Beat 'em Ups (Including Switch List)

[Air Master Burst]

New beat em up coming soon: Vengence Hunters for the NeoGeo and modern systems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NCHr3jsotI

Looks above average by Neo Geo belt scroller standards, but I would like to see higher numbers of weaker enemies, preferably in interesting combinations that require different strategies. Gunstar Heroes float juggling is not what I play belt scrollers for. At least there doesn't appear to be an i-frame dodge roll! The only major red flag here is requiring multiple hits to destroy item crates, which is an unforgivable sin.

[BurlyHeart]

New beat em up coming soon: Vengence Hunters for the NeoGeo and modern systems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NCHr3jsotI

Looks above average by Neo Geo belt scroller standards, but I would like to see higher numbers of weaker enemies, preferably in interesting combinations that require different strategies. Gunstar Heroes float juggling is not what I play belt scrollers for. At least there doesn't appear to be an i-frame dodge roll! The only major red flag here is requiring multiple hits to destroy item crates, which is an unforgivable sin.

One of the characters has a invincible cartwheel that was likened to a "Dark Souls roll."

I think the game looks decent. Not perfect - I would like more grabs myself - but certainly fun.

[velo]

Looks above average by Neo Geo belt scroller standards,

Damning with very faint praise The game does look pretty good, though.

[Air Master Burst]

Looks above average by Neo Geo belt scroller standards,

Damning with very faint praise The game does look pretty good, though.

Hey, Final Vendetta is finally getting a Neo Geo release, so there's at least one actual good belt scroller on the system!

Even with the recent revival we still only get maybe a couple of these a year, so of course I'm buying it day one.

[Sima Tuna]

Mutation Nation is the only good beat em up on neo-geo if we discount latter-day releases. If we do count those, then yeah, Final Vendetta is currently the best neo-geo compatible beat em up. I won't say it's SoR2/Final Fight levels, but it is close.

[Sumez]

Being close to SOR2 level is a pretty damn high standard in my book

[velo]

Mutation Nation is the only good beat em up on neo-geo if we discount latter-day releases. If we do count those, then yeah, Final Vendetta is currently the best neo-geo compatible beat em up. I won't say it's SoR2/Final Fight levels, but it is close.

I've warmed a little on Ninja Combat, of all games. It doesn't exactly wow on a first impression and it's very simple but there doesn't seem to be anything seriously wrong with it either.

Final Vendetta is great but has so many annoying little flaws. Claire's way too busted because of a couple of moves, easy big/infinite juggles, some mobs/bosses are repeated verbatim, dashing has almost no drawbacks so there's barely a reason to walk. Just little things that seem like they could've been fixed easily.

Even with the recent revival we still only get maybe a couple of these a year, so of course I'm buying it day one.

Off the top of my head, I think these are due 2024: GI Joe, Power Rangers, Toxic Crusaders, The Phantom, Mayhem Brawler 2, Maiden Cops, and now Vengeance Hunters. I think the new Rushing Beat too, if it counts.

[Air Master Burst]

Off the top of my head, I think these are due 2024: GI Joe, Power Rangers, Toxic Crusaders, The Phantom, Mayhem Brawler 2, Maiden Cops, and now Vengeance Hunters. I think the new Rushing Beat too, if it counts.

Rita Rewind should be a nice gorgeous shallow nostalgia hit with i-frame dodge rolls and cheesy supers.

Mayhem Brawler was ok I guess. I'm not super stoked for a sequel but I'm gonna give it a shot.

Maiden Cops did not wow me with the demo, but it's been a while and they could've tightened it up.

GI Joe, Phantom, and Toxic Crusaders are wild cards since I haven't heard of any of the devs. GI Joe is fascinating because of how many guns I see in the screenshots. Maybe not quite Bucky O'Hare, but certainly AvP human levels vibes for sure.

I will of course be buying all of them.

ETA: The preview video for Rushing Beat X make it look like a slow, shitty attempt at Dynamite Deka. I love Dynamite Deka enough to reserve judgement for now, but they got a lot of work to do.

