2D Beat 'em Ups that aren't Streets of Rage et al

[extrabastardformula]

Double Dragon feels more like a wrestling game in retrospect, maybe because of the clearest successor to it was Technos WWF games.

[isfet]

yeah i think the combat in DD is more intimate, so to speak - makes sense since the game designer apparently used to get into street fights as a teen

he never talked about platforming as a teen, though, so maybe someone else came up with that

[extrabastardformula]

you know who I suspect did their fair share of platforming as a teen?
Jordan Mechner

[isfet]

somehow missed this post.

neat! i always wanted to check this version out as it seemed pretty good. is the emulator locked behind the Patreon / have you tried this out, yet?

[Mikey]

I should replay Super Double Dragon sometime, I really liked that one

[smbhax]

I haven’t played it, and I’m not sure about the Patreon.

[isfet]

well gosh, i have some homework to do when i get home from work, then

@Mikey

I should replay Super Double Dragon sometime, I really liked that one

you should! it’s one of my favorites. i might recommend Return of Double Dragon (the JP version) instead as it’s a little more complete (some extra music, moves behave a little differently, an expanded final level) and closer to the designers’ unfinished original vision, but there are some things i prefer in Super because that’s the version i grew up with.

[lasa]

i would also recommend double dragon advance to all of you which has one of the most expansive and satisfying movelists to ever appear in a beat 'em up. it even includes a lot of signature fall off the edge of the platform bullshit so it’s maybe the perfect double dragon game.

[isfet]

yeah Double Dragon Advance is probably the pinnacle in a lot of ways, and i wish they’d been able to keep going with the series

at the same time, it’s maybe too smooth because i’m a freak

[lasa]

true, it’s perhaps going against the spirit of the series by being programmed properly

[extrabastardformula]

The Spectrum port of Renegade and the sequels that were Speccy exclusive feel like a similar branch of beat em up evolution.

[smbhax]

There’s something key in the grunge and uncertain melee of the original arcade Double Dragon that nothing else really replicates; a lot of it must have been unplanned accident, and if you try to go for it on purpose, it’s going to feel insincere. Technos themselves never managed to replicate it. My current number #2 DD is I think GB Double Dragon II, which does at least have a lot of slowdown. ; D

[Sleazy]

i feel like at this point i feel like “idea for a licensed game that would have been a beat em up in the era that beat em ups were popular” is basically a full subgenre of it’s own

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble - Official Reveal Trailer

[Rudie]

Just glad so many Beats of Rage modders turned a hobby into a career.

[LeatherPantsBabes]

Thank god, I don’t have to respond to each message individually.

@notbov

Violent Storm is Konami going “let’s not be weird for 5 minutes” and making a belt scroller that’s almost literally Final Fight instead of whatever madness they were chasing in all their other games

surprise, it’s good and it’s probably their best of the genre

Metamorphic Force was also fucked with in the US set with health that drains constantly so you stop being a furry and turn back into a wussy

casual reminder that arcade TiT is an abomination and the SNES version is the good game

all games can’t be perfect like Knights of the Round. or DD Crew.

I hate that energy drains even when you are NOT getting attacked! Same problem with the Spider-Man arcade game too. Ugh!

PS - Also, the Adventure Island games. Hate those too.

@smbhax

Piko has a couple other arcadey beat-em-ups, the not-too-flashy-VFX one I’ve just tried is Gourmet Warriors

although their translated title screen has it as “Gourmet Squad.” Installing gives you the “game” file in the “res” folder which is a SNES rom, it runs fine in Mesen.

People vibrate a bit more than I’d like when you punch them, and it’s probably a bit more repetitive than it should be, and the boss I ran into so far was an unbelievable pushover, but the graphics and sound are decent and the punching isn’t terrible. It’s going for some kind of Choaniki + cooking vibe; some of the weirdness is actually kind of cute. The female playable character is more fan-servicey than I want to play, the guys seem okay though. You get a powerup that gives you a CPU clone partner, friendly fire in full effect. ; )

The Super Famicom original was Gourmet Sentai Barayarō by Winds

Funny enough, I find those robot bunny girls to be hotter “sex sells” characters than Mademoiselle.

@Dracko

Feilin in Night Slashers.

Feilin from Fighter’s History? Hmm…I’d rather have her in Vendetta instead, but since Vendetta is a Konami game, oh well…

@Dracko

new-version-of-x-men-on-saturn-adds-playable-storm-three-player-co-op

That X-Men game from Konami has not aged well. I hate games where energy draining special moves will drain energy even when you DON’T hit the enemy!
And here’s another bad thing about this game.

