Streets Of Rage 4 - How To Unlock Every Retro Character

TheGamer

By Peter Glagowski

Published Apr 29, 2020

If you want to jump into Streets of Rage 4 as a retro character, here's what you'll need to do to unlock them.

As a loving tribute to a bygone era, Streets of Rage 4 is a pretty great game. Made by a group of clearly passionate fans, the teams over at DotEmu, LizardCube, and Guard Crush went all out in creating the ultimate retro brawler game. Maybe it doesn't redefine the genre, but this is an absolute must-play for any fans of Sega's original series.

Similar to titles like Contra 4, Streets of Rage 4 includes a range of unlockable retro characters that you can play as. Taking the form of sprites from all three Genesis installments, unlocking these characters isn't made exactly clear from the start. Sadly, there's no easy way to obtain them all.

The basic requirement for getting each character is to simply play the main game and wrack up a high score. At specific score thresholds, you'll unlock a different retro character. You'll start with Streets of Rage 1 and work your way through Streets of Rage 3 until you have them all. It'll take you roughly five playthroughs to get everyone, which is maybe 10 hours in total.

The best method for nabbing a high score is to chain hits together. When you successfully bank a large combo, you'll unlock anywhere between 500-4,000 additional points. This can give you extra lives during a level, which means you'll be able to stay alive longer and get even more points.

If you use assists during a level, your score will be reduced by up to 90%, so that is obviously something you want to try to avoid during future playthroughs. Regardless of whether or not you use them, any points you earn will add to the overall total and you'll make progress on unlocking each character.