I love this game too much to have any type of unbiased review for it. So I'm not gonna bother, I'll just tell you some cool tricks I've learned after replaying the game 50000000000000000 times. I've finished it on Mania in one credit, for christ's sake.
There's a 1up in the bottom left corner of the screen as soon as you start stage 1. You can't see it because of the sign in the way. Just walk down there and grab it, it's free!
There's another one behind the truck in stage 2, and another one under the alien head in stage 3. Remember where they are and you're GUARANTEED to make it to the end.... you know, unless you suck or something.
If you're ever thrown, you can land directly on your feet if you hold down Up + C. You can abuse this in multiplayer by intentionally setting up the second player for a back throw to clear out a bunch of enemies (unless you're Max; he'll just suplex them and they'll lose a huge chunk of HP!)
Speaking of multiplayer exploits, there's a TON, but the most notable to me are relatively simple.
Accidentally hitting your co-op partner is not actually that big of a deal. They only take 1/8th of the normal damage from friendly fire attacks, so what that means is... if you interrupt their special attack with a jab, they will actually take less damage than they would've from just doing it. If you synergize well, you can get some impossibly high damage combos for less than half the normal cost.
There's also this weird bug where, if two of your hitboxes overlap, the game will freak out and repeat it over and over again for every frame. If you and your buddy jab a guy at the EXACT same spacing, he'll just die instantly and not be able to do anything about it. Goofy!
Play the game some more! Try it on harder difficulties! Melt healthbars with Axel's Grand Upper! Pummel people's heads in with Skate! Knock 'em dead with Max's backswing pipe! Be REALLY LAME and spam Blaze's jump kicks, I don't care, you do you!
Play Streets of Rage 2!
There's a 1up in the bottom left corner of the screen as soon as you start stage 1. You can't see it because of the sign in the way. Just walk down there and grab it, it's free!
There's another one behind the truck in stage 2, and another one under the alien head in stage 3. Remember where they are and you're GUARANTEED to make it to the end.... you know, unless you suck or something.
If you're ever thrown, you can land directly on your feet if you hold down Up + C. You can abuse this in multiplayer by intentionally setting up the second player for a back throw to clear out a bunch of enemies (unless you're Max; he'll just suplex them and they'll lose a huge chunk of HP!)
Speaking of multiplayer exploits, there's a TON, but the most notable to me are relatively simple.
Accidentally hitting your co-op partner is not actually that big of a deal. They only take 1/8th of the normal damage from friendly fire attacks, so what that means is... if you interrupt their special attack with a jab, they will actually take less damage than they would've from just doing it. If you synergize well, you can get some impossibly high damage combos for less than half the normal cost.
There's also this weird bug where, if two of your hitboxes overlap, the game will freak out and repeat it over and over again for every frame. If you and your buddy jab a guy at the EXACT same spacing, he'll just die instantly and not be able to do anything about it. Goofy!
Play the game some more! Try it on harder difficulties! Melt healthbars with Axel's Grand Upper! Pummel people's heads in with Skate! Knock 'em dead with Max's backswing pipe! Be REALLY LAME and spam Blaze's jump kicks, I don't care, you do you!
Play Streets of Rage 2!