What are your top 3 all time side scroller best em up games/franchises? Also, has anyone made any new ones in a retro style?
-
Streets of Rage (spent many hours playing that on my Genesis)
-
Double Dragon
-
X-Men 2 for PC (obscure choice but it was cool because they had different X-men to pick).
Honorable mention to the game within a game from the Warriors PS2 video game
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. It consists of the original, its sequel, Turtles in Time, and I guess you could consider the recent Shredder's Revenge as part of it as well (it IS a spiritual successor).
The Simpsons (the arcade game from the 90s)
River City Ransom series.
River City Ransom was a lot of fun on PC. TMNT and Simpsons were the classic arcade machine games that you could drop a lot of quarters into.
There were three NES Turtles games unless you're not counting 1 because of the vehicle segments.
I was referring to the two arcade games, plus the more recent one released on everything.
Castle Crashers was a lot of fun.
Guardian Heroes on the Saturn, possibly the last great beat em up on home systems before everything went 3D and the genre died.
D&D Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystra, made by Capcom around the same time and possibly the last hurrah for this genre in arcades.
Double Dragon series, ported to near everything, I mostly played one on PC, three on NES, and the crossover with Battle Toads on Genesis.
Dragon’s Crown, Night Slashers X, Double Dragon Neon.
There’s a program called OpenBOR(Beats of Rage) that people use to create some awesome Beat em ups. It’s kind of like MUGEN but for sidescrolling beat em ups. There’s a lot of slop on there but there’s some true gems like Night Slashers X and TMNT: Rescuepalooza.
Cool! Thanks!
I'll try to pick a few that haven't been mentioned yet:
The Punisher (1993 Arcade)- Flashier combat than most, with a variety of usable items and throwable scenery. Occasionally guys come at you with guns and you can just blast them. Doesn't overstay it's welcome at about an hour long.
Sengoku 3 - Ninja beat em up with a good variety of moves and combos
Captain Commando - It's a bit cookie cutter, but you can shoot those 4pack rocket launchers at people and turn them into the classic flaming corpse. Also there are robots mechs you can drive. You can also cut people in half, although if you play on mame I believe you have to mess with the dipswitches to enable this. I have nostalgia for this game because they had one of them in the grocery store when I was a kid.
My personal favorite is D&D Shadow over Mystara - it has a lot of depth to the combat, you can dash, dash attack, dash jump attack, almost every combination. You have usable and permanent inventory, level ups, spells, there are branching paths, there's just a lot to it. It's a little boss heavy as things progress (and a mega token taker), but it's very fun. I'd like to see more RPG games take this format so they're fun to play.
Never really enjoyed the beat 'em up genre, but for sidescrollers in general I like the metroidvanias and roguelikes. Dead Cells and the like.
Maybe I was playing them wrong, but I always felt that I was just pushing one button in beat ‘em ups.
The majority of the challenge was in spacing and timing, rather than complex button presses.
Not that this makes it more fun to play, but that was the general idea.
There's punch, kick, and jump. That's about it really. But they also have power moves you can unleash by pushing TWO BUTTONS AT THE SAME TIME.
How do you feel about mario?
Sucked at it lol
I loved Golden Axe as a kid. It was one of the few games I've played on an actual arcade machine (and later on a friend's Amiga).
Since then I haven't run into another game of that style that I liked.
I loved Golden Axe. Is that the one that starts with Rise from your grave? I’d love a more in depth rpg of it.
You're thinking of Altered Beast. To answer your question:
Nice choices. Thanks!
Don't remember the grave thing. It's the one where you can play a dwarf with a giant axe, a barbarian and an amazon in bikini armor. You could also ride dinosaurs.
Some gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v7VL4P4tbI
Golden Axe (and GA2) for the Genesis.
Odin Sphere, going further in time.
Dragon's Crown, going even further in time.
Vanilla-ware is the goat of more modern beat-em-ups.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game
Narc - Does that count?
River City Ransom
Forgot all about Narc
Busted, Bu, bu, bu, bu, Busted
Nice choice of isometric side-scrollers!
I'm not sure if Batman (2D side-scroller) get a mention as you could batarang and swing in that. It also had two 2.5D transport levels and some puzzle levels too.
If it does get in then Strider deserves to be there too.
The various Battletoad games server a mention too (Both 2D and Isometric).
Forgot about the Batman one
The Simpsons
Scott Pilgrim
these games were amazing with friends, but I found them to be very boring single player.
I'm not sure if Astlibra counts, but I'm going with Astlibra Revision.
There was one on the SNES I half remember where you'd periodically get a follower and they'd shoot projectiles every time you swung your sword. I had fun with that but it was also pretty challenging as I recall. No idea what the name of that game was but I figure someone here might know it.
The PSP Ikki Tousen games which were only released in Japan:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/945779-ikki-tousen-eloquent-fist
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/977826-ikki-tousen-xross-impact
Haven't played them myself, but I see River City Girls on sale sometimes.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/switch/268788-river-city-girls
Its not a genre I know super well, but I remember there was a Power Rangers one on SNES way back in the original generation that was incredibly fun that I enjoyed. Was very much an old reliable at Blockbuster for a weekend fun time.