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New Streets of Rage 4 screenshots. Looks like signature Streets of Rage.

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
i think the "thing" that people are seeing when they think it looks bad/flashy is because the disparity between the animation of the sprites and the actual framerate of the game.

when characters move around, it could look as if the sprites are sliding across the play field or maybe they look disconnected from the character's positional movement vs its animation movement.

i changed the framerate of the gif above to reduce the disparity and you'll see sort of better overall cohesion. but the problem with doing this is that then game then has to run at a lower framerate.

(edited gif)
yloA4Tb.gif

WOW! This looks pretty good to me.
 

DadEggs

Member
I think its the fx art thats throwing me off.

Thats whats making it feels very flash and amateur to me.

ill still dip if it plays well
 
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CatCouch

Member
Looks spectacular! I am absolutely loving the art. This is up on my most wanted list for sure, now. Have any platforms been announced yet? Can't find any info looking it up.
 

Stuart360

Member
Dont like the look of it to be honest. Looks too clean, a bit mobile like.
I would of prefered polygons but keep the 2D style.
 
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I think it looks good in motion and yeah the character sprites are a little too clean looking for the gritty backgrounds, but I’m definitely buying this. I was a huge fan of the trilogy and this finally looks like a pretty faithful reproduction of the classic games. I’m glad they didn’t go for a retro pixel art look because it would probably look 8 bit or a very early generation 16 but game. It would be a bonus if Yuzo Koshiro is behind the music because besides Akira Yamaoka, he’s my favorite game composer of all time.
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
I'm really impressed by what has been shown. I was somewhat lukewarm on Streets of Rage 4 until now, but I'm very interested now.

The graphics style does look a little Flash-like, but the color saturation and art design looks very good. The streets look suitably dark and sleazy. You might complain about the lack of "pixels," but that's what happens when you render everything in 1080p. If you want that classic look, you'll have to go back to 240/480. The animation looks wonderfully fluid and definitely looks like a "next generation" sequel to the Genesis classics. I'm glad the developers didn't use 3D polygons. Keep it 2D and hand-drawn.

The gameplay offers up some new changes which is very welcome, such as air juggles. I do hope there are some new villains to face instead of just punching out the same group of bad guys all over again, but like the wardrobes, I suspect that fans would cry foul if anything were really changed. I also hope the developers remember how Sega broke up the action in Bare Knuckle 3/SoR3 with scenes like the bulldozers and the bombs. Don't just give us endless waves of fighting, which becomes repetitious and boring very quickly. Pay careful attention to how SoR2 varied its environments and battles from scene to scene, and generally kept those scenes short.

As for the other characters, I expect all of them to be playable, either at the beginning or as a post-game bonus. I don't know if SoR4 will feature more than two players at once, but I really wish we get 4P action. Please give Max a bunch of new wrestling moves. He needed at least one killer throw to rival Mike Haggar. I suggest stealing a couple throws from Virtua Fighter's Wolf and Jeffry.

Oh, and they're getting Yuzo Koshiro, right? Maybe they should go for a different sound than early '90s techno-pop this time. Again, fans would throw a fit if anything changed (they threw a tantrum over BK/SoR3), so I'd expect the sound composers to party like it's 1989.

Overall, everything looks great so far. As always, gameplay is everything and that's where SoR4 lives or dies.
 
They need to add Max, the best character. I need a big guy, not two quick fighters.

I’m assuming and “think” I heard there will be more playable characters. Not sure if they mean later in a more complete version, dlc or a patch of some kind. Adding Max would be a real nice addition.
 
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Mecha Meow

Member
Game looks fantastic and LOL at the people saying it looks like a cheap Flash-based game.

I'm playing a lot of fight N Rage (Ranks in the top tier in the genre IMO) right now and replaying SoR 1/2 and having a helluva good time.
 

SALMORE

Member
Looks Great ! loving the new mechanics , so much combo potentials 😀


i wonder if the snake girl is a playable character or just a recurring Sub boss like Ashura or Ash from SOR3 ?
 

Kazza

Member
I'm currently playing through Wonder Boy: The Dragons Trap (which has the same art designer), and those dismissing the graphics as being "cheap flash mobile" quality couldn't be more wrong. The rough streets look suitably gritty, a big departure from the whimsical look of Wonder Boy,but the actual animation looks just as good. I'm a big pixel art fan myself (really looking forward to The Last Night), but I feel it's been overdone in recent years, so am pleased with the art direction here (after some initial reservations).

Looks nothing like Street of Range and looks more like an Amiga brawler.

What Amiga brawler looks anything like this? If there really is one, I'd be genuinely interested in trying it.

