Topic: One of the greatest brawlers of all time is on XBLA

[PyroMenace]

Thats right, Streets of Rage 2. The genre, as simple as it is, doesnt get much more perfected than this. I couldn't count on my fingers the number of times I beat it, and I always loved the music.

[Xessive]

Sweet! Might convince me to get an Xbox and get XBLive! Then again I do have the ROM (as well the old cartridge) and an emulator.

[Cobra951]

Yeah, I have that too.  I had the real cart at one point.  The music was outstanding for the 16-bit era, especially before the SNES.  (The Genesis/Megadrive had way inferior sound hardware.)  The game mechanics are spot on too.  I liked very few scrolling brawlers, and this was one of them.  I hope it gets appreciated all over again.

Edit:  Oh, man.  Perfect port.  I realize it's being emulated, but still.  The sound is just right.  The graphics are nicely filtered into the higher res.  It plays exactly as I remember it.  I breezed through that 1st stage with Blaze.  This is SoR 2, though, not the original.  I liked it even better because it expands on the original.  I do miss the arrangement of the boss theme from the first game, though.  That was the best.

Edit 2: . . . but Pyro said it was SoR 2.  My mistake.

[MysterD]

I have Streets of Rage 2 on my Genesis -- that game kicked ass.

And Skate ruled.

[Cobra951]

I know I have that boss tune somewhere, in Genesis-native form, but I just can't find it.  I got a bug up my butt about it, and searched until I found this page with the soundtrack in MP3 form.  The tune is the 4th one, Attack of the Barbarian.  Just picture taking on a 16-bit 2D boss with that in the background.  It really worked back then.  The SoR-2 soundtrack is on that site as well.

Edit:  Yuzo Koshiro got a bit of a disservice here in that the MP3 was recorded at too high a level, so the Genny waveforms, never all that pure to begin with, are clipped.  Still, it's awesome.

[Quemaqua]

I've been playing so many brawlers lately, this is great.  I thought I remembered the track you linked to until I downloaded it, Cobra.  It wasn't the one I was thinking of, and I didn't even recognize it until about halfway in... then it all came back to me!  Heh, awesome.  I really need to break out an emu now.

[Cobra951]

It certainly brought back good memories, from a very happy time in my life.  It turns out that site also has the Genesis-native soundtrack.  I couldn't remember that they were GYM files.  With that info, maybe now I can find my collection, probably in some archive in an obscure directory.