4 out of 5

Produced by: Shaun Crook (vinyl mastering)

Label: Data Discs

This isn’t my first time remarking this, but I think a good mark of quality for a soundtrack or score, movie or game, is whether or not you can “feel” the moments represented by the songs, even without an attachment to the  source.  This isn’t a necessary requirement, of course, depending on if you can separate appreciation for a concisely derived soundtrack, or a smart usage of cues, but nonetheless, I tend to give these things extra credit when I want to play the game or sre the movie after hearing the music.

Streets of Rage 2 is my jam.  That’s the one we owned, and that I played the Hell out of, and that the music instantly sounds familiar to me when I hear it.  SoR 1 – either it was more my brother’s game, we only rented / borrowed it, or maybe we played it after the sequel, but it doesn’t have the same nostalgia factor to me.  Yuzo Koshiro’s score sure makes me want to specifically play the first one, though, based on this entrancing and consistently grooving soundtrack.

The depth of some of these bleeps and bloops from the 80s and 90s continues to astound me.  Almost every song on SoR instantly evokes a sense of action, boppin’ down the road, pickin’ on mohawked dudes with a well-placed knee to the face.  The escalating panic of boss fights with ‘Attack of the Barbarian’ makes me want to do karate in the mirror; the gloomy dread of ‘The Last Soul’ has me brooding over fights I’ve, like, never had, but gosh darn it I will avenge something.

Which isn’t to suggest its the 16-bit era equivalent of a Korn album or something.  Far from it.  Sidescrollers – that era of games – are all about keeping you button-tapping for a saveless / permadeath couple of hours; the score must be engaging and memorable to kick you pleasantly swayed.  Not only do tracks like ‘Dilapidated Town’ and ‘Moon Beach’ immediately bring to mind the appropriate imagery, even without knowing the titles, they also set your toe tapping, head bobbing, and maybe fingers a’twitching.  As good as these moments are, though, they can’t step to the awesome intro theme, which should get you all revved up for the experience (or game) to follow, and whether intended or not, it ends up bringing an equally fantastic lead-in to the echoes of the theme on the ‘Player Select’ theme / screen, rife with promise (…of three potential characters to choose.)

Admittedly, the B-Side falls off a bit.  ‘Beatnik on the Ship’ feels like a retread of the bop of A-Side tracks like ‘Keep the Groovin’ ,’ and ‘Violent Breathing’ is the only tonal mismatch on the album of name to tune.  The tracks feel a bit more clipped; snippets.  But: On the whole, the sense of composition is still there, and the one-two punch of final showdown ‘Big Boss’ and the fascinatingly somber closer ‘My Little Baby’ – with SoR the ending was always facing that it’s just one down, more to come – is impactful.

A wonderful mastering for Data Discs by Shaun Crook, maintaining the lo-fi digital sound of the original but at modern-day clarity and volume.  Packaged w/ DD’s precise and pristine tastes: OBI strip, full bleed art, and a couple of inserts of game art.