Sega of America butchered Bare Knuckle III into Streets of Rage 3 in a handful of ways. First, they color-swapped the characters (and did an amateur job) which makes the sprites pop out less. Secondly, they changed the story and removed the bombing subplot. They also removed Ash, the gay stereotype character, which is somewhat understandable. Additionally, they made Streets of Rage 3 way, way harder and reduced the number of difficulty settings by 1. So, at least Streets 3 is appealing to truly experts Streets players because it offers the greatest challenge in the series. A large part of the soundtrack was generated by randomized beat generation software, apparently. Also, Yuzo did not directly compose most of the music and instead handed the reigns to his protege, Motohiro Kawashima. Yuzo recorded all the voices for Bare Knuckle III, but Sega of America used different actors for each character when they re-dubbed Streets 3. There are four endings: first, if you play on easy, the game will end immediately after defeating Robo X with a cutscene telling you to try harder. Second, if you fail to save the guy at the end of stage 6, you'll go to stage 7B and fight Shiva while Mr. X looks on from a far-off room. Third, if you reach Neo X and die, a bomb goes off and you get the bad ending. Finally, if you beat Neo X in time, you'll get the good ending. Max and Adam from the previous games appear in the credits. Streets of Rage 3 is available on Genesis, Steam, PSN and Xbox Live. Otohime and Yasha's team-based projectile attack is actually a fat man riding a horse. Axel's headband-tying intro scene in Bare Knuckle III is a rip-off of the same scene from Rambo III. Every time you get 40,000 points without dying, you gain a star. If you die, you lose a star and your point counter is reset (meaning if you die with 50,000 points, you need to get 90,000 points for another star.) Stars permanently upgrade your dash-attack. You can also execute your star moves with cheater combos using the X button on the Genesis 6-button controller. The beta version featured motorcycle segments where a Donovan on the back of a truck would throw barrels at you while bikers ride by and toss grenades. This was cut before the final release but was restored in Streets of Rage Remake.