The gameplay offers up some new changes which is very welcome, such as air juggles.

I'm glad they have added new mechanics to the gameplay too, but someone who played an early build did mention the frustration of being juggled by enemies as the player. It's never fun as a player when your character is out of your control for seconds at a time while your health bar gets destroyed by multiple enemies. That's something they are going to have to balance very carefully.

I do hope there are some new villains to face instead of just punching out the same group of bad guys all over again, but like the wardrobes, I suspect that fans would cry foul if anything were really changed.

I'm a little disappointed by the lack of new enemies so far as well. I don't mind seeing a couple make a return, such as the mohawk/cape guys (signal?), but I'd prefer most to be brand new designs. I also hope that each level has it's own types. I hate it when the later levels of any beat'em up just reuses enemies from earlier levels.

Oh, and they're getting Yuzo Koshiro, right? Maybe they should go for a different sound than early '90s techno-pop this time. Again, fans would throw a fit if anything changed (they threw a tantrum over BK/SoR3), so I'd expect the sound composers to party like it's 1989.

In an recent interview, Yuzo Koshiro said he would like to go for a Future Bass/City Pop feel for any new SoR game. It would be hilarious of, after everyone begging him to do the soundtrack, he did another uber-experimental one, a'la SoR3 (which I have actually grown fond of).
 
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Kazza

Member
Blaze is a little too thic for my liking and I'm still not 100% feeling hobo Axel, but I can live with both.

Some thoughts:
1. Length of game - beat'em ups can become a little repetitive, so it's best to either keep them short (max 45 min per playthrough), or add some RPG elements. I wonder what the SoR4 team will go for?
2. Axel already seems pretty slow and chunky. Where does this leave Adam and Max (who were traditionally the slow but powerful characters)?
3. How much will it cost? The new Monster Boy game has sold pretty well at $40/£35. I would be willing to pay that for SoR4.

Loving the gritty backstreets look:
streets-of-rage-4-ps4-playstation-4-4.original.jpg
 

cireza

Member
Juggles are the worst thing that could come for the series. I was sure they were going to put this shit into the game.
 
It looks just like later amiga games outside the higher background color detail.

Also the art style isn't semi-realistic, and 80's looking which is why SR used to look cool on the Genesis. The artstyle is just as bad as the new Wonder Boy.
 

SegaShack

Member
SoR1 and 2 are clean, beautiful, colorful games. This looks dirty and ugly and it kills me to say that cause I love the series and always hoped
for another. It’s like if in 2008 they made a sequel for the Nintendo DS, this desaturated cartoony art style went out of fashion a long time ago and certainly does not fit SoR.

“Hand drawn” or not this just looks a million times better. Also it should be Yuzo Koshiro and his company Ancient making the game.

giphy.gif
 
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dirthead

Banned
Looks so much better in motion though, anyone in doubt should check out gameplay footage, that feels so right even if stills can look off given the art style decision isn't really in the same spirit (that would be like comparing old pixel art masterpiece fighting games like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Street Fighter III 3rd Impact to a game like Skullgirls or something I guess, they each do what they do real well).
ing-sor4-gif-1545351826464_1280w.gif

Walking speed's too slow and Axl's walking animation is trash though. What's really telling about the whole thing is that Alucard's hair in SOTN is animated better than Blaze's in this. Just look at the hair. There are so many places where it just freezes in mid air or randomly changes shape. It's so bad. It's literally worse than what we got like 25 years ago.

Juggles are the worst thing that could come for the series. I was sure they were going to put this shit into the game.

Why? Guardian Heroes is a better game than any SOR will ever be, and it has juggling.

SoR1 and 2 are clean, beautiful, colorful games. This looks dirty and ugly and it kills me to say that cause I love the series and always hoped
for another. It’s like if in 2008 they made a sequel for the Nintendo DS, this desaturated cartoony art style went out of fashion a long time ago and certainly does not fit SoR.

“Hand drawn” or not this just looks a million times better. Also it should be Yuzo Koshiro and his company Ancient making the game.

giphy.gif

SOR2 looks so much better because the characters and backgrounds fit in perfectly. The problem with this and almost all contemporary Flash shit games is that the characters look like they were Photoshopped on top of backgrounds. The shading and style of the backgrounds is completely incongruous with the animated game objects.

Yeah, this is basically trash.
 
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Imtjnotu

Member
Everyone talking about sor2 not being gritty needs to go back and play the game. There was only crazy neon during the first stage. Even the jungle road was dark and gritty.
 

SirTerry-T

Member
Love the art direction and the way this is going. It's a clear passion project for all involved, only things I would change, looking at these early shots and gameplay clips, is adds bit more transparency/alpha effects to the fx. They look a bit "Photoshop image with an outer glow filter applied" at the mo'.
 

