No matter how many excellent games you have played, you can probably still easily pinpoint a particular part of your childhood when your experiences with a game were so blissful that you still consider that game one of the best you have ever played.
Admittedly, your fondness is probably driven at least partly by cozy nostalgia working its magic, but that lingering liking wouldn’t have been encouraged by just any game. Stay with us as we reminiscence about a game that has had that kind of effect on us…
A very different – and very fun – time
Turn back time to 1992. That year, Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston wow the crowds in hit movie The Bodyguard, a certain Bill Clinton defeats George H. W. Bush in the US presidential election, and millions of gamers are enjoying a console called the Sega Genesis. Then, on December 20, 1992, a certain game is released for the Genesis in North America…
We remember playing it. We remember choosing from a number of peculiar characters to play: an athletic-looking young man in a white shirt; a more beefy, muscular-looking guy… we could go on. Anyway, we then remember, as one of these characters, entering a dark street where threatening-looking people called ‘Galsia’ or ‘Donovan’ keep approaching and attacking us.
Then, we punch away, grab a pole to swing at them, and occasionally pick up little apples – or whatever they are – from the floor to replenish our health. It’s fast-paced and… wow, super-fun! We have to act quick – there are some dancing people with mohawks who keep trying to slide-tackle us. And now we have just come across some guy who looks like a big Galsia, but keeps laughing maniacally and throwing knives at us. He’s a little irritating, but we eventually defeat him.
X marks the big bad guy. Again
What are we doing all of this for, anyway? It’s all ultimately to defeat some criminal mastermind, who we have so far only seen in a brief introduction of the game’s story, just before the title screen – he’s that big purple guy in the screenshot below. He’s called Mr. X, apparently. We can’t help wondering whether he is any relation to Dr. X, the arch-enemy of Action Man. Or maybe he’s even the same person, from before he gained his doctorate and first clashed with Action Man.
So, what on earth is this game? It’s Streets of Rage 2, of course – and it’s often referred to as one of the greatest games ever made. Our amazing memories of it certainly suggest that it was – as do our recent plays of it. Yes, Streets of Rage 2 is still available on several platforms – have a go with it before judging for yourself whether it really merits its reputation as among the top of top-drawer games.