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In the last decade Sega has been through some tough times, struggling to find their niche. Right now they’re focusing mostly on their legacy, releasing versions of their classic games via the Sega Vintage Collections. In the past they’ve also attempted to revive their old 16-bit franchises, such as with the poorly received Golden Axe: Beast Rider. One of their most popular franchises which has not seen a revival since its Genesis/Mega Drive incarnation is Streets of Rage.
Though some have tried, Fighting Force for the original Playstation started its life as Streets of Rage 4 but Sega pulled the rights after a dispute with Core. It looks like another British studio decided to undertake the thankless task of bringing Streets of Rage back. A leaked video of a prototype from Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian games shows off their vision of a modern SoR.
The footage shows a very early build of the games first stage, complete with some very blatant references to Streets of Rage 1‘s opening stage. There’s some basic gameplay shown as the player character takes out a few enemies, finally taking one down with a few grappling moves. After a quick glimpse at what is presumably the first boss, the video ends.
After a audio-less version of the footage leaked, Gary Liddon, Ruffian Games business and management chief uploaded one complete with sound and had this to say about the game: “Like a lot of developers we work on a lot of different prototypes, they’re just not usually shown in public. In this case an older version of the same video was leaked last week which came as a bit of a surprise if I’m honest. Beyond that there’s not a lot more I can say unfortunately.” The project was apparently intended to be released on downloadable platforms.
Ruffian has said they are unable to comment on why the project never made it beyond this prototype stage. The demo is certainly impressive, for a pre-alpha build. Would you like to see Sega pick this project up? Do we need a new Streets of Rage at all? Let us know in the comments below, or on our forum.
Source: Eurogamer