Streets of Rage 3 (US Ver.): Stage 4 (Axel, “Normal)

The end of Stage 3 has Axel and his crew realize that they just defeated a robot, a robot that looked like him. Skate starts to accuse Zan of treachery with this robot copy, since Zan originally worked for the Syndicate. Zan tries to defend himself over this, while Blaze tries to defend Zan as well and reminds Skate that it was because of Zan’s help that they were able to make it this far. Axel then shuts down all of the arguing amongst his teammates after he finds a secret passageway nearby. This will take the brawlers through an underground subway system crawling with more punks. The Japanese version of this opening is almost the same in everyone’s dialogue, just worded differently. ---------- The main gimmick and hazard of this stage are train engines that will constanly travel through one of the tracks. You’ll know which track it will be on when that track vibrate on the screen. Both you AND your enemies can get hit by it, so either dodge roll out of the way or make a well-time jump over them. A regional change that happened here is that the American version of this game makes the tracks rumble less violently than they did in the Japanese version. ---------- This gimmick carries over into the second part of this stage, where there’s only one rail, but less open space to get head to for safety. You will also only encounter ninjas here, some of them having swords. This is all foreshadowing to what happens to you in Part 3 of this stage... ---------- In Part 3, you face the main boss of this stage, the master shinobi, Yamato. He first splits himself up into 3 people, and you have to fight each one at a time. The first one can teleport and throw shuriken at you. He’ll also lunge at you after teleporting or at random. The second Yamato has all of those moves, plus a new move where he splits into two and slashes at you from both sides. The third Yamato, the real deal, has all of the second Yamato’s moves plus a glowing dash attack and the ability to turn invisible for a moment. Yamato actually has a dubbed voice in the American version. It’s more gruff compared to the higher-pitched sentai-esque voice he had in the Japanese version. You can actually hear this voice as his final line right before he blows himself up after you beat him. Beating Yamato opens the door of the hideout he was guarding. Proceed... ---------- See my Japanese run through this stage, here!: