Streets of Kamurocho was released as a limited time free PC release to celebrate Sega's 60th anniversary. It's a mixture of two franchises of Sega, Streets of Rage and Yakuza. (Kamurocho is the fictional area of Tokyo in which a large chunk of the Yakuza games are based, modeled on Kabukichō a known entertainment district of Tokyo).
It's a really neat little idea as both series cross well with their beat em' up style gameplay and underground aesthetics. It feels like a rom hack of Streets of Rage 2 added with a Yakuza skin because that is what it is really. You get three characters to play as with Kiryu Kazuma and Goro Majima available initially and a third unlocked after you beat it once....which takes about 10 minutes so that seems kind of needless. Whilst I love the idea of this it's only the first level of Streets of Rage 2 which goes on loop getting a little harder to build up your score. I just wanted them to go further and make a whole game of it. Underneath the Yakuza aesthetic the move set is that of Axel from Streets of Rage 2, but it's the same for all three characters. Majima should have been Skate surely? Why not add Kaoru Sayama from Yakuza 2 for Blaze and Taiga Saejima as Max? three characters with identical moves is kind of a let down.
The game looks nice and has lots of nods to the Yakuza series with Bacchus, Poppo etc. Each character has their own music and I certainly can't complain for something released entirely for free as a nice celebration gesture to fans, but the thing is I would have paid good money for a fully fleshed out game of this no question as a Streets of Rage and Yakuza fan....
It's a really neat little idea as both series cross well with their beat em' up style gameplay and underground aesthetics. It feels like a rom hack of Streets of Rage 2 added with a Yakuza skin because that is what it is really. You get three characters to play as with Kiryu Kazuma and Goro Majima available initially and a third unlocked after you beat it once....which takes about 10 minutes so that seems kind of needless. Whilst I love the idea of this it's only the first level of Streets of Rage 2 which goes on loop getting a little harder to build up your score. I just wanted them to go further and make a whole game of it. Underneath the Yakuza aesthetic the move set is that of Axel from Streets of Rage 2, but it's the same for all three characters. Majima should have been Skate surely? Why not add Kaoru Sayama from Yakuza 2 for Blaze and Taiga Saejima as Max? three characters with identical moves is kind of a let down.
The game looks nice and has lots of nods to the Yakuza series with Bacchus, Poppo etc. Each character has their own music and I certainly can't complain for something released entirely for free as a nice celebration gesture to fans, but the thing is I would have paid good money for a fully fleshed out game of this no question as a Streets of Rage and Yakuza fan....