Streets of Rage 3: Streets of Rage 3 - Special Edition

This ROM patch restores the characters in Streets of Rage 3 to their superior Bare Knuckle III colors. The current version (3.13) restores the changed characters' (ie. Axel, Blaze and Skate) sprites, status bar icons and cut scene pictures amongst other things.

Streets of Rage 3 Special Edition Patch (Version 3.13)
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(C) 2001, 2002 Jonathan Hughson - jonny@jhughson.freeserve.co.uk
Released 05/08/02


How To Use
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To use this patch you will need the standard USA Streets of Rage 3 ROM in BIN format. If your ROM is not in BIN format there are a number of ways to convert it. The easiest is to use Genecyst, which most people have a copy of. Open the ROM in Genecyst and select CPU, Dump, ROM. This will create a file named "rom" in the Genecyst folder which you will need to rename to sor3.bin (or whatever).

Be sure to create a backup of your original SOR3 ROM, as once applied the patch cannot be removed. Also, use a fresh, unpatched SOR3 ROM when applying the patch.

To apply the patch, place your SOR3 ROM and the sor3h313.ips file in a folder with SegaTool. Run SegaTool and select Use IPS. The program will prompt you for the ROM file and the IPS file, which you simply select from the list onscreen ie. select sor3.bin & sor3h313.ips

Once applied take your modified ROM and run it in any emulator. The checksum should not be broken, so emulators should have no problems with it. You will also be able to use any SOR3 savestates or PAT files with the modified ROM.


Features
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This version has restored Bare Knuckle 3 colours for Axel, Blaze and Skate. This includes all their character sprites, their status bar icons and their cut scene pictures.

The character attribute icon has been restored to the star icon used in BK3 (SOR3 uses a weird yellow block).

The BK3 alternate Duel palettes for Axel, Blaze & Skate have been added to fit with the restored sprites.


Bugs
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All known bugs have now been fixed. Please report any you find.


Special Edition Info
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The ultimate aim of this patch is to restore the best features of Bare Knuckle 3 to Streets of Rage 3. This will give us the best parts of both games; BK3's superior graphics & sounds combined with SOR3's English cutscenes, improved gameplay and bug fixes.


Future Features
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Future versions will hopefully include restored game art (with the correct character colours), BK3 sound effects (so Axel says "Grand Upper!" instead of "Bare Knuckle!") and much more.

Some features are still under consideration; restoring the names of the punks, for example, is easily done, but it is difficult to decide which names in SOR3 should remain and which should be restored to their BK3 originals.


Streets of Rage Online
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http://www.classicgaming.com/soronline/

Streets of Rage 3 (U) [!].bin
CRC32: D5BB15D9
MD5: 2D0B0C8F10EDF76131708E874E8D1EE4
SHA-1: 40A33DD6F9DAB0AFF26C7525C9B8F342482C7AF6