respectful of the original trilogy of games while also improving on the beat ’em up gameplay to offer something more strategic than your average button masher. Throw in a truly excellent hand-drawn art style, a killer soundtrack, and more content and secrets than you can shake your fist at and we had ourselves one truly glorious modern take on a beloved classic. And now all the gloriousness that is Streets of Rage 4 is heading to iOS and Android devices.
Streets of Rage 4 first launched in April of 2020, when the global Covid-19 pandemic had brought most of the world to a halt. Everybody, stuck at home due to lockdowns, was playing the new Animal Crossing on Switch, myself included. As awful as the pandemic has been, that is one of those “shared experience" type things that I’ll always look back on fondly. However, one can only run around an island filled with adorable animal people for so long before you need a palate cleanser, and for me that palate cleanser was Streets of Rage 4. Oh, Tom Nook talked me into yet another home addition and even more crippling debt? Time to go punch some people. What a wonderful yin and yang those two games were to bounce back and forth between.
Of course, the thought had crossed my mind that Streets of Rage 4 would work perfectly fine on mobile, and leave it to the wonderful, premium-port-loving folks at Playdigious to make it happen. The mobile version will feature cloud syncing, a revamped interface for the touchscreen, Game Center achievements, and controller support. One thing it will not include right at launch is multiplayer, but that will come as a free update down the line. Other than that this will be the whole dang enchilada that we’ve been enjoying for the past 2 years on other platforms. Streets of Rage 4 is set to launch on May 24th and you can pre-order it on the iOS App Store here or on the Android side of things you can pre-register on Google Play here.
