Edward 1Betrayal Is The Ultimate Choice
September 28th 2011 04:47
Why buddy? How could you? We fought side by side against axe jugglers, obese men blowing fire from their mouths, women with whips, Macho Man impersonators and countless thugs with our fists and steel pipes. Together we’d beaten them all. After eight levels of nonstop fisticuffs, no one could stop us…
We were at the final boss, and the only person stopping me from taking him down was you.
Streets of Rage is a side scrolling beat’em up released for the Sega Mega Drive in 1991, and my best buddy and I played it yesterday on the SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for the PS3. I didn’t really care for the series while my friend had childhood memories playing it on his Sega Mega Drive, yet never finishing it. So there was no surprise when he started to geek out near the end of the final level.
He started to jump up and down in eager anticipation, in-game and on the couch, as he finally witnessed the twin doors leading to the final boss for the first time. Meanwhile, I was unaffected by his overflowing fits of emotion. But we both felt one and the same after my character punch’s the twin doors down like a boss.
We felt shocked, amazed and a tint of evil in our hearts as the final boss proposed to us if we wanted to side with him and be his right hand man. Of course I declined and selected no… But my friend chosen power over friendship and we were pitted one on one against each other. Despite choosing different answers, we both felt a sense of satisfaction and anticipation as the game mutated from a beat’em up to a fighting game. Mutual competition between the veteran and the noob was about to clash and we smashed the square button as hard as we can with force and emotion.
Despite my friend carrying more experience, I was holding up surprisingly well. We took away each other’s health to the point we could barely see the red in our health bars. The climax of the fight looked as if my buddy will win with a German Suplex, but I think I bashed the square button hard enough to reverse it and steal the win! Victorious, the final boss asked me the same question: to side with him or fight him. Of course I choose to fight him and he proceeded to kick my ass into the Game Over screen. Fortunately, we used the magic of the Save Game option before the fight and my buddy and I uploaded it and proceeded to fight and beat him eventually. But the real win wasn’t seeing the ending, it was witnesses what most games that gives you a choice failed to do: evoke strong emotion.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the Infamous series had given you plenty of choices, but it never did a genre-defining jump into another genre like Streets of Rage did. It was also a logical step to. Since 98% of the game is simply a beat-em up, there was no expectation to do a one eighty flip like it did. My friend and I continuously comment on each other’s play styles to improve ourselves. We let each other give up 1ups and health foods when we needed it. It never occurred to us we were prepping each other for an eventual match up with the same rules like it was against the AI. And it felt surreal and amazing.
Out of all the choices I had made in video games this year. This 1991 classic is the most memorable.
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