Bringing out a massive update to their game, development teams Dotemu, Lizardcube, and Guard Crush Games are improving Streets of Rage 4 in celebration of 1.5 million sales! Using the feedback from the large community of players, this update contains upwards to 80 updates, bug fixes, and overall balance changes to the game.

The most notable changes to the game include:

• Specials and start move can interrupt all hitstun states

• Axel has been buffed, with a faster movement speed and less recovery on some moves

• Cherry has been buffed, with her flying punch from combos now being fully invincible

• Many bosses have been nerfed, but final boss fights with Mr. Y and Ms. Y have been buffed

Personally, I like that they buffed the characters, but I am not a fan of how they made the majority of the fights easier. While Axel and Cherry were the starring characters of this updates buffs, every character got a little boost of improvement to make them a better fighter to use. But in the same retrospect, bosses didn’t need to be slowed down, weakened, or anything really as they are all able to be beaten with the proper approach. On top of the bosses being nerfed, regular enemies also received a variety of changes that have a variation of good and bad choices. At least they made the final fights harder because I did find those to be too easy.

Overall, the changes are for the betterment of the game and are sure to be helpful to players across the board. But as someone who has already beaten the game multiple times, including boss rush and arcade modes, I don’t think a lot of the nerfing was necessary. Hopefully, they will raise the boss fights again and instead make them just easier to fight on easier difficulties.

Congratulations on hitting 1.5 million download sales and on behalf of the community, we would like to say “No, thank you guys for reviving this series!” in response to Cyrille Imbert, executive producer on Streets of Rage 4, stating “We thank the fans who have supported the game from day one - a lot of the updates in the patch enhance the replay value for folks who have been with us from the start.”