2D Beat 'em ups - From Double Dragon to River City, from Final Fight to Streets of Rage, from Golden Axe to Castle Crashers, from Shadows Over Mystara to Dragon's Crown, from fan-made to official.

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Combo-bloat begets hp-bloat, can't have epic 200-hit juggles in the trailer unless every random goon takes 400 hits to kill. Combos are a meme, piñata-whacking guys once at a time like King of Dragons is superior.
Games like SoR4 have a pretty decent balance where you can still juggle enemies when they are dead for score/juice/achievements OR movement while keeping the combo going to chain it into another guy. Ninja Gaiden 2 on the 360(so not the PS3/PC version) had tons of enemies instead of few enemies with more HP(like in the PS3/PC version). It meant that you could shoot in and decapitate 3+ ninjas at once to start the combat. That was really awesome.
 
I saw somewhere in the comments of that first video that they delisted the Johnny Turbo's Arcade port for Night Slashers? Is that true? Because that fucking sucks if that's the case.
The Johnny Turbo ports are all trash, maybe they were feeling pangs of guilt about charging people money for them. I hope whoever has the rights to Data East's arcade catalog loses them in a poker game or something, we've suffered enough of this bullshit.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers never seems to get any recognition when this genre comes up. There were two great games on SNES, amazing soundtracks (not hyperbole) andcnice visuals.
I just tried this... they made Zach a golliwog

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It's very similar to Ninja Warriors Again, also developed by Natsume... I checked the credits, looks like the Ninja Warriors guys worked on MMPR The Movie The Game.
 
The Johnny Turbo ports are all trash, maybe they were feeling pangs of guilt about charging people money for them. I hope whoever has the rights to Data East's arcade catalog loses them in a poker game or something, we've suffered enough of this bullshit.
Night Slashers played fine for me. And even if it was a little on the shoddy side, it's still way better than that """remake""" that's replacing it.
 
I just tried this... they made Zach a golliwog

View attachment 5466029

It's very similar to Ninja Warriors Again, also developed by Natsume... I checked the credits, looks like the Ninja Warriors guys worked on MMPR The Movie The Game.
Golliwog? That's hilarious, now I know what I'm naming my next Poliwag.

That's interesting, I didn't know they did Ninja Warriors. That was a lot harder, I guess because these MMPR ones were intended for kids, most likely.
 
Stone Protectors had a good soundtrack. It was an attempt at capitalizing on the popularity of TMNT with treasure trolls.

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The Tick was a fun game but there was a glitch where the enemies would get stuck when I throw them across the screen which prevented me from progressing it took a while to beat the game. It was developed by Software Creations the same studio that made Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage.

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Night Slashers remake teaser, but it looks completely barebones:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lKZcrdcktIMShit was announced on 2021, and in 2 years they only got the art style done:
Instead of waiting for this you should play Night Slashers X Rebalance.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=JALwfGj_-qI
I was about to say "Hey, there's a fangame made in the OpenBOR engine that's well worth checking out." But you beat me to it.

For those who don't know: OpenBOR started as a 2D Beat 'Em Up engine written in C+. It was used for a short fan game using King of Fighters characters in a Streets of Rage setting and released around 2007 or 2008? Something like that. The devs went on and did their own things with varying levels of success mostly on the small scale. But a community formed around OpenBOR and there's fucking hundreds of these games. It's like going to 2D Beat 'Em Up Heaven.


Dudes have made almost every kind of dream game you could want. There's even Splatterhouse sequels that are out there although they're simply okay but the effort was appreciated. Plenty of Double Dragon games and remakes the annihilate the ones made by devs and asking money for. I remember a Double Dragon 2 remake that rebalanced the game a little and addressed the annoying left button always hits left and right button always hits right bullshit.

From memory I can remember World Heroes: Supreme Justice being well worth checking out especially if you like Neo Geo games or the short lived World Heroes series.
 
After all these years, I still doubt that the reason Poison was made into a futa because of beating up women is bad, mkay. It is as dubious as Inafune was the creator of Megaman, as dubious as Final Fantasy was supposed to be Squaresoft's last game because they were going bankrupt (sure they were making mockbuster games, but their Rad Racer was really selling extremely well, actually sold more than Final Fantasy)

Also, I mean while in Renegade (Kunio kun in Japan) lets you beat up trannies, Double Dragon 1 has Linda, a female, not a tranny as a goon you beat up, and there's no controversy surrounding the game and it was released at least 2 years before Final Fight 1. Heck, even during the time Double Dragon 3 rolls around, which I think the same time around Final Fight 1, you beat up Daby, which is a female.

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The western market even back then was wierd about women. They would O.K. things like Street Fighter 2 (Cammy & ChunLi) but wouldn't O.K. something like this in Dynamite Headdy
View attachment 5469470
Makes me wonder if they were unsure of what they could show in the way of violence against women without causing an outrage. If that's the case, then it shouldn't be too surprising that they were inconsistent. Kinda reminds me of how in the early-mid '00s developers seemingly weren't sure if dropping the f-bomb in games would cause controversy. Like how Vice City never used it, but the next year True Crime: Streets of LA was filled with them, and the next year San Andreas was as well.
 
Scott Pilgrim still holds up well, River City Girls 1 had a lot of problems but patches fixed some of it. Progression is pretty painful, but I was willing to soldier on because of the soundtrack/spritework/aesthetic, which are actually dealbreakers for a lot of other people. 2 is better, but also re-uses thr vast majority of assets from 1 so that's a dealbreaker for both people who disliked 1's vibe and also folks who just hate asset re-use. I like the RPG progression slowly making these games easier, it's obtuse in Scott & RCR1, a little clearer in 2, but RCR is really wonky on storyline progression and it's easy to just get lost, not know which step is next and say "fuck it" and put it down as a group.

Knights of the Round and the D&D games were really good, surprised more beat-em-ups don't jump to different time periods or eras.
 
The Capcom arcade Beat 'em Ups are top tier. No question. The best of the era. And I say that as a big Streets of Rage fan. Capcom was just on fire with licensed games too. You have:

Punisher
Final Fight
Captain Commando
Knights of the Round
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
Armored Warriors
Dungeons and Dragons 1 & 2
Motherfucking Alien VS Predator (greatest 2D Beat 'em Up ever fucking made)
Battle Circuit (the last of these games Capcom made but this one has RPG elements where you level up your character and it's really fun as to be expected)

The Final Fight sequels on the SNES were bad although 2 was okay. It got leaked that Capcom is making a reboot so we'll see how that goes.
 
Final Fight 3 sucks fucking nuts. It sucks Yokozuna's fat ass. And Streets of Rage blow the piss out of Final Fight.

JAP version of Streets of Rage 3>>>>>> Final Fight as a franchise.

We'll fight under the monkey bars to settle this. We just need a retard to distract the teacher.
 
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