BIL wrote:Good stuff. Kinda bittersweet in hindsight, but then again, arcades in general were always on borrowed time with consoles advancing by leaps and bounds.
Yeah even though of course they're not technically the last of their ilk I tend to think of G Darius as symbolic of the time when an arcade STG with a real staff and a budget was no longer viable and CVS2 represents the same to me for FGs. Yet there's only about 4 years between the two games. The end times were coming one way the other.
Actually you could argue the early and mid 2000s during the pre SFIV drought were easily better times to be into new shmups than new FGs. You had Cave stuff, excellent Naomi to DC ports like Ikaruga, SnSII, Psyvariar 2 and Border Down. Meanwhile fighting fans were treated to games such as SVC Chaos and Capcom Fighting Jam.
I once very crudely plotted the distribution of arcade beat'em ups from 1980 to 2005, counting only games with a full plane of motion.
Memory is hazy now, but the breakdown looked like this:
A. Technos should have popularised the genre in 1986 with Kunio-kun's arcade game, then a few more titles until FF's arrival marked an explosion of the genre (and tons of crappy titles floating around). Their Shadow Force (1993) is ace, but definitely an old-skooler beat'em up, even by 1990's standards;
B. Capcom released 13 to 15 titles from 1989 (Final Fight) to 1997 /Battle Circuit), but their top-down Avengers (1987) might be considered a precursor. Unlike Konami, they kept releasing titles
and showed some kind of commitment to the genre, using the CPS2 for this purpose;
C. Konami released 10 titles or so, 1989 (Crime Fighters) to 1993 (Violent Storm). I may have missed something on their later, more powerful hardware (GGX? Maybe a really ugly Sentai game they
released in 1996 or so would count). I imagine that they planned on squeezing the genre until it was sensible to do so, and then they moved on (hardly surprising);
D. The genre became more or less niche after that period, though IGS and other minor companies produced several titles (e.g., Sengoku 3, Knights of Valour), up until the early 2000's.
E. The 1989 to 1993 period saw the release of tons of titles, though the quality was at times abysmal (say, Burning Fight). 1994 and 1995 already had less titles, though some of them were stellar
(e.g., Aliens vs. Predator, Denjin Makai II or whatever is called, Taito's Lightbringer which is actually an isometric mix of this genre with ARPG's).
In a nutshell, the genre apparently had an intense period of popularity and even over-exposure after some slow beginning, then it entered a long twilight along the arcades' historical trajectory.
...I guess: if you guys can make better conclusions from my notes, I'd like to read them.
I also guess that Shmups had a similar trajectory, though some differences are obvious.
They emerged earlier, never really peaked as "the current big thing in the arcade" (but maybe someone can check JP popularity polls?), and lasted longer.
This forum should have a chronology of arcade shmup releases, so someone who wants to have fun may check (and analyse) the facts.
I keep thinking that even more complex trends could actually emerge if someone plots action games during a similar period, but an obvious proviso is that action/run'n'gun/whatever-you-want-to-call-them formed a fairly flexible genre to begin with (example: do Bucky O'Hare, Thunder Fox and Rolling Thunder belong to one general action genre, however vaguely defined?).
Final musings:
Someone doing research on "videogame design" (it is a thing, yes) could actually produce several papers by just studying and reporting these facts, I guess.
In particular, someone with good Japanese language skills could build an interesting academic career by "researching the history, evolution and death of arcade genres", I guess.
Last edited by Randorama on Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
Rastan78 wrote:Actually you could argue the early and mid 2000s during the pre SFIV drought were easily better times to be into new shmups than new FGs. You had Cave stuff, excellent Naomi to DC ports like Ikaruga, SnSII, Psyvariar 2 and Border Down. Meanwhile fighting fans were treated to games such as SVC Chaos and Capcom Fighting Jam.
Indeed, Gradius V and Under Defeat as well - and even if it's got plenty to criticise, R-Type Final got a ton of press and a worldwide release ca 2004. There really was a sense of swan song around then.
Soul Calibur II's GC/XB/PS2 trio with its exclusive characters was the biggest FTG buzz I can recall from the same period, along with GGXX#r gaining a Western foothold. Capcom seemed to be looking firmly backward with that Hyper SFII + 3s twofer. There was KOF MI as well, which never really took off.