[Sumez]

Looks above average by Neo Geo belt scroller standards, but I would like to see higher numbers of weaker enemies, preferably in interesting combinations that require different strategies. Gunstar Heroes float juggling is not what I play belt scrollers for. At least there doesn't appear to be an i-frame dodge roll! The only major red flag here is requiring multiple hits to destroy item crates, which is an unforgivable sin.

I'm torn on the game. Graphics and visual feedback looks really excellent, which already elevates it over a lot of the genre.
The guy talking as he plays gives me an impression of a person who has thought a lot about the details of how it plays, which gives me quite a bit of faith in it. However, "Red flags" for me, is, as BurlyHeart points out as well, the lack of throws - throwcentric brawlers is what managed to get me into the genre, and instead you get two different punch buttons. I'm a simple guy, there's a reason I'm on a shmups forum. I don't know what to do with multiple attack buttons unless one of them is a bomb

He does say that there's usually nothing wrong with just spamming the same punch button though, but apparently he takes inspiration from "character action games". Maybe some people will enjoy that, but it's not for me. Those games tend to feel like they over-complicate basic combat systems for no clear reason other than appealing to people who want those things to be complex. Memorizing Bayonetta combos isn't my idea of fun. That said, I don't think this game looks much like those games.

[Sima Tuna]

The problem with taking cues from character action games is they are different kinds of games from beat em ups.

Beat em ups are like jousting. In fact, a game like arcade Joust is not too dissimilar from a beat em up in a sense. It's all about jockeying for position and using spacing/movement to win the battle before you press a button. The reason why it's good for your main character in the beat em up to be "overpowered" is because you're jousting. It doesn't matter if you have generous i-frames or not, when you have to win a jousting match against 6 other guys who are all on the same team against you. See what I mean? Of course, you need any advantage you can get.

The point is that every attack button should have a very clear advantageous use. Not just variety for the sake of it, or for style. Styling on enemies is antithetical to beat em up design, unless being "stylish" confers a concrete mechanical benefit, such as i-frames. Long combos are usually bad in beat em ups, because most gameplay is against multiple enemies and combos lock you into place/into a preset movement pattern. (In boss fights 1vs1, that's of course reversed and you want to prolong combos without knockdown for the sake of piling on damage.)

Ideally, every move in your tool kit should be absolutely irreplaceable. In games like Final Fight, that's so. It's hard to imagine playing Final Fight with any of the current moves in the game taken out. They're all so essential to gameplay, including the unintended infinite. By contrast, in DMC3, large portions of the gun and sword movesets are chopped out for their respective styles, and so by definition they are unnecessary in the majority of cases. If DMC3 forced the player to pick Gunslinger or Swordmaster to pass a certain boss, then people would call that bad design. But that's the way beat em ups work. You have to master every single move in your kit to joust most effectively with enemies.

Beat em ups without walk-to-grab are a bit of an odd case. They can work sometimes. I think the Technos style brawlers do a pretty good job. The best of those are Vendetta, Double Dragon Advance and Double Dragon NES. River City Ransom isn't a full beat em up (it's hybrid rpg/open world) but I still like it. In general, however, walk-to-grab is an elegant, beautiful way to expand the player moveset while conferring even more strict advantages to positioning. The design of walk-to-grab is so brilliant that refusal to implement it strikes me as being defiant for the sake of such.

[miwa]

Off the top of my head, I think these are due 2024: GI Joe, Power Rangers, Toxic Crusaders, The Phantom, Mayhem Brawler 2, Maiden Cops, and now Vengeance Hunters. I think the new Rushing Beat too, if it counts.

Rita Rewind should be a nice gorgeous shallow nostalgia hit with i-frame dodge rolls and cheesy supers.

Mayhem Brawler was ok I guess. I'm not super stoked for a sequel but I'm gonna give it a shot.

Maiden Cops did not wow me with the demo, but it's been a while and they could've tightened it up.

