Streets of Rage 2,[b] known as Bare Knuckle II in Japan,[c] is a 1992 beat 'em up game developed and published by Sega for the Genesis.

Like the previous game, Streets of Rage 2 is a side-scrolling beat-em-up in which one or two players fight against waves of enemies while picking up weapons and items along the way.

To celebrate the defeat of the mysterious Mr. X and his criminal organization, The Syndicate, the trio of Axel Stone, Adam Hunter, and Blaze Fielding had met at their favorite nightspot in Wood Oak City, reminiscing about both their vigilante crusade and triumphant victory from within the previous year.

Adam has since rejoined the police force and lives in a small house with his younger brother, Eddie "Skate" Hunter.

The criminals began to retake the streets once more, as beatings and looting took place regularly and in broad daylight; chaos reigned in Wood Oak City, far worse than before.

The quartet soon embarks on a rescue mission, which will take them from Wood Oak City all the way to Mr. X's hideout on a desolate island, where they will eventually face Mr. X and his bodyguard Shiva.

Unlike the other two games in the series, Streets of Rage 2 has only one ending, where Mr. X is defeated and Adam is rescued, after which the heroes leave in a helicopter.

The brother-sister team took inspiration from Capcom's Street Fighter II, an arcade cabinet of which they had installed at the Ancient office.

To make it possible to add more features and additional memory cache, the programmers improved the Mega Drive cartridge specifications.

[12] The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2 is considered "revolutionary" and ahead of its time,[13][14] for its "blend of swaggering house synths," "dirty" electro-funk and "trancey electronic textures that would feel as comfortable in a nightclub as a video game.

An arcade version of Streets of Rage 2 was released onto Sega's Mega Drive based Mega-Play hardware.

It was published on Steam on 26 January 2011, both as stand-alone purchase and part of the SEGA Genesis / Mega Drive Classics Pack 4.

Rage Relay allows the player to play through the game using all four characters in any chosen order, and will switch to the next in line each time they die.

Casual Mode allows players to instantly defeat enemies, including bosses, by knocking them to the ground or using combos.

[55] The free-to-play Android version Streets of Rage 2 Classic has received more than 1 million mobile game downloads, as of 2019[update].

[56] Upon release, Streets of Rage 2 received widespread critical acclaim, with scores above 90% from most video game magazines at the time.

[25] In the United Kingdom, Computer and Video Games gave it a highly positive review, with one reviewer Steve Keen stating it "is without doubt the finest scrolling arcade beat 'em up on any format" and that it is like taking Street Fighter II and "dumping the characters into a horizontally-shifting arcade extravaganza and that's basically the result you get with this game.

"[37] Mean Machines gave it a positive review, describing it as "the ultimate cartridge beat 'em' up on the Megadrive," praising the graphics as "superb, with huge sprites and great animation" and "loads of enemies attacking at once," the sound and presentation as "of an equally high standard," and the gameplay as "superb, especially in two-player team mode.

[87] The game's soundtrack also received a positive reception for its techno-based chiptune tracks which impressed many gamers and critics at the time, especially due to the audio limitations of the Mega Drive/Genesis console.

The reception for the soundtrack was so high that the game's music composer, Yuzo Koshiro, was invited to nightclubs to DJ the tracks.