From the Creators of Tomb Raider Comes... Streets of Rage?

You read the title. So... how exactly did Core Design, the developers of the original Tomb Raider games, make a Streets of Rage game? Welcome back to THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM, and today I'm going to be covering Fighting Force, a two-game series originally conceived as a 3D version of the Streets of Rage series that received one sequel that changed everything about the first game and caused a second sequel to be scrapped.

This in 3D.
Image credit: NME

Fighting Force was released back in October, 1997, a year after Core Design's hot new game Tomb Raider. Now, I will make a BIG confession here. I've never played ANY Tomb Raider games. I know, I'm a disappointment, but I will play the games some day. Anyways, Fighting Force was not always Fighting Force. As you can see in the title, Fighting Force was originally pitched to SEGA by Core Design as a Streets of Rage game and back then was intended as the fourth entry in the series (Streets of Rage 4 only came out in 2020, remember?), with a working title of "Streets of Rage 3D". However, SEGA declined the offer, saying that they were planning their own continuation of the SoR series (look how long it took for that to happen). No longer being constrained to the SEGA Saturn, Core Design rather moved to create a multi-platform title, which is where Fighting Force begins.

Turns out "3D Streets of Rage" WAS released... but it's just Streets of Rage on 3DS and still in 2D.
Image credit: Nintendo World Report

Core Design had Eidos back as their publisher, as they had with the original Tomb Raider the year before. This is where the final version of Fighting Force began production. The game was being developed for the original PlayStation, eventually to be ported to Windows, Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn, its originally intended platform. This was not how the chain of events played out, as the PlayStation (known in Japan as "Metal Fist", unrelated to Vivid Games' mobile game of the same name) and Windows versions were released, the Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn versions were nowhere to be seen.

Metal Fist!
Image credit: Retroplace

Fighting Force's Nintendo 64 version, entitled Fighting Force 64 like many N64 ports of the time, was originally shown off at E3 1998, though the game was cancelled by Eidos for unknown reasons. Los Angeles-based company Crave Entertainment bought the rights to Fighting Force 64 and released it in June 1999. The N64 has some differences to the main version, mainly graphical. As mentioned before, a SEGA Saturn version was also in production but was also cancelled, despite being completed. Eidos, like with the N64 port, dropped out of the Saturn port for unknown reasons, and SEGA Europe offered to publish the port but also dropped the idea in 1997. Luckily, in 2008, Hidden Palace contributor drx released a playable prototype of Fighting Force's SEGA Saturn port, entitled "Judgement Force". This was not the end of Fighting Force, though. The game was successful enough to be granted a sequel, and December 1999 saw the release of Fighting Force 2.

Hawk's final PSX rendition.
Image credit: Darius320 / YouTube

Hawk's original Saturn rendition.
Image credit: Hidden Palace

Fighting Force 2 is a drastically different game. Where-as the first game was a storyless, street beat-em-up, single-player and multiplayer game, Fighting Force 2 is a more grounded action-adventure game that follows a clearer story and, for some reason, removed the multiplayer. The sequel also only features one playable character, whereas the original featured four. Fighting Force 2 was only released on the original PlayStation and SEGA Dreamcast to rather negative reviews, killing the planned sequel. However, there is still enough information to piece together what could have been Fighting Force 3, so let's dive into it.

Doesn't look like Streets of Rage anymore.
Image credit: IGN

Fighting Force 3 began development in 2002, which saw the release of Core Design's PS2 platformer Herdy Gerdy and their GBA game Tomb Raider: The Prophecy. Planned to be released on PS2, Xbox and possibly the Nintendo GameCube, Fighting Force 3 returned to the first game's 3D beat-em-up style, while bringing back all characters back from the original and adding in Jill, a new playable character. It also would have features multiplayer again, something missing from the second game. Sadly, Core Design's June 2003 game Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was unsuccessful and caused Fighting Force 3 to halt development and eventually be cancelled, eventually leading to Core Design's shut down a few years later. Unseen64 has quite a few screenshots and clips on Fighting Force 3, which you can find here.

That's more like it.
Image credit: Monokama / Unseen64

So that's Fighting Force, a failed 3D version of Streets of Rage that became an unsuccessful franchise, cancelled after its second game. I've got tons of upcoming posts planned, so keep watching this space. Well, that's a wrap on THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM!