yeah, I don’t think of those the same way as these relatively late, almost tossed-off experiments, which probably accounts for the timelessness
it’s specifically the era in which these games felt newly cheap and low end but not explicitly 2D throwbacks that I think I’m nostalgic for
feel like i may as well throw some Super Spy or Aggressors of Dark Combat itt if Riding Fight qualifies, maybe even some Dynamite Duke.
I’ll offer some vintage konami that i have a great nostalgia for instead. Has much been made on here about the literal faceless sprite aesthetic that konami has going on in a lot of their nes era stuff like this and rush n attack?
the most experimental was probably dark edge, an insane sprite scaling fighting game from sega
and also in the early 90s, sega pushed the limits of sprite scaling with rail chase
but neither of these are beat em ups. maybe there should be a sprite scaling thread?
wait, sega also did a beat em up with a lot of sprite scaling! arabian fight, which also has some really cool massive anime-looking sprites like those used in the sailor moon arcade game
I think it would be a lot of fun to talk about the edge cases. ^ _^ (I didn’t even know about Super Spy orrr I think Dynamite Duke. Aggressors of Dark Combat is a good call-out too; I hate when it’s called a fighting game so uh yeah. ; )
Jeepers, I remember the title RollerGames from back in the day and I think the logo art, but somehow I never even knew it was a beat-em-up, I guess I just assumed it was more some kind of pseudo sport thing like oh Speedball or something.
Oh wow. Love the colors and character art/sprites. I was going to wonder why it didn’t get a console port but I guess none of those System 32 games did back in the day.
trapped in the limbo that the mega drive didn’t stand a chance, and they were old before the saturn came along
(i guess the mega cd had some decent sprite scaling but it still probably would’ve been a struggle)
I was looking at System 32 games and was about to toss Dark Edge into the fighting game thread melee island (fighting game club) if it isn’t there already (checked now: it isn’t).
(Was going to put it in as a B-side to a post about another System 32 fighting game, Burning Rival, but on closer inspection that AM2 2D fighter looks SUPER JANKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKFIzgGi38k so I’m going to do like Sega and pretend it doesn’t exist. :"P)
Rail Chase looks like it could be good for sprite-based first-person games (with mobile avatar and granular turn increments)
rail chase doesn’t fit in that thread because you don’t control the movement
That’s what I was thinking, but I never had the pre-DC Sega systems so I wasn’t sure how that would have shaken out–there were still System 32 games coming out in '94 when the Saturn came out, for instance.
Ah! Thanks, missed the “mobile avatar and granular turn” requirements. : D
Dynamite Duke was a crosshairs shooting game sort of like Cabal or more fabulously Wild Guns, but to conserve ammo you had a punch and kick button too, and charging up the punch let you use your Dynamite Dukes! a big explosion punch attack.
The Super Spy is a firsat person brawler. It’s a neat tech demo for what the NEO GEO could do and was a whole lot of fun, but boy did the game go on WAYYYY longer than the actual mechanics would support you being able to have a good time wiith it. For almost 20 minutes it’s great, too bad the game lasts two hours. I like to think of it as the precursor to Fight Knight (which I stopped caring about when I found out the dev was a creepo, though the game did look good in the demo)
I always figured that was down to the low resolution and their less super-deformed, more “adult” sprite style in which facial features would have been tough to fit in, so they found a more “cool” ie expressionless look worked better.
Wow! Yeah I guess SNK thought maybe people would dig it enough to keep plunking in quarters, guess it didn’t quite catch on that way.
this is yet more evidence for one of my favorite bugbear alternate histories: The Sega CD should’ve had an 020 and the VDP2 scaler built in. usually I offer this up as evidence that it would’ve gotten both the Neo CD releases and all the 3DO’s DOS ports (as well as having more continuity with the eventual Saturn, like the 32X was supposed to)… but getting the System 32 ports makes sense too.
Oh this piqued my interest, but I’m not familiar enough with DOS games to be able to pick them out from the GameFAQs list of 3DO games. Googling suggested they would include Wolfenstein (but not Doom, which was a bad port of the Jaguar version?) and Star Control II. What else?
And was it referred to then as the 3DOS? : D (Okay, Google suggests not, but it is the name of a DOS emu for the 3DS. = P)
well, I looked up ADK on youtube and was surprised. I was thinking of a different early NEO GEO game that was an over the shoulder view sword fighting game that looked very Golden Axe inspired. Not sure what that one is called but I’ll post a video if I find it.
Ah yeah, Crossed Swords and Crossed Swords II.
CSII ( Crossed Swords II - Wikipedia ) is a bit of a curio in that it was it was exclusive to the Japanese Neo Geo CD–didn’t come out on MVS/AES.
Of course, the best beat-em-up format is isometric double-wide a la Taito’s Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III : D ( Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III - Wikipedia )
There’s also Konami’s X-Men of course
but the real surprise to me just now was finding out about Taito’s 1987 The Ninja Warriors, which was TRIPLE TRIPLE TRIPLE-wide = oo:
three contiguous screens (one screen in the usual place for an arcade game, and two more screens in the cabinet below, reflected by mirrors on either side of the middle screen) which created the effect of a single, “triple-wide” screen
– The Ninja Warriors (1987 video game) - Wikipedia
Oh heck there’s even a PS4 version
However, it isn’t isometric, so to heck with that noise.