THE ROADS NOT TAKEN

SCRAPPED SECTIONS HINT AT GREATER AMBITIONS FOR STREETS OF RAGE 3

Though Streets Of Rage 3 introduced a fair few tweaks to the formula of the previous games, there was at least one radical change under consideration – the inclusion of brand-new vehicle stages. These would have seen Axel and the gang take to the road on motorbikes, dodging enemy attacks and ramming enemies off the road. At least three such stages are known to have been in development. The first and most mysterious is an urban street stage, which has only ever been seen in prerelease screenshots, but the other two were actually fairly far along in development.

One took place in a wasteland area en route to the Syndicate hideout, with Storm enemies throwing molotov cocktails. The other took place on a bridge prior to the White House/city Hall stage, and had a Donovan throwing oil drums and knives at you from the back of a truck. Completed graphics and some coding for these stages exists within the Japanese version of the game, and enterprising modders have produced restorations of these stages. Interestingly, the Australian magazine Hyper actually highlighted these stages in its review of the game, including a screenshot of the bridge stage. The reviewer “detested” them, noting that the bikes “move forward, side to side and can ram other bikes (to little effect)” and that the gameplay “gets boring after about three seconds”. This may hint at the reason they fell victim to the editor’s scissors.

Additionally, the sixth stage actually has a far larger map than you are ordinarily allowed to explore. There is a completely unused fourth floor, as well as blocked sections on the other floors including an exit door. There’s no known reason for these changes, though if we had to guess, we’d imagine they were intended to simplify the stage.