When you get the chance to play a fan-made beat-em-up on Mega Drive these days, I haven't really seen anything like it before. Streets of Rage 2 - Fight'n Rage isn't an official sequel to the legendary series, but a fan-remake with soul and understanding of what makes a proper homage work. This shows you what a waste modern "remasters" really are.

It's a classic scrolling brawler from the nineties. You pick a character and pummel gangsters progressively through four or five stages in streets, warehouses and bars. Goal: reach the end and destroy the bosses. The game doesn't overcomplicate things — movement, punch, kick and a special attack that costs a bit of health but seriously blasts distant enemies. The sound and music comes straight from Mega Drive like a proper retro product, with those angular bass lines I'll keep in my head from Mighty Max.

The gameplay sits exactly where it should. The character moves snappily, hits are responsive, even if the timing isn't quite as precise as in classic Streets of Rage. The security guard grunts come at a reasonable rhythm that lets you catch your breath between action. Bosses aren't genius, just stereotypical bigger guys with the same attacks you can easily dodge. The difficulty stays in the middle ground — neither needlessly hard nor a pushover.

What makes me remember it is exactly that the fan who made this understood what makes Streets of Rage great. It's not about toxic nostalgia here, but a game Sega could've released without question in 1993. Nowadays it's swarming with retro knockoffs and increasingly common AAA remakes that lost the spirit. This is restoration in the best sense of the word.

It'll click with you if you love classic arcade brawlers, or if you want to know what respectful fan code looks like without kitsch elements. From here comes the feeling that Sega's disciples came home and told what they saw, and without sentimentality. A few hours of carefree button-mashing await you in your browser or emulator — that's the intention and nothing more.