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Streets of Rage 2 is a side-scrolling beat 'em up released by Sega in 1992 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It is the second game in the Streets of Rage series, a sequel to Streets of Rage and followed by Streets of Rage 3. It is known as Bare Knuckle II in Japan and Streets of Rage II in Europe. Its soundtrack is again done by Yuzo Koshiro, whose work was inspired by early '90s club music.

The game was ported over to the Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear and released for the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console on May 21, 2007 for the USA and June 1, 2007 for Europe as well as Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) on August 29, 2007. The game introduced two new characters: Max Thunder (known as Max Hatchett in Europe) and Eddie "Skate" Hunter (known as Sammy Hunter in Japan), brother of Adam Hunter from the original game.

Gameplay

Though Streets of Rage 2 plays very similar to its predecessor it improves and refines much of the gameplay. The biggest change is the replacement of the original special attack, which was calling a police car to damage all on-screen enemies, with individual special attacks performed by each character, that depletes some of their health. Each character's move list has been expanded and edited to make them very individual to play instead of similar with different handicaps.

Enemies are also improved; all are given Life Gauges (previously only Bosses used them) and names, and like the selectable characters, given bigger and more individual movesets. There are many new enemies, including Bikers, which speed across the screen in certain levels, running over the Player, tossing grenades and/or leaping off their bikes to attack; new Ninjas, which are excessively quick and sometimes deadly to fight due to their avoidant tactics, ranged weapons and special moves; Kickboxers and Robots.

A welcome sight from the first game are the "suicide stabbers"—weak enemies, invariably a Galsia, who hold a Knife in front of themselves and literally run at the Player in the hope of impaling them. Since these "stabbers" usually arrive only when the Player is involved in mortal combat with other enemies, and their only attacks are fast strafing attacks, they can often be a lethal, but highly amusing, nuisance.

There are also changes to the weapons that can be picked up. The Pepper Shaker and the Bottle from the original game have been removed. The Knife has been tweaked, so the Player can choose to throw the Knife when he or she pleases, whereas in the first game the Knife could be thrown seemingly by accident by the Player, with all the hazards it implies. As a trade-off, the Knife does much less damage when thrown in Streets of Rage II. A Kunai has also been added, with the same functionality as the Knife.

The Baseball Bat from Streets of Rage is replaced by a Katana, which is the most deadly weapon in the entire game.

A much needed piece of functionality, as already hinted, is the ability to throw all weapons at will by holding down jump (C) and pressing attack (B). When not holding a weapon, this combo allows the Player to lash out behind him or her to take out an enemy sneaking up from behind.

Aside from the differences in weapons and enemies, the characters themselves are given some special abilities and handicaps. In addition to their traits and individual moves, the characters now have a "semi-special move": a powerful, non-energy-draining attack delivered by double-tapping a direction and pressing attack (B).