Fantastic and rightfully influential. I still get those "wow" vibes when this game starts.

One of the best of its genre

Good game. However the streets of rage games were better just because you can do magic in them. Otherwise this is a good game when I played it.

Yet to have its formula refined, but enjoyable.

The base model for the next decade's worth of Capcom beat 'em ups (and a lot of other people's for that matter). The big characters were nice at the time, though the gameplay's pretty mindless, and there are just so many games that went on to do more with this premise.

For the most part it would be fair to say I was Team Capcom over Team Konami when it came to the two big guns of Nintendo third-party development of the 80s and early 90s, but the beat 'em up/brawler genre would probably be one of the exceptions to that; Capcom just couldn't pull off anything quite as iconic and fun as Konami did with their Ninja Turtles games.