Thanks to a string of tweets from Lizardcube’s creative director/CEO, we’ve got an insight into how Streets of Rage 4 came to be.
Ben Fiquet, the CEO and creative director of Lizardcube, one of the studios involved in bringing Streets of Rage 4 to life, yesterday shared a Twitter thread revealing how the game came to exist. And it simply started from his desire to bring back one of his favourite games.
Before working on Streets of Rage 4, Fiquet and his team at Lizardcube worked on Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, a return of a classic franchise. But Fiquet wanted to bring back another game: Streets of Rage 2. It had always been one of his favourite games, you see. He worked on drawing the characters just for fun, to see how they may work out with a modern animation style. Of course, it looked great:
Nonetheless, I still drew the characters to get a feeling out of it.
Hey, I even tried a bit of animation 🙂. It was a huge leap artistically speaking after WB. pic.twitter.com/PFZtRDPWla— Ben Fiquet (@BenFiquet) July 20, 2021
At Wonder Boy’s release party, Fiquet talked to a team member from Dotemu, who also worked on the development of the game. They shared the same passion for Streets of Rage 2. Together, they pondered the possibility of creating a fourth game in the series.
From that conversation, the concept for Streets of Rage 4 was presented to SEGA Japan. Fiquet explains how Dotemu and Lizardcube had previously won SEGA’s trust with the successful release of Wonder Boy, but he still didn’t have much hope. Thankfully, SEGA were on board with the idea, leading to the release of Streets of Rage 4 some years later.
Read Ben Fiquet’s whole thread by clicking here – it’s a fun and insightful read, with plenty of sneak peeks of early concept art from the game. We’re very grateful for both studios – and for Wonder Boy – because without them, we wouldn’t have had the excellent Streets of Rage 4.
We’ve recently reviewed the latest DLC for Streets of Rage 4, Mr. X Nightmare. It’s a fantastic addition to the game, adding in new characters and a new game mode. Read more about it by clicking here.
Source: Twitter/@BenFiquet