Durask

Member
I'm currently playing through Wonder Boy: The Dragons Trap (which has the same art designer), and those dismissing the graphics as being "cheap flash mobile" quality couldn't be more wrong. The rough streets look suitably gritty, a big departure from the whimsical look of Wonder Boy,but the actual animation looks just as good. I'm a big pixel art fan myself (really looking forward to The Last Night), but I feel it's been overdone in recent years, so am pleased with the art direction here (after some initial reservations).

Never heard of Wonder Boy: The Dragons Trap and watched some on Youtube now, looks great, just the kind of art that I like, will check it out.
 

Lightsbane

Member
Looks dreadful. But the real question is, how does it play?

I can get past any sort of bad visuals if it's as fun as 2.
 
It's a very strange situation.
Sega throwing the SoR 4 name out there in the first place. Then you have Lizardcube, they did a rather good job with Wonderboy even though I'm not a fan of their artstyle but that doesn't matter.
DotEmu is involved too? They're pure shite and then that other party who made that terrible" realistic" looking brawler lol. Maybe Sega threw like 500k at this at most.
 

dirthead

Banned
It's a very strange situation.
Sega throwing the SoR 4 name out there in the first place. Then you have Lizardcube, they did a rather good job with Wonderboy even though I'm not a fan of their artstyle but that doesn't matter.
DotEmu is involved too? They're pure shite and then that other party who made that terrible" realistic" looking brawler lol. Maybe Sega threw like 500k at this at most.

The real developer (the one doing the gameplay programming and engine) is Guard Crush Games, and so far all they've shown us is crapola.

 
Those rockstars indeed. But I'll buy it day one, visuals and audio should be great even though the artstyle is hit and miss but that is debatable. How it feels though? Streets of Rage still has the most satisfying impacts as far as I'm concerned. :D
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
DotEmu is indeed not always trustworthy, some of their retro game ports were great, others were awful with redone cheesy menus and shit. I dunno about the other guys you mention but the River City Ransom: Underground devs hadn't made anything else and that worked out. It's a bit flawed and had bugs at launch for some but the core of it is superb and they managed to do crazy and diverse movesets in the tiny amount of pixels each character possesses, it's insane. So yeah, hopefully just the fact these other guys are getting to use the legendary SOR name makes them put in extra effort and hard work too.

We'll see, we can always just keep waiting for The TakeOver to get done for more SOR-like goodness anyway. Incidentally it was updated this month with a new character addition and a redone Megan :)
 
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stranno

Member
I'm not a big fan of this style but SEGA must be wishing to close the SOR4 chapter. I mean, how many games has been developed under the SOR4 name? Tons..

Fighting Force was going to be SOR4 (in fact there was a leaked build of the game when it was called Streets of Rage 3D), Dreamcast got a tech-demo, GRIN, Ruffian Games, so many projects..
 
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Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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I thought I'd share a few Streets of Rage 2 photos for comparison. These were shot on my Genesis which was connected to a Sony Trinitron via RF cable.

Looking at this game on actual hardware shows that the art style was aiming for a cartoon or comic style, with a lot of color and little, if any, pixelation. It's a very clean look and has aged very nicely. The characters are fairly large and well animated by the standards of the 16-bit era, usually 3-5 frames. Your heroes have a large number of moves and the action flows very quickly.

As is often the case, many emulators running on HD displays tend to over-sharpen the image, resulting in a very pixelated display. You'll also see a lot of color dithering in places where the colors are intended to blend. This is where using a CRT display on real hardware makes a big difference. The Genesis looks much better on RF than Composite, but S-video looks quite good if you get your console modded.

Looking at the SoR4 footage, the animation has increased dramatically but the flow still seems to be there. It remains to be seen how the air juggling will affect gameplay, but reports are that it goes both ways, and the bad guys can knock you around endlessly. This is perfectly fine by me, as one of the major flaws of beat-em-up videogame was how your characters were far more powerful than the villains. I think the only genre title where that was notably different was Golden Axe 3, which played out a lot more like tournament fighters, and really had some honest-to-goodness fights in it. I loved that game to pieces.
 

dirthead

Banned
Looking at this game on actual hardware shows that the art style was aiming for a cartoon or comic style, with a lot of color and little, if any, pixelation. It's a very clean look and has aged very nicely. The characters are fairly large and well animated by the standards of the 16-bit era, usually 3-5 frames. Your heroes have a large number of moves and the action flows very quickly.

