Streets of Rage 4 – How to Unlock Secret Characters

Streets of Rage 4 remembers its roots, and old fans will be pleased to learn they can unlock the original Streets of Rage versions of Axel, Blaze, and Adam. There are some other secrets lingering in the roster, so how do you unlock them?

Secret characters are earned by increasing your lifetime score.

That’s truly it: Streets of Rage 4 doesn’t bother itself with obtuse methods, hidden codes, or other such nonsense. You want a new character? Then play the game. You increase your lifetime score by kicking ass and completing stages. The more points you have at the end, the more you’ll add to your lifetime score (which appears upon stage completion as a golden bar, and the secret characters are clearly marked by the diamonds attached).

Completing a stage for the first time with a different character nets a small bonus, as does your first time hitting a certain rank. Otherwise, if you wanna grind up your lifetime rank and unlock the clearly signposted unlockable secret characters then simply beat the story to access Stage Select, pick a stage and difficulty you wanna grind, then get to it. Just remember: using a post-death modifier will negatively affect your final score, so if you are having issues jump down to Easy difficulty. It is, without a doubt, the fastest way to farm points for your lifetime score.