BOTTOMLESS PITS!

Normally, it might be okay for a game like Streets of Rage to do it, but not in a game that has STORM and NIGHTCRAWLER as playable characters! Heck, even Wolverine can save himself with his claws if he’s near the cliffside.
Capcom’s Mutant Apocalypse is way better.

@loki

infuriating that only rich assholes will ever get to play this

Jitsu Squad and Samurai Pizza Cats

That’s why piracy exists.

@loki

The Phantom beat’em up.

Very clever of making Diana wear pants that is almost the same color as her skin. But what about little Jedda Walker, The Phantom’s daughter from Defenders of the Earth? I’d rather play as her alongside her pop!

@smbhax

@notbov Oh actually no, Wikipedia says

he now owns the rights to Ninja Baseball Bat Man 's non-video game products, while Irem Japan owns the rights to its video game content.

so maybe they’d be in the clear?

You can always pirate it when all else fails.

@smbhax

Denjin Makai

and the sequel

Guardians

That first Guardians game has got one of the nastiest flaming silhouettes ever! But I’d say Stone Protectors for the SNES has the nastiest one of them all.

@Dracko

Rushing Beat X.

Has anybody done a translation of all three Rushing Beat games (Rival Turf, Brawl Brothers and The Peace Keepers) that stays true to the original storyline? Those running Jaleco’s American offices should be blackballed from the video game industry!

@Sleazy

i feel like at this point i feel like “idea for a licensed game that would have been a beat em up in the era that beat em ups were popular” is basically a full subgenre of it’s own

Would you rather have the licensed game be a genre that NOBODY likes such as Britney’s Dance Beat?

@extrabastardformula

Double Dragon feels more like a wrestling game in retrospect, maybe because of the clearest successor to it was Technos WWF games.

Ah. The good old days of bashing Ted DiBiase’s brains out with a steel chair using Stone Cold Steve Austin…oh, wait…

@loki

disappointing it isn’t a sprite scaling shooter like the gi joe arcade game tbh

A G.I. Joe beat’em up. Never thought I’d see the day that would get made. Contra III or Hard Corps is the game I would mimic if I made a game based on the I.P. that slaughtered my beloved Centurions and Galaxy Rangers during the great syndicated cartoon wars of 1986!

@Dracko

Karai in Shredder’s Revenge.

And Karai’s likeness is based off of her SNES Tournament Fighters appearance. Nice! Too bad we’ll never see Aska.

@Grandpa

Forgot to say I actually tried that Toxic Crusaders demo.

The mechanics feel a little…eh, until you grasp that double tapping a direction + attack will pop up enemies, and let you pretty generously juggle them.

There’s a goofy mechanic where puddles of toxic waste will appear on the ground (sometimes from enemy attacks, usually broken barrels), and standing in it will charge up your meter at a decent clip. Can’t remember if it heals your or boosts attack or anything.

Presentation seems pretty good, though! It’s a little bland, but I wanna say it nails the Toxic Crusaders license…I think? I haven’t watched it in like 30 years, I dunno.

I remember the Toxic Crusaders cartoon. Sadly, it got overshadowed by better shows like the Swat Kats and Mighty Max later on, so I too haven’t watched it in decades.

@Victor

Magggas very well done game World Hereos Supreme Justice Extra

While this game has had plenty of characters added, the base 5 (aka the MAIN characters) should have had Jeanne instead of bleeping SHURA in there instead!

@smbhax

Tecmo Knight (JP: “Wild Fang”) came out this past week on console as part of the Arcade Archives series.

Short version: plays weird but really really well, until the ridiculous and gross last boss(es); finally got through the end with a random super dragon powerup and what was possibly an AI glitch.

Holy R-rated violence! This might be one of the only times where I feel really sorry for the “bad guys”! Not just the fatalities performed on them, but the fact they are BLEEDING PINTS when they are low on health is just savage! And seeing that the Tecmo Knight’s (Duke and Fleet) have sub-par likeness’ (same with that Smokeman character), then I’m all for the game over screen where Duke and Fleet scream in agony as they get devoured by (most likely) that King Kong knock-off!

@RT-55J

oh wow they made billy a twink

Do you prefer the DiC cartoon version of Billy instead with the raven colored hair?

PS - Jimmy was the blonde in the cartoon.

@Sykel

ALTERED BEAST IS THE SHIT AND ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE CAN GO TO HELL

AND THIS MESSAGE OF YOURS TELLS ME YOU ARE AN A.H.!

