Streets of Rage 4 OST Review

• Reviewed by: Mark Goninon
• Name: Streets of Rage 4 Original Soundtrack
• Label: Oliver Deriviere
• Composer(s): Oliver Deriviere, Yuzo Koshiro, Groundislava, XL Middleton, Keiji Yamagishi, Harumi Fujita, Motohiro Kawashima, Yoko Shimomura, Scattle and Das Mörtal
• Number of Tracks: 36

The original three Streets of Rage games are renowned for their awesome electronic music soundtracks which means the Streets of Rage 4 soundtrack has a lot to live up to. However, fans will be reassured to know that Dotemu didn't cut corners when it came to hiring composers, with lead composer Oliver Deriviere (known for the Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Freedom Cry, Get Even and Remember Me soundtracks) collaborating with 9 others, including original Streets of Rage composers, Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima, to produce this album.

There are 36 tracks on the Streets of Rage 4 OST available on Oliver Deriviere's Bandcamp page. As it is Bandcamp, tracks are available in a variety of formats including MP3 V0, MP3 320, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC, WAV and AIFF. Most of these tracks you'll hear as background music at some point in the game with the exception of the final bonus track called "Down the Beatch". Oliver Deriviere does the lion's share on this soundtrack with half of the tracks being composed by him. The rest of the tracks are composed by the other 9 composers.

Tracks on this soundtrack are listed in the order they appear in the game with Yuzo Koshiro's "Main Theme of Streets of Rage 4" coming in first and Motohiro Kawashima's credits themes coming in at Track 34 and 35. Like the Sinless soundtrack, the Streets of Rage 4 soundtrack has an eclectic mix of genres but most of it tends to emulate 80s and 90s dance and R&B just like the original Streets of Rage games.

Unlike the Sinless soundtrack, the Streets of Rage 4 soundtrack has little in the way of ambient tracks which means it's eminently listenable in my books. In fact, there are so many good ones to choose from such as Yuzo Koshiro's "Main Theme of Streets of Rage 4" which takes many cues from the intro theme to the original Streets of Rage. It's a bit like a low tempo 90s dance-pop/R&B track similar to Jon Secada's "Just Another Day" or Lisa Stansfield's "All Around the World". He also takes cues from the Level 1 music in Streets of Rage called "Fighting in the Street" and injects this into the "Character Select" music and "They're Back" - they both have a very Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam" feel to them and even has elements of early rave as you'd hear in "Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)" by the Immortals.

The main throwaway from listening to this album though, is the fact that Oliver Deriviere is a very talented composer with the ability to score music in a variety of styles (at least when it comes to electronic music, which is what this album is all about): you've got the funky Big Beat/Electro Swing of "Funky HQ" (which sounds like something Moby would do to the James Bond theme), the industrial/rock dance music of "On Fire" (with a guitar riff reminiscent of AC/DC), the latin Nu Jazz of "An Exhibition", the heroic synthwave in "Rising Up" and even a little bit of dubstep in "The Storm Boat". Once you start adding a whole bunch of different composers to the mix, you have an album that has examples of music that runs the gamut of the electronic music spectrum (so much so that I was inspired to investigate Ishkur's Electronic Music Guide again) .

Score – 8/10

If you're a fan of electronic music of the late 80s and early 90s (which is what Streets of Rage is all about), this is an excellent soundtrack to listen to on its own. 90s Rave, Synthwave and Chiptune/VGM are well represented but there's also Big Beat, Nu Jazz, Hip Hop, House, industrial and pop elements scattered throughout.

If you're interested in purchasing the soundtrack you can purchase it off Oliver Deriviere's band camp page for $9.99 USD.