GI Joe, Phantom, and Toxic Crusaders are wild cards since I haven't heard of any of the devs. GI Joe is fascinating because of how many guns I see in the screenshots. Maybe not quite Bucky O'Hare, but certainly AvP human levels vibes for sure.

I will of course be buying all of them.

ETA: The preview video for Rushing Beat X make it look like a slow, shitty attempt at Dynamite Deka. I love Dynamite Deka enough to reserve judgement for now, but they got a lot of work to do.

One game to add to this list is "The Karate Kid: Street Rumble", coming out September 20th.
Admittedly, GameMill Entertainment is a red flag, but I did enjoy the trailer.
Let's all hope Terry Silver will be a playable character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SmyGkuDzpk

[BurlyHeart]

Quality post

Excellent analysis and articulately written. I wanted to say the same regarding the dev's character action comment, and also his comment on grabs feeling awkward, but lacked the ability to express myself.

The game still looks fun, but missing these elements can stop it being great. It's kinda what Shredder's Revenge is lacking for me. Crowd control using grabs is very satisfying. And it's something the great modern beat em ups - SOR4, Fight'N Rage, TNWOA - do superbly.

[Sumez]

The point is that every attack button should have a very clear advantageous use. Not just variety for the sake of it, or for style. Styling on enemies is antithetical to beat em up design, unless being "stylish" confers a concrete mechanical benefit, such as i-frames. Long combos are usually bad in beat em ups, because most gameplay is against multiple enemies and combos lock you into place/into a preset movement pattern. (In boss fights 1vs1, that's of course reversed and you want to prolong combos without knockdown for the sake of piling on damage.)

I agree with this entirely, and it reflects my views on video games as a whole, not just beat'em ups. Again, this is why I bounced off hard on Bayonetta.

[Air Master Burst]

The problem with taking cues from character action games is they are different kinds of games from beat em ups.

Your post is fantastic and mostly reflects my own beliefs on the genre.

Beat em ups without walk-to-grab are a bit of an odd case. They can work sometimes. I think the Technos style brawlers do a pretty good job.

Best girl Linn Kurosawa is my absolute favorite character to play as in any belt scroller (possibly any game ever), and her only grab is that hilariously abusable air throw. She also has stupid flashy combos and is essentially useless without her gimmick sword. AVP even has the third button for gunplay, but I think the sheer quantity of enemies makes it viable. She's clearly the exception that proves the rule, though, since all three other AVP characters have walk-to-grab.

I've heard a rumor over the years that the DMC team was inspired by Linn, but I've never seen an actual citation.

One game to add to this list is "The Karate Kid: Street Rumble", coming out September 20th.
Admittedly, GameMill Entertainment is a red flag, but I did enjoy the trailer.
Let's all hope Terry Silver will be a playable character.

Ooh, nice find! I'm not sure it will be any good (I didn't see a single grab in the trailer), but my dedication to the genre requires a purchase

[Lander]

By contrast, in DMC3, large portions of the gun and sword movesets are chopped out for their respective styles, and so by definition they are unnecessary in the majority of cases. If DMC3 forced the player to pick Gunslinger or Swordmaster to pass a certain boss, then people would call that bad design.

An interesting point on character action is that it tends to narrow toward a more beat 'em up kind of rigidity as the difficulty level increases, since tougher and more aggressive enemies reduce your safe or viable options to the point where practicality trumps style.
DMC3 DMD highlights that for me, since it changes the game from 'express yourself' to a hunt for the strongest and most abusable special-case tech. Killer Bee cancels, Spiral / Kalina Ann spam, Royal Release, anything to delete those motherfuckers before they become a major problem.
Bayo as well, since Climax mode nerfs the core mechanic and forces the player to compensate by squeezing every last drop out of their weapon and accessory choices.