Oh god, SUCC Chaos. I still remember seeing previews for the original, polygonal incarnation of CFJ, featuring Haggar, Strider Hiryu and some original character design (Luke/Rook, iirc), which quietly vanished, only to be replaced with the Mugenesque final version.
Which I still bought and played, just all the above FTGs and the XB1 port of SUCC. >_> Interesting time period for the two genres. Aaand right in the middle... Final Fight Streetwise.
Randorama wrote:I once very crudely plotted the distribution of arcade beat'em ups from 1980 to 2005, counting only games with a full plane of motion.
Memory is hazy now, but the breakdown looked like this:
This lines up pretty well with my experience, although I didn't really start going to arcades regularly until 91. Capcom were truly the masters of the genre, they made more than anyone else and I don't think they had a single dud in the lineup.
The thing about arcade machines though is that they had a pretty long floor life, at least in a lot of places in the US. I got my 1CC on Captain Commando on an arcade machine in like 96 or 97, and it wasn't even hidden away in a back corner or anything. One of the local movie theaters had my childhood AVP machine that I 1CC'd several times until they closed in like 03 or 04. It makes sense that most places would already have all the belt-scroller machines they would ever need by about 93 or so. You just didn't have the same level of turnover that console gaming did, unless it was one of the big fancy premiere arcades in a major city.
The genre enjoyed a golden age between 91 and 94. It was started by Final Fight. 1990 came too short after Final Fight for devs to adapt. And it ended because of 3D. It's not fighting game that killed them. We have this impression because Fighting Games continued to grow, but it was easy to transpose the genre in 3D while you couldn't make the same thing with BTU. Polygonal 3D basically destroy Final Fight fundamentals. Can't group because enemies can't juxtapose, can't move around because enemies are always facing you. It forced the switch to big melee weapons with huge arcs for crowd control and Simon Says mechanics for approaching them.
Otherwise, I'm pretty sure the genre would have continue to grow. Without 3D, I'm sure Beat'em up wouldn't be niche at all...
Randorama wrote:Their Shadow Force (1993) is ace, but definitely an old-skooler beat'em up, even by 1990's standards
Since it's the right topic for that, I'd say it's overrated. It's enjoyable but you have to make your own set of rules like "never possess" because it's so unbalanced.
Also a case of a game with tons of normals yet you always spam the same thing. It goes into the category of beat'em up where devs thought "hey, let's bring fighting game complexity into it" without thinking about the key differences between those genres, like why we need so many normal in a fighting game in the first place.
It's not as overrated as Guardian Heroes but still pretty up there. Mad Stalker is also a sinner in that regard but I genuinely enjoy spamming dragon in that one.
Honestly, I've a ton of respect for how Technos started belt scrollers (Nekketsu Koha Kunio-Kun is the 2nd game made with a belt perspective but the first with scrolling), put in place so much stuff (almost as much as Final Fight), tried new things all the time BUT:
- Nekketsu Koha Kunio-Kun is still their best game
- With all the money they made whoring their Double Dragon franchise everywhere, each of their games still felt like they were bankrupted. Jaleco was spending more!
- They are responsible for the River City Trend.
- Final Fight
@Rando yeah I agree. It seems like the genre burned very brightly though only for a short time. Where I grew up you could run into best em ups anywhere. Bowling alleys, shops, grocery store, gas station, airports, outdoor fairs with tents or trailers full of machines. You name it. Aside from almost all of the Capcom ones including AvP, Punisher and WoF, the Konami ones, even Metamorphic force, I even ran into random shit like DJ Boy and Gaiopolis. (Yeah might as well dump Lightbringer and Gaiopolis in there. Close enough IMO even if the don't scroll always horizontally.) The majority of these were found outside of actual arcades.
@Air Master Burst, they did really stick around sometimes. I would regularly see Metamorphic Force at an airport I flew in and out of up until about 20-25 years after the game came out lol
Lightbringer is one of those games where I always think damn that looks cool. I should play that and of course never get around to it. A console port would be cool.
