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Streets of Rage 4 devs talk development, considering DLC, say SEGA America didn't learn about the game until the reveal trailer

DLC could be coming!
by rawmeatcowboy
13 May 2020
GN Version 5.0

Streets of Rage 4 launched just a couple of weeks ago, and its been lighting up the digital sales charts ever since. Following the game's successful launch, developers Olivier Deriviere, Cyrille Lagarigue and Jordi Asension sat down with French Twitch team Gwak to do a massive interview. You can find a complete summary of that interview, courtesy of DualShockers, below.

- Streets of Rage 4 was first pitched by Guard Crush to SEGA Japan
- Guard Crush, Lizardcube and Dotemu already had ties to SEGA through the Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap remake
- SEGA approved the project and pretty much gave the french developers free rein
- the Streets of Rage 4 devs were only in touch with a small division at SEGA Japan, which they regularly sent new builds to
- adding ramen as a recovery item was a suggestion of SEGA Japan
- SEGA of America learned of Streets of Rage 4‘s existence at the same time as everyone else with the reveal trailer
- the devs feared people wouldn't understand the game, and worried it would be labeled a nostalgia-fueled shallow game
- the team did a lot of choices that can be considered unconventional or anti-modern by some
- feedback shows that the vast majority of players do understand the game
- the devs are happy a lot of people dig the combo-based gameplay
- Dotemu is the sole entity deciding to share sales numbers or not, and those numbers are yet to be shared
- Guard Crush has some Streets of Rage 4 DLC ideas in mind, but no DLC is officially in development
- the team is unsure if they’ll actually make DLC or not
- Guard Crush tried to make Streets of Rage 4 as accessible as possible, that’s why the game has many difficulty levels
- the game was developed on hard, and the other difficulties were added later
- the team wanted the game to focus on scores, which is why the stages are short, and there are few waves of enemies
- Streets of Rage 4's main inspiration is Streets of Rage 2
- this is why the game doesn’t include a running system like Streets of Rage 3
- the developers wish for Streets of Rage 4 players to think ahead, not to react by reflex
- the team also felt the running function in Streets or Rage 3 can make your fingers tired pretty fast
- in Streets of Rage 2, using your special move uses some HP, which leaves the player frustrated
- using the special move feels as if you’re playing badly, which is why Guard Crush improved this system in Streets of Rage 4
- Streets of Rage 4 includes many references to other games, anime, etc, which all came about naturally
- a lot of the references and Easter eggs in the stages were added by Background Artist Julian Nquyen You
- Streets of Rage 4 players already managed to find things Guard Crush didn’t know themselves
- the developers managed to get many different composers, most notably from Japan, thanks to Brave Wave Productions
- it was decided from the start that Olivier Deriviere would handle the stage BGMs
- each one of the other composers would do a boss BGM
- each composer got some visuals of the boss they were composing for
- the title screen BGM, character select screen BGM and the first part of the first stage’s NGM are handled by Yuzo Koshizo
- Koshiro also composed the final boss BGM
- Olivier Deriviere explained this is to show the link between the past works and to show Yuzo Koshiro’s importance
- Jet Set Radio composer Hideki Naganuma did not participate in Streets or Rage 4′s OST as planned due to scheduling issues
- DotEmu only got the rights for the Streets of Rage 1’s Game Gear version OST, not the Genesis version
- most of the BGM names are references to anime, games, etc

[Link]