Streets of Rage 4 News

• The intimidating and powerful Estel Aguirre as a playable character
  
• New smashing game modes
  
• Extra moves and weapons to keep the battles interesting
  
• Exclusive tracks by Tee Lopes
  

Streets of Rage 4 was an incredible highlight of 2020’s gaming year. It’s a lush love letter to both its own franchise and old-school arcade brawlers in general that we have had no issue sharing our enthusiasm for over and over again. The base game itself is fantastic, but we of course love to see more. Dotemu has teased that DLC for Streets of Rage 4 is coming, and although details are sparse, a SteamDB listing may have just teased an idea of what we can expect.

It was fairly recently noticed that an interesting listing appeared on SteamDB, tied directly to Streets of Rage 4. Titled “Mr. X Nightmare,” this listing apparently requires Streets of Rage 4 in order to run, highly suggesting that it could be DLC for the game. For those who are unaware, Mr. X is a longtime antagonist of the Streets of Rage franchise, appearing as the final boss in the first three games. He’s also the deceased parent of Streets of Rage 4’s obnoxious villain duo Mr. and Ms. Y. This listing seems to suggest that Mr. X could be making a dastardly return in new content.

In the past, Dotemu has teased that Streets of Rage 4 DLC was definitely in the works, but the publisher and developer could not provide any details as to what it would be or when we could expect it. The picture is still vague as to what we’d be getting when it comes to DLC, but Mr. X Nightmare has us intrigued to say the least. Streets of Rage 4 did more than enough to garner all of our praise in its Shacknews review. While we know the lush, hand-drawn art style of the game takes a massive amount of work, the payoff was a fun, gorgeous, and incredibly well-balanced and engaging brawler.

It will likely be some time before we figure out what Mr. X Nightmare actually is, but the opportunity to play more Streets of Rage 4 is one opportunity we’re salivating to see. Stay tuned as we continue to follow this story for further news and updates on this possible SoR4 DLC.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves is widely considered to be one of the absolute gems of the overall SNK fighting arcade library. The style, precision, and altogether impressive technicality of the game have brought fighting fans back to it for years. It can truly be considered the masterpiece of the Fatal Fury franchise, but what if we could see a return of it? For what it’s worth, Streets of Rage 4 developers Lizardcube seems to be interested and even drew up a mock of what a new Garou might look like in its style. The results left us wanting more to say to least.

Lizardcube posted its artistic mockup of a Garou: Mark of the Wolves sequel on its Twitter, as well as a concept art timelapse video on its YouTube channel, on January 19, 2021. The mockup shows the iconic Rock Howard standing off with an original character of Lizardcube design on a stylish background and complete with a full fighting game HUD. The whole thing is wonderfully done in an artistic style similar to that of Streets of Rage 4, which Lizardcube also had a heavy hand in.

It’s a delightful look at what could be to say the least. Streets of Rage 4 was a masterpiece of side-scrolling brawler design in 2020, good enough to score high marks here in its Shacknews review, as well as earn its spot on the Shacknews Top 10 Games of the Year 2020 list. A big part of that was its striking art style that permeated the characters and backgrounds, and it looks like Lizardcube certainly has an idea of how they’d translate that to Garou.

It seems doubtful SNK would give up the reins anytime soon, especially considering that they just announced Season 3 of Samurai Shodown and the reveal of King of Fighters XV. That said, if SNK ever outsources its old work for a new project, Lizardcube seems like a perfect fit for the shortlist.