Developed and published by Sega in 1994.

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Better known in the west as Steets of Rage 3, this is a game that had something of an identity crisis, which resulted in three different versions.

The Japanese release features a completely different storyline to the US/European versions, despite being set in many of the same locations, but was unavailable outside of Japan.

I remember that the European version had completely different colours for the player character's clothing so as to be "gender neutral". I also remember that whoever did the palette swap on Axel did a real hatchet job on some of the sprites from his animation set; part of his leg disappears.

Perhaps most famously, the character "Ash" was completely removed from the western release and replaced with Shiva. Ash was based on a stereotyped gay male, which was deemed unacceptable for western audiences, hence his removal from the game.

The version that I have recorded here is the original Japanese version under the Bare Knuckle moniker with the unofficial English translation patch applied. Evidently, fans of the series felt that the Japanese version was superior, but that only those who could understand Japanese could fully enjoy the story. The patch translates the dialogue into English, and it appears to have been done very well as the game remains completely in tact and the plot is easy to follow.

As for the game itself, it took Streets of Rage 2 as a base platform and tweaked it slightly. The game improves the graphics and changes the art style slightly so that the characters look slightly more realistic and less cartoonlike (in my opinion).

Yuzo Koshiro composed the music, although the style used in this game is considerably grittier and less melodic than it's predecessors. The music divided opinion, but I liked the sound, especially the music in the opening level.

Something else I remember about the game is that it cost a small fortune when it came out. The game came on a 24 megabit cartridge and with memory being expensive, I recall that this cost about £50 upon release. My parents bought me a copy and I recall that this was the closest to an arcade experience in the home as I'd ever been.

The series ended with this game as a fourth game planned for the Dreamcast never materialised, but at least it went out on a high.
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