@stavekoff

the only good “beat-em-up” is a little thing called “real life”

Your point is?

@smbhax

Played the Undercover Cops I extracted from Irem Arcade Hits.

This “World” version of the Undercover Cops ROM apparently has cut-down sound and omits a few player character attack moves (missing an additional throw animation, and a dash jump attack that probably would have helped with one boss I can think of

in particular) compared with the Japanese version or the apparently ultra-rare “Alpha Renewal” version (Japanese music & moves + English text).

Even with cut-down music, this version gets soundtrack copyright claims on YouTube! Sheesh.

It’s got Irem’s future Metal-Slug-creating Nazca Corporation team’s signature obsessively detailed animation action sprites, but the gameplay isn’t great, with somewhat clunky control (a frustratingly short dash range, for instance, and a jump animation that delays take-off to show the character bending their knees,

which has got to be an Action Game 101 no-no) and lots of cheap-feeling enemy attacks (tunneling up from the ground to transform into exploding mines, for instance,

or just having an instant, unerring wide-range counter attack move

I will never forgive the person that thought it was such a brilliant idea to include cat sized SNAILS so hideous looking in this game as a power-up!

@smbhax

Crime Fighters, Crime Fighters 2 / Vendetta, and Violent Storm. Haven’t played Violent Storm, but aside from having the same buttons and being able to kick downed opponents, Crime Fighters and Crime Fighters 2 / Vendetta don’t feel particularly similar;

Ah, except that Masahiro Inoue
although having strictly creative credit only in Crime Fighters among those three, does have credits in all of them: “Software designer” in Crime Fighters (1989), “Special Thanks” in Crime Fighters 2 / Vendetta (1991), and “Producer” in Violent Storm (1993).

Smart of Konami’s North American office to call Crime Fighters 2, Vendetta due to having little to do with the “prequel”. Also, I’ve never seen any HARD EVIDENCE that Violent Storm is Crime Fighters 3. Just as well since Violent Storm has as much to do with Crime Fighters as Vendetta does.

@extrabastardformula

Ikari III is where the Ikari Warriors series changes to become the popular genre of the time, the roaming brawler. There are two versions, the eight way stick version and te rotary joystick version where your character keeps facing in one direction and changes facing based on twisting the joystick, the way that the first two Ikari games did it.

The standard joystick version is good for conversion of existing cabinets I guess but Ikari Warriors is pretty much defined by those rotary sticks so that’s what I’d prefer. It makes spin kicks a physical joy to perform since it uses the motion of spinning the joysitck to do. And you’ll be doing it a lot to keep enemies off of you.

Game is practically built around spinning during attack animations to hit more than the tiny hitboxes will tag otherwise, so with the 8-way tying facing to movement you’re gonna be dancing around a lot every time you kick or punch and it gets hard to connect. If you don’t wan to to use the rotary stick go play SNK’s other military belt scroller, POW instead, I guess.

The weapon variety is surprisingly limited for a military themed beat em up; just knives, grenades, and the coveted rifle.

The time limit is brutal, the military theme is kinda off putting, and the armored vehicle bosses are not that exciting outside of the big ending. Overall it’s an enjoyable game that had potential to have been iterated into a better one, but the demands of quarter munching make it a little bit less enjoyable than it could have been. Kinda like Crime Fighters by Konami.

It’s too bad they didn’t think of creating Heidern at the time. I can see it now.

Clark Steel=Guy
Ralf Jones=Cody
Heidern=Mike Haggar

@Dracko

Final Fight Mega Drive remake.

Did I just see Maki’s health drain BEFORE she hit the enemy with her special move!?!
Also, Cody in 2027 sure looks good for a 60-year old!

@smbhax

There’s an unlockable version of this in the PS3 collection Final Fight: Double Impact. According to that, it’s season 2, episode 25 of the Street Fighter USA cartoon (so the series’ second-to-last episode, originally airing April 27, 1997.

And now I don’t need to play through Final Fight ever again. ; P

Doesn’t matter. The Street Fighter cartoon can’t hold the jockstraps of a Jonny Quest and Thundarr the Barbarian anyway.

@smbhax

The Combatribes (Technos Japan, 1990)

The game where you get to slam the faces of clowns into the pavement VERY HARD, causing blood to fly (among other things). I’d love to replace all the enemies in this game with scantily clad female fighting game characters and female WWE performers from 1997-2002 just for the ryona alone!

