Retrocast 007 Top 5 Beat Em Ups

[4]

I think I might have to side with Dave's list on this one. Here's my personal list of brawler favs

5.X-Men The Arcade Game
4.Splatterhouse 1
3.Zombie Revenge
2.Final Fight
1.The Warriors(PS2/XBOX)

The Warriors also doubles as my favorite game based on a movie. I've been tempted to try the Live Arcade Warriors game, but have heard horrifying things. I love how brawlers have been coming back more thanks to services like Live and PSN. We just got the one two punch with Scott Pilgrim and Shank, and hopefully we get to see more soon.

[Juese]

5. Battletoads
4. Double Dragon II
3. River City Ransom
2. Final Fight
1. TMNT: The Arcade Game - Favorite over best, but this is the one I spent my time with. One of the main games that got me into the genre and into arcades, and beat to utter hell at home. I have so many memories attached to this game I can't even begin to get into. 4 I didn't get to until much older, and frankly it's really hard to me. I can rarely get anywhere into the time travel aspect of the game. Really, I need to Mame this to just play it all the way through.

Really close calls: Scott Pilgrim, X-Men Arcade, Captain Commando, Streets of Rage 2, Knights of the Round

A dear topic, good retrocast.

[dave auto]

Sooo many close calls for me as well, because while there are very few brawlers I actually revisit repeatedly, there are many that I've played a couple of times and had a blast with, like Battletoads and Knights of the Round. Which version of Double Dragon II is your poison, Juese, and why?

4, I've been meaning to try The Warriors for some time now. I just discovered yesterday, in fact, that it supposedly runs in 720p on Xbox, so I think I'll pop it in and give it a go today after that ringing endorsement. Just in time for the movie to arrive on Netflix Watch Instantly!

I can't recommend enough that everyone try out Beats of Rage, the homebrew beat-em-up engine I mentioned. It's available for a huge variety of platforms, but I always prefer to play console-style games on a console. If your Wii is softmodded (painlessly easy to do), you can download it right from the Homebrew Browser. It's available for your modded Xbox as well, but for many, it might be easiest to play on Dreamcast, where I first discovered it many years ago. Just visit DC Evolution and download this disc image (the better of the two collections they've assembled), burn, and start punchin'!

[Ekkebus]

The classic beat em up genre is often derided for having boring repetitive content, an artifact of the early days of gaming that doesn't have a place in the modern era and I can say now, more than ever that that notion is such total BS. My top 3 were easy picks but the more I thought about it and the more games to mind, the fight for the 4 and 5 slots became a bloodbath. There is such a rich history of quality content in this genre that I feel is completely overlooked in favor of a handful of classics.This might be getting a bit ahead of myself but I bet there's a ton of variety that we'll see between peoples lists. There are those stalwarts that will pop up more often but its interesting to see what those little things are in this fairly straightforward genre that make certain games resonate with certain people.

Reposting my list:

5. Final Fight
4. Turtles in Time
3. Streets of Rage 2
2. Castle Crashers
1. River City Ransom

And yeah, if you ask me in a year, Scott Pilgrim will be on that list, I'm sure of it.

[Juese]

@auto - As you guys set up, the genre gives so much room to dissect nuance, and because of that I think a lot of beat em ups just work for some people and not others with it being hard to justify (see: Hyperstone Heist). Double Dragon II, for one, was really cool because I got it from HO/RC hobbies. Represent. The controls, although certainly odd, were really satisfying at the time. "Oh no, I got hit! Aaaaand hit a+b right as I land, knee the punk across the screen. Or hit b and give this really strong/goofy uppercut." That's where "The Revenge" part of that game is for me. I also love pretty much every track from the soundtrack (highly recommend the arranged album for those that agree.) Whereas the first Double Dragon in arcades is waaaay superior, I liked the home version of DDII more. I preferred the feel (biased, I played the home version first), look (a good case of the minimalism of sprites letting me think the characters looked way cooler than intended), sound font, and apparently the arcade only had 4 levels vs. the NES's 9 (if you beat it on Supreme Master.) Though, yeah, those treadmills are goddamn mean. Nostalgia might play into this genre more than any other for me, when I feel like beating some fuckers up.

I also want to recommend checking out a game I found when I was on my own brawler kick because of Scott P last week. This is a game called Shadow Force. As the article tells, this is a late Technos arcade beat em up with a ballsy control scheme. Shadow Force had it's controls set up like a fighting game, with a full 6-button control scheme. Also, you could possess and control normal foes for a limited amount of time. It looked really cool, as I checked some YouTube videos.

[shadowdancer21b]

1. Streets of Rage 2

2. The Warriors

3. River City Rumble

4. Knights of the Round

5. D&D Shadows of Mystfar (This game is awesome).

[4]

1. Streets of Rage 2

2. The Warriors

3. River City Rumble

4. Knights of the Round

5. D&D Shadows of Mystfar (This game is awesome).

Damn right. We should all be so lucky to be in Dave's shoes right now...experiencing the sweet sweet brawling and radio jacking of The Warriors. Fuck you Furies!

Have you guys seen the new Wii Batman game based on the unfortunately titled Brave and the Bold series? The Gametrailers review had me seriously considering it.

[shadowdancer21b]

I love Max on Streets of Rage 2. He's my favorite big guy of all time in all the brawlers ever. Even more than Percival and Haggar.

[4]

Oh no you didn't.

[dave auto]

Yeah, The Warriors is pretty awesome. Not being a GTA guy, I've never really gotten the opportunity to appreciate Rockstar's filmic sensibilities. But, damn, the presentation in Warriors is just stunning. I've never seen a movie game stay so true to the idea that this is a game based on a piece of cinema, dammit, and that has merit. There is a lot going on, gameplay-wise, like the radio-stealing and graffiti-tagging, that I fear might needlessly slow down the pace of the game, but it does help contribute to the idea of fleshing out day-to-day gang life, so I'll take it with a grain of salt.

Not to hate on other big-and-tall pugilists, but I think there's a reason that Mayor Haggar is so popular in the polls. He's appeared in enough games now that we, the audience, feel like we know him. But even if you just consider the first game, Capcom did a great job of communicating who this character is and what he's about with his tremendous range of expression: the stoicism, the gung-ho rage.

[Ekkebus]

I've been eyebally The Brave and The Bold as well. I'm pretty much just going to wait until I can get it for $20 but I am going to get it.

[4]

Aside from it being THE beat em up I played the most during the 16bit era, Haggar was a huge part in making Final Fight the memorable experience that it is for me, and I'm sure many others. He's the mayor that literally takes action. Typically when a mayor's daughter gets kidnapped in any form of media, they stay sitting behind the desk and send out other men to do the job. No, this man rips off his shirt and goes out to claim vengeance with his own bare hands. Oh, and he also happens to be a former professional wrestler. Good times. Final Fight is one of those games that I will never tire of.

And yeah, buying the new Batman game at full price just isn't a good idea now that we're stepping into a financially punishing season of gaming. Perhaps next year when there's a lull....if there is one. Christ, 2011 is shaping up to be even more brutal on us.

[Trio of 9999]

My list is Juese's list.

I miss four people in the same room screaming at the screen.