The fan remake gives further support to the "Robot Mr X"-theory above, as it features all the levels of SOR1 and SOR2, into SOR1 and SOR2 routes respectively, within the same game. And while the SOR1 stage 8 is treated as a good ending, providing you don't purposely try to do the bad ending gimmick, it's actually the SOR2 stage 8 that's treated as the 'best ending' instead. There is a Robot X route, with remade SOR3 levels, that upon beating it's stage 8 (same as the Robot X battle in SOR3 Stage 5) it's quite obviously a 'try again/unfinished' ending given that Mr X is still alive, but it has the same music as the SOR1 stage 8 ending. I guess the SOR1 route was still a 'try again/unfinished' route so to speak, but since the game characters believe it really was Mr X, it didn't felt unfinished to them, because they thought it was the good ending. But it was the SOR1 game's unfinished route, that led to Streets Of Rage 2 having to be a thing in the first place. After the SOR2 route though, that's it, the real Mr X's body is damaged.
Presumably that's why the remake gives you a choice over which round 5 boat you wish to join, the first game's or the second game's. So you can cross to the right route if you chose to start on the first game's one.
And why the Streets Of Rage 3/Remake routes can actually send you onto the Streets Of Rage 2 route intentionally, but never onto the Streets Of Rage 1 one.
The Streets of Rage Remake has an ingenious difficulty set-up: most of the playable characters are noticeably stronger than their main game counterparts. The game stays fairly balanced, though, as a good chunk of the enemies have lifebars as long as the player's. All of this means that when you play, the game remains fun while still being challenging.
