What's your favorite Beat'em Ups!

[Yoshi]

The Konami ones are all junk. Yes, that one whose PCB you bought, too.

Two and nope.

[sleeve]

One thing that beat-em-ups have taught me is that apparently New York is home to a vast assortment of gangs, crime syndicates, international terrorist organizations, rogue ninja clans, and monster hordes. About 50~75% of beat-em-ups took place in New York, or an ersatz New York. I don't know why anyone would ever want to live there and put up with all of that.

It's part of that "dark urban decay" cultural moment in the late 80s-early 90s that also gave us great movies like Tango and Cash, Predator 2, The Last Boy Scout, the Lethal Weapon films, Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2, Robocop, and so many more great action movies. It also gave us terrible things like "three strikes" laws, the federal Armed Career Criminal Act, and mandatory minimum sentencing laws, but that's an issue for another thread.

[Fe 26]

I think we had a thread on that.

Movies and events that inspired beatemups.

The Warriors is one.

[gameoverDude]

Streets of Rage Remake on PC is great. It adds some stuff that got cut from the original series, such as SoR3's missing motorcycle battle. Too bad Sega didn't do an official port of it to consoles as "Streets of Rage Special". For official ones, I'd say SoR 2 & BK3 are tied. I say Bare Knuckle 3 instead of SoR3 because the US version is censored. For BK3, just be sure to set the difficulty 1 level higher than you would on SoR3 (where USA Normal = the Japanese Hard mode).

Capcom's Alien Vs. Predator has to be their best. Overall, Final Fight is when this genre got good. However, its sequels needed to be arcade first rather than held back by the SNES's limits. FF2 & 3 on SNES are too easy. Imagine FF2 as a three player arcade cabinet with 8 enemies on screen at once and better AI. Missed opportunity. Golden Axe II & III on Genesis are actually harder than the arcade GA1.

Konami's best IMO would be Simpsons and Violent Storm. They made up for the travesty that was Crime Fighters. I would say Aliens as well but I consider it a run-n-gun.

Double Dragon 2 on the PC Engine CD is good. While it takes an expected graphical hit and has no enemy KO voices, the game speed is generally faster and lacks the arcade's slowdowns.

Another good one from Sega is Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder. That this didn't get ported to Saturn is a grave crime.

[DirtySouth]

It's part of that "dark urban decay" cultural moment in the late 80s-early 90s that also gave us great movies like Tango and Cash, Predator 2, The Last Boy Scout, the Lethal Weapon films, Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2, Robocop, and so many more great action movies. It also gave us terrible things like "three strikes" laws, the federal Armed Career Criminal Act, and mandatory minimum sentencing laws, but that's an issue for another thread.

Gotcha. Certainly makes sense. I guess New York is just a natural setting to portray that aesthetic.

[Diff-chan]

New York at that time yes.

From around 75-89 it was a shithole.

[GohanX]

Then sometime in the 1990's Mike Haggar was elected.

[FuryFox]

I mean, all the games mentioned are obviously terrible. The Capcom D&D games had some meat, but, the gameplay is still super jank.

Aren't melee-combat action games the new beat-em-up? The Ninja Gaiden's and Nioh's and DMC's and GodoW's and w/e? Even those dumbass dynasty style games where you do one button press and knock back like 20 mindless drones?

Or is the signature element here the faux-3D plane and sprite-based graphics?

[Yoshi]

I mean, all the games mentioned are obviously terrible. The Capcom D&D games had some meat, but, the gameplay is still super jank.

That seems akin to saying every game on 2600 is super jank.

Aren't melee-combat action games the new beat-em-up? The Ninja Gaiden's and Nioh's and DMC's and GodoW's and w/e? Even those dumbass dynasty style games where you do one button press and knock back like 20 mindless drones?

Or is the signature element here the faux-3D plane and sprite-based graphics?

It's not so much the new as the evolved. You could make a case that Double Dragon turned into Bayonetta and that Contra turned into Vanquish. They're unique genres, because enough changed to necessitate that, but the DNA is there. It's not quite so clean in the Bayonetta case though, because Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden had to go somewhere too. Bayonetta is arguably a mix of both classic genres.

edit: Let's hope that Musou garbage just goes extinct before it pollutes any future genre.

[FuryFox]

I really liked that Data East arcade game Bad Dudes. I think you only had like 4 moves plus a few odd weapons you could pick up. I feel like it's more in line with Shinobi and Rolling Thunder, or an evolution of Kung-Fu than a classic BMU.