@smbhax

Arcade Archives Zero Team (PS4)

I’m not too keen on the other three playable characters (regular beat 'em up hero guy, blond hero in ninja suit guy,

girl with embarrassing slaps in embarrassing thong)

so I’m thinking for playing this again I can work on improving my play-through score with Big-O!

Of all the characters in this game, your favorite just happens to be the LEAST interesting of the four with the worst likeness.

@stavekoff

don;t be knocking my girl spin she has the best moves of the lot

And she looks like an American Aska from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters SNES edition. That’s a win for me. I will never forgive the guy who thought it was such an all so brilliant idea to make that female hostage during the final boss fight scream like a banshee whenever you accidentally hit her though.

@notbov

I don’t know if 64th Street had a US release (it probably did, the flyer is in Japanese and English and lists both Western Jaleco subsidiaries) but it has a world ROM in MAME and you can see the beautiful story in English

the secret to 64th Street is never ever let the bosses do anything, just stand over them and throw meaties and God have mercy on you if they get to do anything

it also bears mentioning that it has the best transitional screen in games

Got to love a game where you get to instant kill enemies by throwing them into water (stage 2) and off the train (stage 3). Wish you could throw them into lava/molten steel too.

@smbhax

@Cerium

This is really pushing the limit of 2D beat em ups that aren’t Streets Of Rage

I 100% agree with this, especially after reading about it in this extremely long blog entry detailing things I’d skipped over in the video including jet wave boarding fights vs guys with scimitars somewhere in the Middle East

Although there’s also a sideways section?

Well I’m conflicted, why did Taito have to make this hard.

This game would be so much better if the main characters were babes in thongs, or better yet, skintight black leather pants! With the characters backsides being shown a lot, who wouldn’t want to play as a leather pants wearing “Baby Spice” Emma Bunton or Laura Branigan instead of a bunch of Billy and Jimmy Lee knock-offs?

@Hojulas

@notbov

and you have full control over your character

God I love Boris, just headbanging to hit dudes behind you, piledriving fuckers and and rolling around like a madman all day long. He’s the most fun I have with any Big Guy in beat 'em ups ever.

Boris deserves his own video game.

@notbov

this is me remembering The Simpsons has the same thing where the special attack costs no life so you do that a bunch

it’s okay, they course corrected in X-Men and now you can instantly murder yourself to hear Colossus scream a few times

it’s also not as though deeply fucked or weird games didn’t exist post-Final Fight; there’s a shocking amount of games where you can only hit one enemy at a given time and it becomes a game of figuring out your best crowd control option (looking at you, DD Crew)

Energy draining special moves when you hit the enemy=fine.
Energy draining special moves when you DON’T hit the enemy=Unacceptable!
Special moves that don’t drain energy=Easy and repetitive game.

I prefer option one myself.

@u_u

in the Hook arcade game you can play as Thudbutt and immolate pirates by kicking cooking stoves into them

Never thought in a million years I’d see a beat’em up where you get to have “Robin Williams” attack a defenseless “Dustin Hoffman” while the latter is on the ground trying to get up.

@loki

final fight 2 is better than final fight tbh

but you should probabl play it on hard

Stages, music, enemies, main characters, ending weren’t as interesting though, so I’ll have to agree to disagree.

@loki

the sailor moon arcade game came out in 1995, which is later than any of the sailor moon beat em ups on snes and mega drive. despite that, it doesn’t do anything innovative mechanically, just having regualar combos and throws, along with a golden axe-style magic attack that gets more powerful the more crystals you collect before using it
it does have amazing graphics and animation, though.

The Sailor Moon arcade beat’em up has one huge flaw…NO ENDING!!! Even Hyper Zone had a very clever cast and credits roll with really good music, which is why I’ll forgive Hyper Zone’s lack of an ending. The Sailor Moon arcade game has none of that.
‘’’
Also, that stupid Friends (the NBC show) trivia game should have been a beat’em up that uses the power-up system and stage transitions from the Gradius games. Who wouldn’t want to play as Rachel Green beating up Bred’s and Andore’s while collecting six power-ups just for a health restore (in place of Gradius’ force field)?

[loki]

if you know of a way to pirate exa-arcadia games, please share

[LeatherPantsBabes]

@loki

if you know of a way to pirate exa-arcadia games, please share

Sorry, pal. But I wouldn’t know how. I just brought up piracy because of how out of control and corrupt those companies are.

[loki]

[notbov]

okay see this is interesting because you the juggle system let’s you get at least two of every move before you run out of gas

[Father.Torque]

Surely you mean jiggle system