Bare Knuckle 3 was the third entry in Sega's star beat'em up series Bare Knuckle, which we know here in the States as Streets of Rage. While Bare Knuckle 3 was released Stateside (as Streets of Rage 3), Sega of America thought it was a good idea to remove large portions of the story. What they didn't remove, they rewrote or altered in some other fashion leaving you with a plot that has more holes in it than fine swiss cheese. Perhaps the only thing that Streets of Rage 3 has over its Japanese counterpart is being insanely more difficult. If you like it rough, that is.

The goal of this project is two fold. First, to rectify Sega's shortcomings and create a quality translation of Bare Knuckle 3 that is faithful to the source material and doesn't remove any of the plot. Second, for me to gain experience with the Sega Genesis.

Hacking-wise, this is my first foray into the world of Sega and it has proven much more difficult than I originally thought. As those of you who have followed along since the project's inception know, I initially planned to only do a simple 16x16 to 8x16 font hack. I eventually scrapped that idea in favor of a VWF, which required tools that did not exist. Days quickly turned into weeks, weeks into months and finally now more than a year later, the necessary tools exist.