I have a half-baked fantasy that after this new Ray'z collection Taito/M2 will do a beat em up collection of that quality. Pulirula, Lightbringer, Rastan III (the double screen beast), Arabian Magic, Growl etc.
Well I had a fantasy that they would do a Ray series collection after Darius so anything is possible I guess?
I think there's a good chance for Ray'z. The Darius ones came over and we already know Ray'z is getting localized for English so . .
Shottriggers I wouldn't hold my breath. They haven't even been localizing them for a while now.
Since we're in a hot take thread I'll say I think what they're doing with Taito lately is better than Shottriggers. Beautiful and intuitive GUI without the clutter. Still has it where it counts.
The gadgets in the Toaplan stuff OMG. You need a damn magnifying glass. I wonder with the Taito stuff if grampa Toyama was like guys you need to chill with that. STG players are now too old to see that without their bifocals on.
BIL wrote:Technos was a bit of a ghetto-ass operation to hear Kishimoto tell it.
Ultimate humiliation! Going from pioneering 2P beltscrolling, to finishing off making an FTG of the same IP for their former genre rivals SNK!
RIP you crazy Nihonjins. ;-;7
It definitely feels ghetto when you go back and look at their games now. They farmed out Double Dragon 3 so they could pour all their money into Combatribes, a new IP with no name recognition. Who does this? Even if Combatribes was the best game ever made, it would still have to entice new players all over again. It especially doesn't make sense considering Combatribes and Double Dragon take place in nearly the same setting, and story was never the arcade DD's forte anyway. Why change IPs for a game whose mechanics and characters would slot perfectly into the DD franchise?
I don't know if Combatribes would have performed better if it was called Double Dragon 3 and a few of the sprites were swapped to DD ones. But I think many players would have considered it an improvement over arcade DD3, even if only just.
I know some will disagree, but I think Technos' output shines when you look at their Famicom work. Not just River City Ransom, but all the hilarious sports games. Hockey, Dodgeball and Soccer are instant classics. Their output is overall more consistent and of a similar style on famicom as well. The success of their famicom work has definitely led to modern arcsys whoring out the kunio brand nes graphics for far too long, however. But that's another story entirely.
I thought the Gameboy Advance was overrated, most of its games didn't make use of its (admittedly) hidden capabilities making people dismiss it as a 16-bit handheld despite having a 32-bit CPU, and it didn't help that its audio chipset produced awful sounding music (in my opinion). To me, it really is a shame that there once was a time where we've been through two console generations without competing handhelds that surpassed Nintendo's offerings. Sure, there were the Neo Geo Pocket (Color) and Nokia N-Gage, but most people don't know those exist and many of the people who have used those (especially the N-Gage) hated them.
I actually liked the XBOX Duke Controller to the point where it's one of my favorite controllers of all time. I don't like the XBOX Controller S as much because of the location of the White and Black buttons, which multi-platform games tended to use in place of the L1/R2 buttons on the PS2, due to the lack of shoulder buttons. If I had to choose between an XBOX Controller S and a 3rd party controller that has shoulder buttons (that functioned as White and Black), I'd pick the 3rd party one anytime.
I don't like Project Gotham Racing, I thought its scoring system was too off-putting for me to actually get into it, especially since I'm used to more traditional racing games.
Sima Tuna wrote:I don't know if Combatribes would have performed better if it was called Double Dragon 3 and a few of the sprites were swapped to DD ones.
Maybe a bit better but I don't think Combatribes would have made big if it has been rebranded as Double Dragon 3. First, it was released just after Final Fight, and everyone played Final Fight. Combatribes is not a ugly game but it looks very retro compared to Final Fight. In terms of artistic direction, the super deformed proportions are not for every taste. Gameplay wise, it's more complicated to learn, with a large very contextualised moveset. It's also insanely hard. And not intuitive; if you don't have a guide, you're going to credit feed for a long time. And finally, you progress from one arena to the next. Usually, people prefer games where you advance through the levels.
Technos failed to jump on the bandwagon. SNK, Sega and Jaleco have been the most reactive ones. Especially Sega who already had 3 Final Fight clones ready by 1991 (Riot City, Bare Knuckle and Spider-Man). I find it quite impressive since they started making beat'em up well before everyone else (and continued to do so even after Capcom stopped).
