[+] Rietveld, Hillegonda C., and Andrew Lemon. “Strutting with Streets of Rage: When Dance Music Enters the Fight.” In Music and Sonic Environments in Video Games, edited by Kate Galloway and Elizabeth Hambleton, 121-35. New York: Routledge, 2024.
The soundtracks for the first three installments in the early 1990s Streets of Rage series of “beat-’em-up” fighting games draw on various styles of contemporary electronic dance music, creating an immersive and intertextual experience for the player. The music for the original Streets of Rage (SEGA, 1991) was composed by Yuzo Koshiro and can be characterized as a pastiche of hit (American) dance music by acts such as Soul II Soul and Enigma. For Streets of Rage 2 (SEGA, 1992), Koshiro and co-composer Motohiro Kawashima dive deeper into early 1990s club music, incorporating faster tempos and emulating specific elements of electronic dance tracks. In Streets of Rage 3 (SEGA, 1994), Koshiro and Kawashima create a more stylistically nuanced soundtrack drawing on the underground electronic dance genres of gabber (Rotterdam-techno) and Detroit techno. The fast, angular sound of this music (made available to Koshira and Kawashima through advancements in video game sound software) plays an important part in creating the atmosphere of excitement that defines the influential Streets of Rage series.
Works: Yuzo Koshiro: soundtrack to Streets of Rage (123, 128-29); Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima: soundtrack to Streets of Rage 2 (130), soundtrack to Streets of Rage 3 (131).
Sources: Soul II Soul: Back II Life (123), Get a Life (123); Enigma: Sadeness Pt. 1 (123, 129); Technotronik: Pump Up The Jam (128); Inner City: Good Life (128); The Shamen: Move Any Mountain (130); Kraftwerk: Home Computer (130); Joey Beltram: Forklift (131).
Index Classifications: 1900s, Film
Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet
