(Rating is 4.5; no half star option though.)
I have come back to this with Beta 30 and I stand by what I said back in August. This is on par with Streets of Rage 4 as a package. In some ways, it actually outdoes that game. The mechanics connect well and are polished to a sheen!
...Except for a few parts. The 3-Star Super Attack is the main issue I have. For one, it's hitbox feels too small. At least with Axel, it LOOKS like it hits enemies in a circle, but it doesn't. The second issue is that, if I've grabbed an enemy, I can't use said attack. Paired with the hitbox issue and the foes moving around, it has always felt too janky and unreliable to use consistently.
One thing I personally would like to see is a Composite Video filter. The heavy amounts of dithering on the original hardware was because of the 61 simultaneous colour palette out of a max of 512 possible colours. So Composite Video blended a dithered picture to either make more colours or allow transparency, which the Genesis is not natively capable of.
- Rage attack hitboxes: they are following the sprite size with some small increment depending on the character's movement. Plus you can easily connect any rage using the cancelling system.
Specifically for SOR3 Axel, this was developed to be a frontal attack, not a circular or expansive attack like SOR4 Axel. As a suggestion using Axel, you can easily connect a "ground upper" with the rage move by simply pressing the energy button while the "ground upper" is hitting the opponent. It's safe and very effective.
For the next beta 31 I already added the hitbox size a bit for the SOR3 Axel rage, but it stays as a frontal attack only.
- Rage attack during grabs: this feature was added for the next beta 31.
- Composite Video filter: Since this is related to the engine, unfortunately there's not much I can do at the moment. Sorry friend.