Bare Knuckle is the successor to Final Fight's DNA, as far as I'm concerned. You can really see the lessons taken from FF in the first SoR, and then even more with the jump to SoR 2. First SoR had no superjoys, for example. It had a bomb system similar to Golden Axe. But then SoR 2 came along, and suddenly every character had multiple superjoys. They did the same kind of gradual upgrade with weapon use and character differences, and kept building on those ideas in each game. Culminating in the charging superjoy meter for Bare Knuckle 3, secret characters and special weapon techniques. I love both franchises and hold them equally responsible for making beat em ups such a great genre.
The thing about Technos brawlers is they've never taken lessons from any other franchise, near as I can tell. Technos has always been Technos. They love those context-sensitive actions and mapping a billion functions to a single button. Far as I know, they never even picked up on the "move into enemy to grab" mechanic. So a technos game was always gonna be a Technos game. But I think Combatribes falls flat in its presentation, and maaaaybe the Double Dragon iconic characters would have helped. The three main characters are blank as fuck, even compared to Bimmy and Jammy. Most of the boss designs in Combatribes are blatantly stolen from random stuff the Technos staff were probably looking at, like Karnov (from data east games) and Stroheim (JoJo). At least Abobo would have been... Kind of fitting? Steal from your own stuff, guys.
Great post. I never thought about that re: Technos but it's very true.
One thing I always appreciated about the Bare Knuckle/Streets of Rage series is how grab attacks worked. Hold forward to grab, and holding forward you can do the basic attacks until you're ready to throw with neutral + attack / back + attack / jump to vault then throw, etc. I always find it tricky in brawlers where left / right + attack is throw to maximize damage on a grab, because you have to hold forward, then switch to neutral to attack twice after you see the grab, then hold forward again. It's easy to throw early as soon as you grab before you get your extra hits in.
Kriegor wrote:
Technos failed to jump on the bandwagon. SNK, Sega and Jaleco have been the most reactive ones. Especially Sega who already had 3 Final Fight clones ready by 1991 (Riot City, Bare Knuckle and Spider-Man). I find it quite impressive since they started making beat'em up well before everyone else (and continued to do so even after Capcom stopped).
Riot City was only published by Sega, it was made by someone small enough I can't even remember the name offhand. The only memorable thing about it was the one playable character had the most hilarious walking animation I've ever seen.
It's a low budget game and very generic, but it's decent. It's kind of my reference point. I usually ask myself "is this better than Riot City?". If yes, it goes into the good belt scroller category. It not, it goes into the bad one.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Why?
It's much more arcade than the igavanias, while still retaining some freedom in how you approach each level. The fact that you can zoom in, zoom out is a very cool feature. Each of the 11 levels are very distinct and the time limit prevents you from being too careful, especially if you play solo. There are 7 playable characters, each with their unique playstyle. Some have a very high skill ceiling. Being released on 7th generation home consoles also makes it one of the most detailed. The coop feature added replayability without detracting anything.
My main complaint is that certain characters push you to grind a lot. It feels like a Monster Hunter at times. You're left wondering if you keep coming back because you genuinely like the gameplay or because you want to keep upgrading your heroes.
Kriegor wrote:
Technos failed to jump on the bandwagon. SNK, Sega and Jaleco have been the most reactive ones. Especially Sega who already had 3 Final Fight clones ready by 1991 (Riot City, Bare Knuckle and Spider-Man). I find it quite impressive since they started making beat'em up well before everyone else (and continued to do so even after Capcom stopped).
Riot City was only published by Sega, it was made by someone small enough I can't even remember the name offhand. The only memorable thing about it was the one playable character had the most hilarious walking animation I've ever seen.
Westone. Even got a version on turbo cd with altered graphics similar to Wonder Boy/Adventure Island.
Here's one: Raiden is badly designed, cheap-ass bullshit. Sniping because you scrolled three pixels of an enemy is not 'challenge', it's coin munching. The power-up system sucks. Its beyond me how it has the reputation it does.
I love Raiden in spite of all its bullshit. The power up system is garbage though. Whenever I see a new shmup that uses a similar power-up mechanic, it's often a hint to me I'm going to hate the game.
