Streets of Rage 4/Playable characters

Characters Availability

Vanilla Game

The first time a player launches the game, only the Story mode and 4 playable characters are available:

• SoR4 Axel Stone,
• SoR4 Blaze Fielding,
• SoR4 Cherry Hunter,
• SoR4 Floyd Iraia.

The character select screen hints at a 5th character that must be unlocked: SoR4 Adam Hunter. While all the other modes are unlocked by completing the Story mode at least once, nearly all the previous incarnations of playable characters in the franchise can be unlocked through a lifetime scoring system, the only exceptions being Roo/Victy and Ash from SoR3. Players can earn lifetime points simply by completing stages in the Story mode or the Stage Select mode.

After completing a stage, a stage score is calculated following those different criteria:

• Initial score, points cumulated during the run by hitting enemies, doing combo chains and picking bonus items up,
• Time bonus, the faster the stage gets completed, the more points the player gets rewarded with,
• Health bonus, the more health remains, the better the score,
• Star bonus, The more stars you collected without using them, the higher the score.

The run is assessed by a letter-ranking system (S, A, B, C, D) and, then, a total score is calculated:

• Score bonus, the stage score is directly added to the total score,
• Rank bonus, the better the assignment, the higher the bonus,
• First time completion bonus, when the player finishes a stage with a given character for the first time, he/she gets some additional points.

This total score is directly added to a lifetime score.

By cumulating lifetime points this way, players can unlock new characters by reaching some thresholds:

• SoR4 Adam Hunter gets unlocked after completing the stage 4 the first time in the Story mode,
• SoR1 Axel Stone at 200,000 lifetime points,
• SoR1 Adam Hunter at 250,000 lifetime points,
• SoR1 Blaze Fielding at 310,000 lifetime points,
• SoR2 Max Thunder at 390,000 lifetime points,
• SoR2 Axel Stone at 480,000 lifetime points,
• SoR2 Blaze Fielding at 570,000 lifetime points,
• SoR2 Skate Hunter at 650,000 lifetime points,
• SoR3 Axel Stone at 730,000 lifetime points,
• SoR3 Blaze Fielding at 840,000 lifetime points,
• SoR3 Skate Hunter at 940,000 lifetime points,
• SoR3 Dr. Gilbert Zan at 1,050,000 lifetime points,
• SoR3 Shiva at 1,150,000 lifetime points.

Mr. X Nightmare DLC

Purchasing the Mr. X Nightmare DLC directly unlocks new modes and 3 additional playable characters:

• SoR4 Estel Aguirre,
• SoR4 Max Thunder,
• SoR4 Shiva.

One of the new modes is the Survival mode, which allows players to unlock new alternative moves for every playable character. Unlocking new moves in the Survival mode works similarly to unlocking new characters in the Story and Stage Select modes: completing a run in the Survival mode gives the player some scoring points. If the player cumulates enough points, one or several moves will be unlocked for the character used during the run. However, contrary to the lifetime scoring system, the survival scoring system is only graphical (i.e. a progress bar is associated with each character in a dedicated screen) and no actual figures are ever showed.

As a bonus, the possession of this DLC also allows player to get access to SoR3 Roo/Victy through a cheat code. In SoR3 on Mega Drive, you had to hold + then press  START  on the title screen. In SoR4, you have to input this code on the main screen:

• On PlayStation 4, hold + and press  OPTIONS ,
• On Xbox One, hold + and press  MENU ,
• On Switch, hold + and press .

Nothing indicates that the cheat code worked but Roo / Victy should appear on the character select screen of any modes from there on.

On PC, the cheat code is always the same: hold +Attack and press  START . But the cheat code ignores any button remappings and always follows the default button assignment of input controllers. If your controller doesn't even have a start button, you can always do the cheat code by mixing button inputs with your keyboard. The cheat code by using only the keyboard is the following: hold +F1 and press Enter.

Unless going through the Survival mode and unblocking at least one alternative move with him, the cheat code must be performed each time the game gets launched to get access to him again.

Character movesets

In the vanilla game, all the characters gets moves that can be split into 2 large categories: the common moveset and the advanced moveset. Advanced movesets can be further broken up into different move categories, representing different kinds of special moves that have specific names for each characters. The Mr. X Nightmare DLC adds alternative advanced movesets to all the playable characters, including SoR1 incarnations.

As SoR4 is localised into 12 languages, all those move names are listed in this section. For languages not using Latin characters, move names are first transliterated into the Latin script (a.k.a. romanisation) and then given in the language writing system.