is Streets of Rage 2 the antidote to happy weekend cycling? We hope so!
Many are the activities between couples and many can be laced with consequences.
A gentle afternoon bike ride between lovers along some fenland, for instance. Nothing can go wrong, the sun is ablaze and the mood just so. But we have all been cycling with partners and know that we can have radically different ideas as to what it means.
My wife for instance would say that it involves a thrifty amount of effort and enjoying the air about her face, but that for me it is about testing the integrity of whoever’s bike I happen to be on, whether by my design or stupidity; that would depend on which incident, or bike ride, she was remembering.
Summer Cycling vs. Streets of Rage 2
A few summers back we got our hands on a couple of someone else’s electric bikes and before we left she gave me a look that said, not on these, not today. So pleasant summers cycling is not a complete win-win for me. I have somewhat ameliorated the problem via FreeCycle recently (you can really test their bikes) but a much safer activity match for us is in the form of Streets of Rage 2. Or it could be. We haven’t actually completed it yet but here are some notes from the streets.
What is my wife like at games? I don’t really know. She recently started making fast work through that Zelda remake on the Switch but because of my feelings for Zelda, I don’t play shotgun or backseat, or even be within the same room. But I think she is good at it. Good enough that I thought it was time to clean das streets with me as Axel and her as Blaze because of course.
Quickly then we were in and my wife got her mind around the controls by spaffing on the buttons until she had figured out Blaze’s leg sweep and started building up from there. Me, I was all over the place having quickly abandoned the idea that we both tackle either end of the current quadrant and generally getting stuck in like an absolute boss only to be taken out by my wife doing Blaze’s leg sweep all over the shop/street.
Special move fever
She was in the grip of special move fever like I was years ago when I discovered Eddy Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap. You just do it again and again like a monkey (in my wife’s case, a lovely monkey) and make it very difficult for others to be around. I left her to it and she kicked Ms Whip through the ankles on our way to the first Boss and rounding out Stage One.
Because of my feelings for Zelda, I don’t play shotgun or backseat, or even be within the same room.
So far so good, certainly no bicycles had thus far been ex-communicated from use, but this game quickly goes as steep on the difficulty as the mountain sections of the Tour de France. In Streets of Rage terms that means we are on the bridge and some motorbikers are game for a ding-dong. I don’t think it is tattle to say that my wife quickly ate through our first continue along the opening round of that bridge. Perhaps concerned that she was going to hog them all I took one for myself before that odd interlude section where you fight your way through the trailer of a truck, then onwards Power Ranger-style for the next Boss.
He has a jet pack for goodness sake.
A squirrelly customer to be sure but my wife got him pinned up in the corner and just kept vertically kicking him in the balls. Cheap but I wasn’t going to interfere, not with the kicking or the balls. I just picked off the regular scum while she went to town and bridge on him.
Stage 2 done and there was now a sense between us that we could do this. Not just beat the game, but then beat the disk we were playing it on. Smash it on the drive or just throw it in the recycling. Basically, it was on. I think my wife’s head might have actually been bobbing to the music. No irony just in the zone and on the streets; always looking for some unconcerned piece of furniture to smash if there wasn’t an arse to kick.
Police misconduct
Earlier on she had remarked about police misconduct when I punched a table at the nightclub but she had now reformed into a bin-kicking apple scrumper. That’s what gets justice done she said, behind her eyes, from what I saw. I didn’t mind because she was discovering that joy of this game running on both cylinders. Two players doling out the justice and scurrying for the odd pick-up; she favoured knives whereas I would yell ownership for a piece of downpipe. Either way, there was plenty for us both and we instinctively acknowledged the old maxim that the player with the least energy gets the chicken.
In great spirits we started our efforts along Stage 3, the beachfront. It would be ours for the punching.
I hadn’t expected to beat the game, just that it would be a lark.
Right from the off, be it the sea air or my personal excitement of getting to the arcades as happens when I go wandering down a seafront, my concentration was off. I went straight into a gang of those double-denim punks while my wife appeared to be trying to smash in a bench that really was just background decoration. In short, we had started playing two single player games at once within the same screen. Then things got worse once we reached the arcade as I got upset with my wife for smashing in the coin-ops that I wanted to try have a go on.
The arcade is a lustful and difficult place for me, and so it went for us both as we chewed through the remaining continues like 50ps getting eaten by Cyber Sled.
Game Over, but how had it gone? I hadn’t expected to beat the game, just that it would be a lark. And it had been, for us both, but mostly for my wife. Turns out she would rather walk the dirty streets than wander one of my tested bicycles home while I borrow her working one and test that too. But perhaps the true bullseye for us would be some combination of the two.
Look, no hands
I’m thinking of playing a Gameboy Advance while going no hands on the bike. Years back I got myself one of the first available Tamagotchi’s. A strange item; I used to clear up its pixel shit while riding horses across common land. It was always bleeping at me and one day when I was exercising a horse (behaving like a hooligan) I got so tired of wiping pixel arse at a gallop that I stopped by my house on the way home and smashed that Tamagotchi with a claw hammer.
There isn’t a lesson here other than demonstrating how playing Streets of Rage 2 with a spouse can lead to substantially less damage to inanimate objects.
I hated that Tamagotchi though.
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