Together Retro: Beat-'Em-Ups

[Sarge]

I know the current month isn't over with, but since folks may be getting head starts, let's get this ball rolling! Discuss your brawling escapades here!

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'll try to hit up a couple few games. On the Switch!

I have Double Dragon, Gate of Doom, and Bad Dudes downloaded. Should be fun.

[Exhuminator]

Going through my game collection, I came up with over thirty possible beat 'em up candidates I'm interested in (all over ten years old), that I have not beaten yet. Obviously I'm not going to beat that many. But I'm planning to finish at least five. I started playing one last night out of curiosity, and before I knew it I'd already finished:



2001's The Bouncer on PS2. Yep, that long forgotten SquareSoft launch title. This beat 'em up barely takes longer than an hour to finish. It was OK, but nothing to get excited about. (Unless you get excited over horrible character designs.) Review here.

[samsonlonghair]

I’m so ready for a month of beat ‘em ups!

[laurenhiya21]

I might not be able to participate much until next week (when finals are done woo), but for this month I'm planning on checking out the two Sailor Moon SNES beat-em-ups and maybe Pu-Li-Ru-La. I might check out more than that, but we'll see how the month goes.

[Exhuminator]

checking out the two Sailor Moon SNES beat-em-ups and maybe Pu-Li-Ru-La.

Pu-Li-Ru-La is wacky and a good time. (You might like this too.) I've played the SNES Sailor Moon beat 'em ups, they're not bad. But I prefer the arcade game Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exdbs5qRPYo If you don't mind emulating, it's rather decent.

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I plan to start another beat 'em up on PS2 tonight. Or rather a slash 'em up.

[lordb0rb4]

So, today Gekido Kintaro's Revenge was launched on PSN for PS4, have any of you played it when it was out on GBA?
I'm totally in and will cook a list for this weekend,

[marurun]

I played it. I don’t remember a lot, though. Graphics and animation were good, but I did end up having some gameplay issues. Do not recall what they were.

[Sarge]

Yes, I actually beat that one last year. Lemme see if I can find my thoughts...

...here we go!

26) Gekido Advance: Kintaro's Revenge (GBA) (7.5) (4/16) (~3 hours)

Holy hand grenades, Batman, Gekido Advance is unforgiving! So I estimate about three hours, but that's if you've had a little practice and get the dice to roll your way correctly.

So, for those that haven't played it, it's an old-school beat-em-up with some really nice spritework and music, although a ton of those assets get re-used throughout the game. First, the good is that the combat is fast and fluid, with various combos you can unleash by varying your punch and kick buttons. I recommend keeping it to a five hit combo, starting with the punch, going to the kick, and then back to the punch. This will keep you from being too vulnerable, while still letting you hit with the very powerful flaming uppercut.

Keeping enemies off your back is important. This isn't a game where they'll just sit back and let you pound an enemy, oh no. They're more than happy to sneak in, and sneak in fast. Also of consequence is that you have a lot of vertical range compared to a lot of other belt-scrollers, but this goes for enemies as well. You're going to get popped, a lot. You do have a special clear-out move that is very effective, and it works on a charge basis much like Streets of Rage 3. You also get some standard jumping attacks.

Speaking of jumping, there's a bit more platforming in this than you'd expect. In fact, the game cribs some of the worst parts of Double Dragon, with the spike traps that fall from the ceiling being the most egregious. They are the definition of cheapness, with almost no warning given. Some aren't even on a timer, it's proximity, and they're triggered very, very close. Close enough that you're probably going to take the hit if you don't already know about it.

Also, there are a lot of little annoying enemies, mostly bats. It's not so bad when they're alone, but it will get annoying when other enemies are around. And the dogs that you can't actually kill that run across the screen at times... blah.

To go with the platforming and such, there are some mild adventure elements, in the form of branching paths, mainly to find keys to backtrack to another area and go through there. It never gets too complex, but it can be easy to get lost.

Anyway, this is one that I've always wanted to play through. I enjoyed the PlayStation game back in the day, and this is a bit smoother than that. It's got a pretty rad art style, and if things weren't quite so cheap, it wouldn't be so bad. As it is, it's a solid but very challenging beat-em-up.

(Oh, and thankfully, there are passwords, but those also save the number of continues you have left.)

[Sarge]

Gotta start off with a classic.



The original Double Dragon is a seminal classic, but I really recommend playing the bootleg version as opposed to the original board. It's a bit faster than the official release, which really bogs down with a lot of enemies on screen. I suspect speed runs of this game revolve heavily around lag reduction.

Still, I love the combat in this game, although learning about the overpowered elbow move makes things a bit easier. I try to diversify when I play it, though. For a much smoother experience that captures the feel of the arcade game, play Double Dragon Advance. That distills the arcade-style play into one of the best brawlers on that (or any other) system.