At the turn of the 90s, the attention of the video game industry was riveted to two large companies, struggling for the lion’s fraction of the growing popularity of the industry. One of them was Nintendo, whose ubiquitous name Italian plumbing has already become a household.
The other was Sega, A brand known not only with its prickly hedgehog, but also by the fact that it signaling the specific form of the coolness of the 90s, which contrasted himself with other video games of that time. While Nintendo adhered to her family aesthetics “Games for All”, SEGA released video games that were thematically more risky and more mature.
One of the largest SEGA names of that era was Streets of Rage, BEAT -‘EM-UP game released for the Genesis console in 1991. In it, the player takes on the role of a former policeman who went to clean the streets of a corrupt city.
It was a game with an indisputable style, counterat cultural coolness; Her dirty city landscapes were inhabited by a street squint in leather jackets, she was cruel and uncontrollable. The shock from something new was everywhere on the streets of rage, the feeling of just realized aesthetics, transmitted with amazing accuracy and clarity.
In the center of this was music.
Most of the games of that era were filled with amazing, air melodies. Instead of looking for inspiration in modern video games, The composer of the series Yuzo Koshiro wanted to do something similar to his experience in the nightclubs of Tokyo. As a result, Streets of Rage created music that resembled the world as a whole, and not just the world of video games. Cossack compositions of Koshiro were crispy, rude electronic tracks that were more like a rave on Saturday evening than cute compositions from Super Mario Bros.
It is not surprising that this musical heritage went beyond the original cartridge and influenced the scene itself, which inspired him. Since then, the Streets of Rage franchise has influenced such large musical performers as Just Blaze and Flying Lotus. This music tours live, along with DJs made by original composers, which are sold both in the USA and in Japan. This is the music that entered the house and techno-pantheon.
However, the new game Streets of Rage has not been since 1994.
The revival of your favorite gaming franchises is a risky business, and game fandoms are obviously picky people. But the French publisher of the video game Dotemu made this amazing story: taking his favorite, but inactive franchises and returning them to life.
In 2017 Dotemu Together with a team of developers Lizardcube He released the converted version The Dragon’s Trap, part of the classic adventure series Wonder Boy from Sega. They intended to create a game that would be felt faithful to the originals; They talked with the original team of the developers and struggled to recreate the magic of this adventure. It was the success of both critics and fans accepted it approvingly.
But Siril Imber, Director General Dotemu, already dreamed of starting an even more ambitious, risky and bold project for revival. The idea was to publish a new addition to Streets of Rage.
Impert returned to Lizardcube and began to think about how a new game in the series could look like.
Everything went quickly, and https://spinpanda-casino.co.uk/login/ soon the team was given a green light for development.
The result of more than three years of development was Streets of Rage 4. The team was able to gracefully revive another long dormant franchise, which during its heyday changed what many considered it possible with music from video games.
That is why, at an early stage in the development of Streets of Rage 4, Imbert realized that The recreation of the magic of the series means collecting a list of composers and participants who will correspond to the huge musical ambitions of the series.
Imber stopped at the French composer Olivier Derivier, who previously worked on large games as Alone in the Dark, as well as over games such as Remember Me. But Derivier says that working on such a game was different.
There was a terrifying number of potential directions in which the music could be used:
“Should we adhere to the style of koshiro-san? Should we go with nostalgia for the 90s?"" There were many questions. And it was very scary for me ".
If you rely too much on nostalgia, you will receive the cheap fax of the original. Completely turn over what was the original work, and you will receive something opposite to her spirit.
Instead of taking over the entire burden of responsibility, Impert decided that the soundtrack would be supervised by Deriviere, but it will present a variety of original and new composers. Thus, while Deriviere processes most of the main music, other participants write compositions that will sound during the battle with the bosses.
"We have many very large stars from the east, such as Yuzo Koshiro, Motokhiro Kavasima and the composer Street Fighter 2 Yoko Shimomura," says Derivier.
But, as in the original series, Streets of Rage 4 has a soundtrack, which seems surprisingly modern. This time there are wider genre influences – The heyday of Dabstep, R&B, hip-hop.
"We had DJs and composers from the West, such as Groundislava and Scattle, and even more underground artists."
Initially, the developers asked Derivere to create static, fixed compositions for each stage, something that would be repeated again and again until the end of each level, as in the original trilogy. But such a baking was more likely to restrict the hardware of that era than a strict design rule.
“I insisted that maybe it would be more interesting for the music to change with the game. to create a kind of consistent development, ”says Derivier.
Making your way through the music scene in Streets of Rage 4, you will feel like a DJ, since the methodically built melodies are ultimately replaced by the moments of climax. One episode closer to the end of the game received a particularly strong response from fans, since music and gameplay turn into a climax in the elevator in the elevator.
“You get music in the style of synthesizing waves of the 80s – everyone was delighted with this,” says Derivier.
In addition to new musical achievements, many of what made the original Streets of Rage games unforgettable were melodies composed by Koshiro and Kavasima composers.
In particular, Koshiro is often called the Cross Father Streets of Rage and its straight lines, ready for the rave of the melody – especially "Go Straight" from Streets of Rage 2 – are integral parts of the canon Streets of Rage. Koshiro says that these compositions were a natural by -product of what he listened to at that time, such performers as Technotronic, Soul II Soul, Enigma and Black Box.
But reproducing the sound of club music using equipment for video games of the 90s was not easy. First, Koshiro recorded music on a computer called NEC PC, using a program that he himself encoded under the name Mucom88. Then the music had to be painstakingly converts into binary code. Finally, he had to create a special disk that would make the code read to Genesis.
In Streets of Rage 4, Koshiro intended to reproduce the feeling and structure of music born of these restrictions. One of the things he did is the use of real equipment of the 90s, such as old drums and samplers.
All this was the usual equipment for creating music of that time in the style of house and techno.
New Koshiro compositions created using old technologies occupy a central place in the game. As soon as you download Streets of Rage 4, you will meet your familiar melodies.
“The only thing we wanted to do is start with Koshiro,” says Derivier. “The main topic was written Koshiro. When you choose the characters, this is Koshiro. When you enter the first half of the first stage, this is Koshiro music. It was very important for us to start with his spirit ".
Derivier says that since the process of creating music with Koshiro was so sealed – they never worked together on music directly and did not even discuss in which direction the music should develop – it was an exciting feeling when his work was recognized as the original godmother’s father. streets of rage.
Fans agree with Koshiro: Streets of Rage 4 not only became an unexpected success in terms of sales, but the soundtrack itself was in demand for iTunes and in other places.
This is a game that, like its predecessors, makes risks in the form of design decisions. This is true not only from the point of view of its musical direction, but also its thematic orientation.
The original Streets of Rage was a game of struggle against street criminals from the perspective of a former policeman. In Streets of Rage 4, it is noteworthy that one of the most despotic forces of the game is the police itself. Streets of Rage 4 never indicates many complex decisions that she makes, but this does not prevent her from feeling modern, fresh and vital.