As is often the case, many emulators running on HD displays tend to over-sharpen the image, resulting in a very pixelated display. You'll also see a lot of color dithering in places where the colors are intended to blend. This is where using a CRT display on real hardware makes a big difference. The Genesis looks much better on RF than Composite, but S-video looks quite good if you get your console modded.

That's not universally true. The art and debugging of these games were largely done on incredibly sharp computer monitors and not all console games were really tailored for NTSC TVs let alone RF.

Regardless, your photos illustrate that the SOR2 sprites and backgrounds blend in perfectly. The SOR4 sprites and backgrounds do NOT blend in well at all. They look like oil and water. It's fucked.

I think this highlights just how fucked the art design in this game is. These two images below are from a single frame of the game. They don't fit AT ALL. The moving objects have thick round lines and large blocks of color between them.

Then you have some weird ass sterile looking background with no real line work, aren't rounded at all (they're almost clinically sharp and sterile). It's a mess.

5HCCKSM.png
 

Kazza

Member
That's not universally true. The art and debugging of these games were largely done on incredibly sharp computer monitors and not all console games were really tailored for NTSC TVs let alone RF.

Regardless, your photos illustrate that the SOR2 sprites and backgrounds blend in perfectly. The SOR4 sprites and backgrounds do NOT blend in well at all. They look like oil and water. It's fucked.

I think this highlights just how fucked the art design in this game is. These two images below are from a single frame of the game. They don't fit AT ALL. The moving objects have thick round lines and large blocks of color between them.

Then you have some weird ass sterile looking background with no real line work, aren't rounded at all (they're almost clinically sharp and sterile). It's a mess.

5HCCKSM.png

But if you look at the whole picture then everything makes sense:

streets-of-rage-4-ps4-playstation-4-4.original.jpg


If you compare the sprites to the near background (the floor, the crates, the bridge, the busted trains) it all blends perfectly. The reason the skyscrapers look different is that the are super clean, made of glass and are bathed in sunlight. I think this juxtaposition of the super grimy slums with the prosperous modern city in the background is deliberate and looks good.
 

dirthead

Banned
But if you look at the whole picture then everything makes sense:

streets-of-rage-4-ps4-playstation-4-4.original.jpg


If you compare the sprites to the near background (the floor, the crates, the bridge, the busted trains) it all blends perfectly. The reason the skyscrapers look different is that the are super clean, made of glass and are bathed in sunlight. I think this juxtaposition of the super grimy slums with the prosperous modern city in the background is deliberate and looks good.

Looks like dog shit to me. The art looks like it belongs in a different game.
 

Petrae

Member
Meh. I mean, it’s cool that there’s a new Streets of Rage game, but these visuals look too clean.

As much as people hated Double Dragon IV, I loved the game’s look and how it came off like a true 8-bit DD sequel instead of that hand-drawn look that Double Dragon Neon has. Sure, the gameplay wasn’t that great, but the look was spot-on.

Here, this looks like Streets of Rage Neon. Hand-drawn. Out of place. Ew. I don’t like the look at all. Hopefully the gameplay overcomes my disdain for how it looks, though word of juggles gets me down. My hype meter just isn’t moving all that much on this, though I wish it was.
 

dirthead

Banned
Why does everyone seem to hate juggling?

Guardian Heroes is one of the most beloved games in this genre and had juggling. Seriously, what the hell?
 

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
Still not in love with the art stile, but the animation does look good.
 

cireza

Member
and the bad guys can knock you around endlessly.
This is absolutely ridiculous. This is meant to be a brawler in streets, not a volley ball game. Seeing a fat guy flying around the screen in just plain stupid. It is a boring, repetitive mechanic that makes enemy AI totally useless. Might as well just put the guys there waiting for you to launch them and juggle them to death. Is this Streets of Rage or Tekken Force ?

Can you elaborate on why you think juggling is a bad thing? I like Guardian Heroes BECAUSE of the juggling.
Pretty much just answered. It is ridiculous, makes the AI useless, is boring and repetitive. In Guardian Heroes the enemies go flying way too easily and way to high, it is honestly a pain having to wait until they fall down again to put some damage. Because when they are flying, they take ridiculously low damage. As well as not being able to recover in any way. So, so stupid.

Do Yakuza games have juggle ? I don't think that you can send enemies flying across the street. It would feel completely stupid, but here in a 2D game, it is supposed to be okay ? Juggle was never a part of SoR and it is fine this way. It will only make moment to moment gameplay boring and needlessly long. A BTA is about managing your way as you are attacked from all sides, you need to think which attack you can launch on which enemy in order to avoid being hit, if you can send everyone flying across the screen, you pretty much kill the core mechanic of the game.
 
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