In the Japanese box art, Axel strongly resembles Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mr. X looks quite a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger. There are a few hidden tracks in the sound test that aren't present in the actual game. Track 9 is a hot little ditty entitled Little Money Avenue. It was originally intended for a bonus stage but that idea was scrapped during development. Yuzo Koshiro voices all the characters in this game. For Blaze, he sped up the recording to make it sound female. In the Japanese version, Blaze's jump kick has a different animation showing her panties. This was changed for obvious reasons in the US and PAL releases. The US version is known as Streets of Rage 2, in PAL regions it's Streets of Rage II, and in Japan it's known as Bare Knuckle II: The Requiem of the Deadly Battle. Streets of Rage II is available on a ton of platforms, including Game Gear, Sega Master System, PSN, Xbox Live, Wii, Steam, and even mobile phones. The "It's like Boo!" signs in the stadium stage are likely a reference to how the fat guy enemies have a similar flying bellyflop attack to the character Boo from the Dragonball Z series. Many enemy names are references to anime characters, mostly from Berserk and Fist of the North Star. Some examples are Caska, Griphis, Heart, and Vehelits. Konami seemed to rip-off Blaze's design for April O'Neil in TMNT: Tournament Fighters on the Genesis. The only thing distinguishing April are blue gloves and a bandanna. In the beta, Axel's stationary special attack was a spinning hurricane kick rather than his signature Dragon Wing. Also, Max's walk animation was more ape-like. When you enter a new area or defeat a wave on an elevator section, your health is restored slightly. Lower difficulties restore more health than challenging ones. This feature was likely implemented to give the player a greater incentive to use special attacks, which cost health. Therefore, you basically get one free special per area because it's going to be restored soon anyway. Only Skate is able to run.