Licorice wrote:Persistence (i.e. Saving) was a mistake.
Almost any game can be made better by removing persistence, or rather changing the design to cater to a lack of persistence.
Obviously a bit of an outrageous comment with the undeniable rebuttal of there being so many different types of games that you can't possibly make such an absolute statement. The Witness, Ace Attorney, or even Dark Souls could never exist without that element of persistence (though of course all of those are forced into the suspend-and-resume system).
But at the same time I really appreciate the idea behind it, and the thought experiment of how multiple (action!) games would need to be redesigned, given the lack of any type of saving, forcing the player to start from the beginning every time, but still allowing them to experience a wealth of content and a satisfying challenge.
An interesting example of this, from a genre that traditionally does rely on persistence, is Nightshade on the NES. Essentially a point n click style adventure game, but with no ability to quit and continue where you left off. There is also a (really weak) action element which means it's possible to just game over, with the ability to continue a limited number of times via an in-universe puzzle situation allowing you to escape a deaht trap.
As a result, the game needs a very open-ended design, allowing the player to tackle different puzzles from the get-go instead of having to go through the exact same sequence every time, and once you've solved every path available to you, you can plot out a route through the game that lets you complete every one of them.
It's probably not the ideal formula for an adventure game, but I think the result is very unqiue and super interesting, something I'd have liked to see explored further, and the best comparison I can think of is the situation you're forced into when trying to conserve ink ribbons in Resident Evil.
Kriegor wrote:
If the difficulty has to go from one to seven, and it's 7 stages long, I want it to be like 4-5-6-6-6-7-7 and not 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.
Also, I do like when the last battle is next to impossible. This is something shmup are not shy off.
KPackratt2k wrote:I thought the Gameboy Advance was overrated, most of its games didn't make use of its (admittedly) hidden capabilities making people dismiss it as a 16-bit handheld despite having a 32-bit CPU, and it didn't help that its audio chipset produced awful sounding music (in my opinion). To me, it really is a shame that there once was a time where we've been through two console generations without competing handhelds that surpassed Nintendo's offerings. Sure, there were the Neo Geo Pocket (Color) and Nokia N-Gage, but most people don't know those exist and many of the people who have used those (especially the N-Gage) hated them.
The NGPC would have been perfect if it had GBA SP screen and battery tech and hadn't focused on fighting games, which, while cute, aren't a great fit for handhelds. SNK also needed a few more non-SNK games on there. There's only so much you can do with Pac-Man and Sonic.
But I doubt these are unpopular opinions, so I'll leave it at that.
This one seems like more a "most people don't seem to care" than unpopular opinion but holy fuck do I loathe the combination of delayed + interpolated unfocus -> focus movement in Cave games. It's evidently a deliberate thing as it kept getting more exaggerated over their history, yet I have no idea what design purpose it has other than to be obnoxious. An actual unpopular opinion arising from this: Guwange has probably the best controls of any of their games.
The time warp from Tekken 2 to Tekken 3 is ill-conceived. Base fighters like Kazuya and Jun and Wang Jinrei get cut and some get fresh (read: younger) "successors". Resulting in gutting playstyles and copying characters without any irony. From Marshall to Forrest, Beak to punk pupil, Bruce Irvin to Fury Cybot etc. Emerging as a smash hit with the target groups and a case of ageism. Only nice bit is the aged Heihachi, still a major bastard. I dislike the roster of T3. Discounting TTT, it took the dev only 2 games to fill in the glaring gaps with T5 and bring those fighters back (read: retcon). Maybe they got it then? Time warps suck, man. But so do time stands, where nothing moves. And I REALLY detest time travel, in any medium! Time, man, the pits.
Kinda bittersweet in hindsight, but then again, arcades in general were always on borrowed time with consoles advancing by leaps and bounds.
I still remember seeing previews for the original, polygonal incarnation of CFJ, featuring Haggar, Strider Hiryu and some original character design (Luke/Rook, iirc), which quietly vanished, only to be replaced with the Mugenesque final version.
Interesting time period for the two genres. Aaand right in the middle... Final Fight Streetwise. 
even mean, though?!
