The Streets of Rage series offers side-scrolling beat 'em ups, initially developed by Sega for its consoles back in the 90s. As you can imagine, many 90s gamers grew up playing the first three titles, with the fourth title released in 2020. Amazingly Streets of Rage 4 somehow surpasses the initial three offerings from Sega, thanks to its challenging beat 'em up gameplay, slick graphics that can swap to pixel-based or hand-drawn, not to mention the game's kicking soundtrack. It's a perfect interpretation of an aging series recreated for the modern-day, and it just launched on Android, with optional Mr. X's Nightmare DLC in tow. So now that the game has landed on mobile, possibly as one of the best Android games on the platform, let's take a look and see how this particular port stacks up.

I recorded an hour-long 1080p 60FPS gameplay video of Streets of Rage 4 in action to illustrate precisely how the game performs on Android. As you can see, it's pillarboxed, retaining its original 16:9 format. While It would have been great to see the game scale to all screen sizes since this is a mobile release, remember, it was developed with a feature that lets you swap from classic pixel graphics to hand-drawn designs, which is more than likely the reason scaling isn't offered. Scaling the game's environments and characters while retaining the available post effects would have been pretty complicated.

Once you get past the pillarboxing, it's easy to see that the Android port plays just as expected, complete with controller support across bluetooth and USB. Sure, the touch controls are good enough to get through a few stages, but if you really want to master the challenge of Streets of Rage 4, a controller is definitely recommended. What's great is you can even choose your button prompts, whether you want the on-screen buttons to match with Xbox, PlayStation, or even Nintendo Switch controllers, and yes, you can customize your controls, both the touchscreen controls as well as the mapping for physical controllers.

As for performance, it's spot on, where the game holds a stable 60FPS at its maximum graphical settings on a ROG 5, which you can clearly see in the above gameplay video. The game's as stable as a rock, making its slick animations shine that much more.

All in all, Streets of Rage 4 is indeed a welcome release on Android. It performs and controls great, and since it's a fresh launch, you can pick it up today for 10% off the retail pricing at $7.99. If you'd also like to pick up the Mr. X's Nightmare DLC, that's an extra $2.99 on top, but you do get three new characters, along with a survival mode that adds tons of replayability. Keep in mind the multiplayer content found in the console and PC release is currently missing in today's mobile port, which is about the only caveat outside of the pillarboxing, though multiplayer is expected to arrive sometime after launch in an update, so it shouldn't be missing for long.

So if you're eager to see for yourself how well Streets of Rage 4 plays on Android, especially when considering that this is a game that's considered to be one of the best modern beat 'em ups around, you can purchase a copy through the Play Store widget below. Have fun; this is one that shouldn't be missed!

You can grab the game on the Play Store, here.