Streets of Rage 4 (2023 Update) - Mania+ S-Rank 1CC (Blaze)

It's 2023 and Streets of Rage 4 just had another big update! I don't know all the details, but they altered character balance, added co-op attacks, and tweaked Mania+ a bit. Now there are "cursed" arcade cabinets, that spawn a boss from one of the previous games. Defeating the boss drops an extra star, so it's worth clearing all of them out. If you activate them at the right time, they're pretty easy to deal with (aside from the Lisas in stage 11, they're a pain). If you accidentally activate it while dealing with a big group of enemies, though... that can be a problem. I did that with Souther in stage 10 - you should hit the cabinet before killing both of the Donovans. If you do that, the next wave of enemies with the Koobos won't spawn until Souther is dead. Bosses also spawn mini-bosses and extra enemies at two different intervals as well. It seems like they come in at 70% and 40% health, but maybe it varies a bit. It makes some of them quite a bit more difficult to deal with.

Beyond that, the S-rank requirement for Mania+ has changed since I last played this game. I'm not sure if that's new, but before, it had the same requirements as the regular Mania, which made the S-rank pretty easy to get. Now they bumped the requirement up, to scale with all the extra enemies in this mode. I don't know the exact number, but I'm pretty sure it's at least 600,000. So you have to build up at least a few good chains to make it. I lost a lot of big combos in this run, but still managed to get well above 600k, so it's still not terribly strict. I think they struck a pretty good balance this time.

Streets of Rage 4 was already an excellent game when it came out, and it's only gotten better and better with every update. It's safe to say it's one of the all time great beat 'em ups at this point. Hopefully this team is working on a new game!

0:00 Stage 1
7:31 Stage 2
14:42 Stage 3
19:32 Stage 4
26:09 Stage 5
35:30 Stage 6
45:22 Stage 7
49:39 Stage 8
57:17 Stage 9
1:05:01 Stage 10
1:12:27 Stage 11
1:23:17 Stage 12
1:37:26 Results (699,528)

Streets of Rage 4 Mania Playlist (All Characters):    • Streets of Rage 4 - Mania 1CCs  

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Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight):    • Beat 'em Ups  
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug):    • 2D Action  
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi):    • STG Replays