Axel Stone

Not to be confused with Axel, the face of Crazy Taxi.

Axel Stone is one of the main protagonists from the Streets of Rage series. Alongside Blaze Fielding he has been playable in every single game.

Appearance
Axel Stone is a muscular caucasian male with blonde hair and blue eyes who wear a blue bandanna around his forehead tied at the back of his head. He wears red fingerless gloves on his hands, and white sneakers with a red stripe on them.

In Streets of Rage, Streets of Rage 2 and Streets of Rage 3 Axel is typically wearing a white vest or very short sleeve t-shirt, blue jeans and a brown belt around his waist.

In Streets of Rage 4, Axel now sports a full beard, wears a denim jacket over his white vest and his belt is replaced by a tartan patterned formal shirt tied around his waist. He is ten years older in this game. Axel's physique is considerably broader and stockier in this game than previous entries.

History
Axel joined the Wood Oak City Police force prior to the events of Streets of Rage. Over time the Syndicate managed to successfully take over the city with the police on their payroll allowing crime to run rampant.

He and his partners Blaze Fielding and Adam Hunter decided to hand in their badges in order to clear up the city streets as vigilantes, and put a stop to Mr. X and his lieutenants.

After visiting every area of the city and even managing to defeat Mr. X himself, they successfully seemed to liberate Wood Oak City of the Syndicate and believed peace was restored. Axel proceeds to move outside of Wood Oak City and finds work as a professional bodyguard.

On the one year anniversary of Mr. X's defeat, Axel was supposed to reunite with Blaze and Adam to celebrate their successes and reminesce about old times, when he recieved a phone call from Adam's younger brother Eddie "Skate" Hunter who reveals that the home he and Adam live at had been ransacked and Adam was missing.

Axel and Blaze both come to investigate their missing friend, and discover a photo of Adam bound by chains with Mr. X standing over him. Axel calls in a favour from his professional wrestler friend Max Thunder to aid him, Blaze and Skate in taking down Mr. X and his new order syndicate and rescuing Adam.

After a hard fought battle Axel, Blaze, Skate and Max manage to defeat Mr. X once more, rescue Adam.

After this the story differs depending on the version of Streets of Rage 3

Japan
Axel decides to rejoin the police force alongside Adam and Blaze in the Japanese version

A terrifying experimental weapon goes off which kills thousands of innocent civilians, and injures even more. Axel and Blaze are assigned to investigate and bring the people behind this attack to justice.

At the same time Axel himself is framed for the kidnapping of General Ivan Petrov, a representative of the Lima region who had been invited to the White House for peace talks.

Whilst trying to work out what happened and how to prove Axel's innocence, Axel and Blaze are contacted by the man who claims to be behind the creation of the weapon that killed thousands of civilians, Dr. Zan. He informs them that his research is being used by powers who plan to use Wood Oak City as a testing ground for it's terrifying destructive purposes.

Western
Blaze contacts Axel to help in her private detective investigation after recieving a tip off from Dr. Zan that he's come across plans for Mr. X and the Syndicate to take the city over once more and replace the chief of police.

Both
Axel decides to team up once again with Blaze, Skate and Dr. Zan, a former syndicate member who lost his body due to the Syndicate's attacks and wishes to make ammends by revealing the bomb locations.

He eventually comes across  'Break' a robotic replica of Axel that was used to frame him in the kidnapping. Axel and the others defeat Break, and proceed to fight against Mr. X's own robotic replica, Robo-X, Mr. X's right hand man Shiva and the mad scientist Dr. Dahm before coming face to face with Mr. X for a third time.

Having barely survived the past two encounters, Mr. X is merely a brain in a jar at this point and fights against Axel and the others using a robotic mech known as Neo. X. Axel manages to defeat Neo X within three minutes whilst Adam defuses the bombs and the heroes go their seperate ways knowing after this third and final defeat Mr. X can no longer terrorize the city.

Ten years pass, and Axel Stone has once again left the police force, instead living a life in isolation where he continuously trains and studies martial arts. Blaze gets in contact and reveals that after some investigation that the Syndicate is back on the rise and she needs Axel's help once again to clean up Wood Oak City, to which he immedietly returns to lend his aid.

Mr. X's offspring are now following in his footsteps and it's up to Axel, Blaze, Adam, Adam's daughter Cherry Hunter and Dr. Zan's apprentice Floyd Iraia to put a stop to the revival of the Syndicate.

Trivia

 * Axel originally had the name of 'Hawk' during Streets of Rage's production.
 * Axel's moves in the original beta were very similar to Street Fighter characters having moves very similar to Ryu, Ken and Sagat.
 * Axel's shoes are an inverse of Sonic the Hedgehog's with the singular stripe and two toned color.
 * His special move 'Bare Knuckle' is named after the Japanese series name.
 * Axel's stats are inconsistent game to game.
 * Axel is a racer in the Japan standalone Nintendo 3DS eshop release of Power Drift alongside Blaze, Adam, Alex Kidd, Harrier and other famous retro Sega faces.
 * Axel appeared in the mobile game 'SEGA Heroes' as a blue hero.
 * He and Sonic both appear in the launch trailer of SEGA Heroes in the same team despite both being blue heroes. This cannot be done in the actual game.