Golden Axe and Streets of Rage represented two sides of the same brawler coin for Sega in the 90's: The garish, tactless Conan-derivative beat-em-up with sloppy mechanics held together by senseless guilty pleasures, and the suave, snappy Fight Fight clone with a more soulful take on the sights and sounds that defined the mold. Hindsight hasn't been as kind to Golden Axe as it has to good ol' SoR, but the nuances were probably a lot harder to see at the time. You'd be justified in saying each respective entry in their trilogy was doing their best for their time.
When the Sonic bucks started rolling in, it came to stand that Sega's other IP's deserved another shake with further passion and budget. Streets of Rage 2 enriched every idea from its predecessor, bringing the visuals up to the same pristine fidelity that anointed its SNES nay-sayers alongside expansions and refinement to the pre-existing format. It was everything a sequel should be - respecting the original while acknowledging the need to innovate.
Golden Axe II, released a year prior, was not so lucky. Its changes largely superficial, its improvements limited to extremely subtle differences in gamefeel, and its content and scope just as limited as the original. If anything, II's failure to innovate makes it come across as the weaker of the two, being 2 years older but retaining the original's issue of feeling like something is amiss. While Sega would later have the chance to right their wrongs with the arcade-exclusive Revenge of Death Adder, console owners would remain stuck in tunnel vision as the Genesis Golden Axe games failed to mature while their contemporaries graduated and moved on to bigger and better things.
When the Sonic bucks started rolling in, it came to stand that Sega's other IP's deserved another shake with further passion and budget. Streets of Rage 2 enriched every idea from its predecessor, bringing the visuals up to the same pristine fidelity that anointed its SNES nay-sayers alongside expansions and refinement to the pre-existing format. It was everything a sequel should be - respecting the original while acknowledging the need to innovate.
Golden Axe II, released a year prior, was not so lucky. Its changes largely superficial, its improvements limited to extremely subtle differences in gamefeel, and its content and scope just as limited as the original. If anything, II's failure to innovate makes it come across as the weaker of the two, being 2 years older but retaining the original's issue of feeling like something is amiss. While Sega would later have the chance to right their wrongs with the arcade-exclusive Revenge of Death Adder, console owners would remain stuck in tunnel vision as the Genesis Golden Axe games failed to mature while their contemporaries graduated and moved on to bigger and better things.