With stunning visuals, solid gameplay, and a then-advanced soudntrack pushing the Genesis console to its full capabilities, Streets of Rage 2 is a must-play for anyone into the Beat 'Em Up genre. It is considered by many fans to be the greatest game in its respective series.

Bringing the roster of characters to 4 by introducing the strong-but-slow Max, and the fast-yet-weak kid Eddie/Sammy "Skate" Hunter (the younger brother of excluded original protagonist Adam Hunter) Streets of Rage 2 brings in plenty of strategy depending on which character(s) you select.

One year has passed since the events of Streets of Rage. Always ready to conquer the city once more, Mr. X kidnaps original protagonist Adam Hunter, and sets loose all of his punks on the streets, bringing the city once more into destructive turmoil. In response to Mr. X's return, the retired police officers Blaze Fielding and Axel Stone once more set forth into the streets of rage, this time with Adam's younger brother Skate, and Axel's wrestler friend Max, in hopes of permanently ending Mr. X's reign on the city and rescuing Adam.

The gameplay of Streets of Rage 2 is similar, yet more refined to the original game. The main protagonists walk to the right on a 2D-3D plane, stopping on occasion to beat through waves of punks and martial artists. In rare occurrences, certain everyday sights (trash cans, phone booths, tables, etc.) are on the playing field, and can be struck to obtain street weapons (knives, lead pipes, baseball bats, etc.) and healing items.

This hack restores all the stuff that got censored and removed from the American version back to it, it also fixes the names of three enemies and changes the music on one stage as well.

Here’s what this hack does to it:

It restores Blaze’s original flying kick sprites from the Japanese version.

It restores Mr. X’s cigar from the Japanese version.

It restores the number of enemy knockouts status bar on the pause screen from the Japanese version, press the "A" button to see it.

It changes the names of Galsia, Galuda and Mosquite to Garcia, Garuda and Mosquito. Sega mistranslated their names in all versions of this game.

It changes the music on the Pirate Ship stage to play the unused "Little Money Avenue" music track.

It changes the words PLAYERS, ROUND & RD to LIVES, STAGE & STG.

Included a extra patch that will add all this stuff to the European side of the Japan/Europe ROM, also included alternate versions of both patches that will change Skate's name to his Japanese name "Sammy" and another set that would keep the original Pirate Ship stage music intact as well.

The Pancake 2 utility tool was used to restore Blaze’s original flying kick sprites.

The 0xED hex editor was used to restore everything else.

Streets of Rage 2 (USA).bin
SHA-1: 8B656EEC9692D88BBBB84787142AA732B44CE0BE
CRC32: E01FA526
Bare Knuckle II - Shitou e no Requiem ~ Streets of Rage II (Japan, Europe).bin
SHA-1: A0D3A216278AEF5564DCBED83DF0DD59222812C8
CRC32: 42E3EFDC

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