Video Game / Streets of Rage 2

Streets of Rage 2 is a 1992 beat 'em up developed and published by Sega. It's the second game in the Streets of Rage series and, like the game before, was released for the Sega Genesis.

A year after the ex-cops defeated and drove his syndicate out of the city, Mr. X has come back with an even stronger force and orders his men to kidnap one of the trio, Adam, to spite them. Axel and Blaze, determined to help save their comrade from Mr. X and his syndicate prepare themselves for their new battle while gaining two new allies in the form of Adam's young brother Skate and Axel's friend Max. Together, the quartet embarks on a rescue mission to help save Adam and defeat the new gangs recruited by Mr. X.

Like the first game, it was ported to Game Gear and Sega Master System, and an enhanced port on Nintendo 3DS was published by M2 in 2015.

This work contains examples of:

• Amusement Park: Stage 3. Starts on a boardwalk, through an arcade, a pirate attraction, one more walkway, and finally in an alien-themed attraction.
• Athletic Arena Level: Stage 4, which takes place in front of and veers into a baseball stadium. Which has a secret lift that goes underground!
• Badass in Distress: Adam in this game. He can fight well enough, but got blindsided by an ambush when Mr. X started trying to rebuild his empire, prompting our heroes to go rescue him.
• Battle Strip: Barbon (first boss of the second game and fifth boss of the fourth) starts the fight by ripping out of his shirt.
• Digital Destruction: The game's soundtrack album, released shortly after the game's Japanese release, noticeably suffers from the notorious difficulty with replicating the sound of the Genesis' YM2612 FM synthesizer, resulting in tinny audio and radically different mixing.
• Easier Than Easy: Very Easy which is exactly as it says, enemies health are ridiculously low and there's very few of them swarming you through the level. It essentially the training wheels mode of the game.
• Fight Clubbing: Stage 4 boss fight ends in one after the heroes take a secret elevator in the baseball park. Here you face the current champion, Abadede.
• Fighting Clown: R.Bear and his palette swaps in 2. He's a bulbously-fat bald guy in an old-fashioned swimsuit, no shoes and a gigantic mustache wearing boxing gloves who appears to be moonwalking, and when the fight starts he launches himself at you with a flying butt-drop. Then he beats the absolute crap out of you because he's got anti-air attacks, insane reach and quickness, an overpowered grapple, and is generally considered the toughest opponent in the game bar Shiva.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Max sports a vertical one across his left eye.
• Gratuitous English: "Do! Base ball" and "It's like Boo!" on some flyers and banners in the stadium level. Allegedly the latter refers to a miniboss you're about to fight.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Vehelits. While in the middle of an amusement park in battling thugs, you suddenly fight an attraction that resembles an undead alien dragon. The Syndicate doesn't seem to have any involvement with it at all (though it's implied they're likely controlling it from within the attraction as a means to take out the heroes).
• Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat: You can find apples and roasted chicken by smashing arcade cabinets, wooden crates, and trashcans. It may not be sanitary, or make any sense, but you take what you can get when you're being ganged up on.
• Irony: The ending theme is named "Good Ending", even though this installment does not have Multiple Endings.
• Lost in Translation: Stage 3 has Bare Knuckle cabinets and Bare Knuckle II posters in the Stage 3 arcade. Unfortunately for Western players, the series is called Streets of Rage outside of Japan, but the Bare Knuckle references were kept.
• Offscreen Start Bonus: The first stage has a 1-Up tucked away in the lower-left corner at the start, behind a mailbox in the foreground.
• Revenge: Mr. X's motivation in this game, wanting to avenge his defeat from the first game. To do so, he ambushes and kidnaps Adam, sending a picture of him chained up to goad Axel and Blaze to come rescue him.
• Unique Enemy: In most stages of this game, there are unique variants of punks which will give you 10000 points if defeated, such as Mc. K and Altet (Donovans) in stage 1, and Axi and Mavin (Signals) in stage 3.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Zamza is around when the game stops going easy on you, especially on the higher difficulty levels. He hits much harder than Barbon or Jet did, he's fast, he has a lot of health for that point in the game, and his erratic movement makes it hard to land any significant damage on him.