How 'Streets Of Rage 4' Reimagined Gaming's Most Iconic Rave
At the turn of the '90s, the attention of the video game industry was locked onto two major companies battling for the lion's share of a growing industry. One was Nintendo, whose ubiquitous Italian plumber was a household name.
The other was SEGA, a brand known for its spiky hedgehog, sure, but also for signaling a specific kind of '90s cool that set itself against other video games of the time. While Nintendo stuck to their family friendly "games-for-all" aesthetic, SEGA put out video games that were thematically riskier and more mature.
One of SEGA's biggest titles of that era was a beat-'em-up style game released for the Genesis console in 1991. In it, the player assumes the role of an ex-cop out to clean up the streets of a corrupt city. It was a game with an irrefutable style, a counter-cultural cool; its grimy cityscapes were populated by leather-laced street punks, it was violent and unruly. The shock of, the feeling of a freshly realized aesthetic rendered with startling precision and clarity.
