Mega Drive
Pick up a PAL copy of Streets of Rage 2 and the case still snaps shut the way it did in 1992. That one detail – Sega shipping games in hard plastic clamshells while Nintendo was still using cardboard – is half the argument for the Mega Drive as your first serious
Pricing
Put a PAL clamshell of Streets of Rage 2 next to a US copy of John Madden Football and you're looking at the same console's library ageing in two completely different ways. One is a hard plastic case that has shrugged off three decades of shelves,
Games
Yuzo Koshiro's name sits right on the title screen of Streets of Rage – not tucked away in the end credits, but up front, before you've thrown a single punch. Sega knew exactly what it had in 1991: a beat 'em up whose club-inspired soundtrack