Streets of Rage GENESIS

Streets of Rage is Sega’s 1991 beat-’em-up, built in-house to give the Genesis its own answer to arcade brawlers like Double Dragon and Final Fight. Three ex-police officers fight their way through eight city stages to take down a crime syndicate boss, with two-player simultaneous co-op supported throughout the full campaign.

Composer Yuzo Koshiro’s techno-influenced soundtrack became one of the game’s most distinctive elements, pushing the Genesis’s sound chip in a direction few other games of the period attempted. It launched a trilogy that’s often cited as one of the console’s strongest overall franchises, with the sequel widely regarded as an improvement on this foundation.