Final Fight vs Streets Of Rage 2 (Which Is Best?)

[ZEUSDAZ]

Hi everyone and welcome to the December 2016 and last edition of this series of Which Is Best?
Last month I placed Renegade and Target Renegade on the ZX Spectrum against each other and after a battle with the votes,...Renegade won with 19 votes to Target with 12 votes, this really put the loyal Renegade fans at gunpoint to decide which of the Rene games they would side with,...cruel but very interesting.
This month I place the Arcade version of Final Fight against the Megadrive classic Streets Of Rage 2,...which is the better beat'em-up scroller?!,...only you can decide that, happy voting! (please vote here or the main Youtube vid).

[ Show youtube player ]

All the best, Zeus.

[Retro-Nerd]

Street of Rage 2 of course.

[trixster]

SoR2, without question.

[Overflow]

Just chipping in to say I love your youtube commentary, espesially the shit game segments

[Anakirob]

If the question was "which one has the best music" I'd have to go with SoR. But if it's a question of which one I'd rather play, I'm going to have to vote for Final Fight.

[gazj82]

SOR2 all day long

[nobody]

Streets of rage is better

[vulture]

Final Fight is a better overall experience imo!

[Nibbler]

i have all the Final Fight games ( japan uncut ) and all the Streets of Rage Games.
No contest there, Streets of Rage Serie wins !

Better and deeper Gameplay
Better Music
Better Overall Presentation and Feeling of the Game.

The Suprime Serie over Final Fight IMO

[dlfrsilver]

Final Fight is a 1990 game, while Street Of Rage is younger.

And Yuzo Koshiro's music are unbeatable. Final Fight has awesome graphics, with more colors than SOR series, but indeed, SOR series has a better game feeling.

[Amiga1992]

SoR has a few gameplay quirks that make it way too easy at times, so although I would choose it any day against Final Fight, I would have to be really neutral here and say that maybe Final Fight has better and more rewarding game mechanics, although it's usually way TOO hard, but ends up being a better game, gameplay-wise. SoR2 can get very repetitive.

It's just the beautiful graphics and fucking amazing music that make it more appealing in general!

[Shatterhand]

SoR 3 is kinda challenging..... and I think that's why most people prefer SoR 2, because it's a very easy game... it's probably one of the easiest Beat'em ups I ever played that remains fun to play.

Between SoR 2 and Final Fight 1, I'll stick with SoR 2..... but like people said, Final Fight is an older game, so it may be unfair to compare both games.... Final Fight set a new standard for the genre and it is the template for a lot of later Beat'em ups, including Streets of Rage itself. I do prefer to play SoR 2, but historically Final Fight is way more important. I am pretty sure there would be no Streets of Rage if Capcom hadn't made Final Fight before.

But I really love Streets of Rage 2, even with its flaws. So my vote goes for it.

Edit: Looking at the video, you have to at least acknowledge the fact Final Fight has a lot more of action going on screen. It feels a lot more "busy" than Streets of Rage 2

[Amiga1992]

Yes, SoR3 eliminated some or most of the gameplay "cheap tricks" I use to get through SoR2 like nothing. But I never liked it aesthetically (the graphics are weird, the music is just not as good as SoR2) so I never paid much attention to it.

As for action , it's a bit of an unfair comparison in this case. The arcade version of Final Fight can run circles around a Sega Megadrive. A fairer comparison would be with the Sega CD version, which to be honest, is not tooooo far off from the arcade!

[ransom1122]

Originally Posted by Akira

As for action , it's a bit of an unfair comparison in this case. The arcade version of Final Fight can run circles around a Sega Megadrive. A fairer comparison would be with the Sega CD version, which to be honest, is not tooooo far off from the arcade!

Completely agree.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Akira

Yes, SoR3 eliminated some or most of the gameplay "cheap tricks" I use to get through SoR2 like nothing. But I never liked it aesthetically (the graphics are weird, the music is just not as good as SoR2) so I never paid much attention to it.

As for action , it's a bit of an unfair comparison in this case. The arcade version of Final Fight can run circles around a Sega Megadrive. A fairer comparison would be with the Sega CD version, which to be honest, is not tooooo far off from the arcade!

SoR 2 had that infinite combo trick/bug where if you waited half a second between button presses, you could keep light punching enemies infinitely until they died. It didn't work with level 4 boss but worked everywhere else, and made the game ridiculous easy. And then, even without abusing this, the game was really very easy (I finished it on Normal level without continues on my 2nd try. My first try I reached the last boss without using continues)

And yeah, of course, Final Fight arcade hardware is a lot more powerful than the Mega-Drive. One curious thing is that I had never noticed you have more than 4 enemies on screen on SoR 2 even on the MANIA difficulty setting until someone here pointed this out to me... so the game kinda makes up the lack of enemies on screen with a good variety of enemies.

I do like SoR 3, but I agree the music isn't as good as in previous games.. and while the sprites are pretty good IMO, I can see how the backgrounds on some levels can feel weird indeed, making stuff look out of place.

[nobody]

Final fight was not the first game of this type. There was Renegade, Double dragon, Target Renegade before Final Fight. It just had the awesome graphics due to CPS power and Capcom artists were the best around, world class. Final Fight was "next generation" Double dragon.

[PortuguesePilot]

Streets of Rage 2 is very good. But, for me, the arcade version of Final Fight is the better game.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by nobody

Final fight was not the first game of this type. There was Renegade, Double dragon, Target Renegade before Final Fight. It just had the awesome graphics due to CPS power and Capcom artists were the best around, world class. Final Fight was "next generation" Double dragon.

But I think it was the first to focus the gameplay with 1 button combo attacks, to have different characters to choose from with different gameplay features, the first to have a special move that drains energy when you use it... (Though to be honest, I am not sure if Golden Axe came before)

Final Fight is indeed the "next generation" double dragon, and the all games after Final Fight tried to copy it somehow, instead of copying Double Dragon.

Streets of Rage was made to be an answer to the SNES port of Final Fight.

I also find really funny how european gamers actually think Target Renegade has any kind of importance on all of this. I personally think it was a mediocre, simplistic game with nothing special and not even close of the previous game, developed by people who had nothing to do with the original game and it clearly shows. At least in the Spectrum version you fight more than 2 enemies at the same time, but if I remeber correctly even on the NES version there's never more than 2 enemies on screen... which is kinda silly, except if you are Mighty Final Fight, because Mighty Final Fight really rocks

Renegade 3 is even more of a joke, but I think everyone agrees on this one.

[Baboon]

Final fight for the colourful graphics and hugely drawn sprites, sor for the music. I loved playing them both so it's a tie for me.

[nobody]

I think Target Renegade was as good as it gets on the 8bit. It was so simplistic that all games of this type are a joke on the Amiga. Also Double dragon had some different moves. The size of sprites and animation quality was the thing that impressed the most on Final fight. CPS was a real 2Dpowerhouse, I can compare it only with Neo Geo and later Sega Saturn, possibly also X68000 as a minimum.