I suppose that beat 'em up ethos is one of the things that made 3D Ninja Gaiden age like fine wine. In its bones, it's more of a function-versus-function game where knowing which of your things beat which of theirs is the bottom line, along with the strong focus on strategic defense and positioning.
It suffers from a similar narrowing effect, but that just feeds the baseline rigidity and pushes the player toward finding the right tool for each encounter, rather than discovering that a large chunk of their moves were just there to look cool.

Of the traditional set, I reckon Double Dragon Advance is one of the more pointed theses, abusable elevation differences notwithstanding. No fanciful combos beyond those you can kitbash together yourself, and every move distinct with clear purpose.

[BIL]

DDA combos exemplify Sheiky Baby's Greater Principle Of Combinated Destruction. Each attack, a sturdy boxcar in a body-crushing martial trainwreck!

NSFW

Not safe for WEENIES

1] Put them in the Camel Clutch! (■｀w´■) [K -> G]
2] Break their back! (｀w´メ) [K x 2, UP+K]
3] Fuck their ass to make them humble! (◎w◎;) [PK -> K]

No triple-digit slap n' tickle here, son You're getting this Personally Autographed Bodycast - FO FREE!

Of course, it is merely a smoother, more connective refinement of classic Technos sensibilities, from DD otaku Muneki Ebinuma! Every hit tends to mean something in those games, within the rubric of 1] BEAT EM TIL THEY HEAVE and 2] SCRUFF EM AND BEAT EM SOME MORE - with the caveat that this can happen to you too, again and again!





Maybe you shoulda STAYED IN SCHOOL, so I wouldna had to HIT YOUR NUTSACK WITH THIS BROKEN BOTTLE (・｀W´・)

[velo]

GI Joe, Phantom, and Toxic Crusaders are wild cards since I haven't heard of any of the devs. GI Joe is fascinating because of how many guns I see in the screenshots. Maybe not quite Bucky O'Hare, but certainly AvP human levels vibes for sure.

GI Joe and Toxic Crusaders have demos on Steam, if you haven't checked them out.

One game to add to this list is "The Karate Kid: Street Rumble", coming out September 20th.
Admittedly, GameMill Entertainment is a red flag, but I did enjoy the trailer.
Let's all hope Terry Silver will be a playable character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SmyGkuDzpk

I knew I was forgetting something! Doesn't look bad. I think GameMill is just the publisher. Beltscrollers published by Digital Eclipse don't magically inherit SoR4 quality, so maybe it works the other way around with publishers of lousy games.

The point is that every attack button should have a very clear advantageous use.

Yeah... when you see two buttons attack buttons in a belt scroller, you can bet they only exist to input combo strings. And one combo string will work for 95% or more of the game anyway, leaving us functionally back where we started. Just give me different enders for tilting the stick up/down.

[Air Master Burst]

Yeah... when you see two buttons attack buttons in a belt scroller, you can bet they only exist to input combo strings. And one combo string will work for 95% or more of the game anyway, leaving us functionally back where we started. Just give me different enders for tilting the stick up/down.

AvP has the gun button, Denjin Makai 2 has that cool super button, and Sailor Moon has the crystal button; but those are the only good 3rd button usage I can think of off top. I'm sure there are a few more floating around, though.

ETA: I'm not counting defense buttons like blocking in SNES KotR.

[velo]

Yeah... when you see two buttons attack buttons in a belt scroller, you can bet they only exist to input combo strings. And one combo string will work for 95% or more of the game anyway, leaving us functionally back where we started. Just give me different enders for tilting the stick up/down.

AvP has the gun button, Denjin Makai 2 has that cool super button, and Sailor Moon has the crystal button; but those are the only good 3rd button usage I can think of off top. I'm sure there are a few more floating around, though.

ETA: I'm not counting defense buttons like blocking in SNES KotR.

I was only thinking of DMC-inspired light/heavy attack schemes, mostly in modern indies. Counting games with a dedicated super button or the technos punch/kick setup or Ninja Gaiden's G-R-A-S-P button and so on, those are a whole different thing.

[BIL]

As with staggered grapples, I like dedicated Punch/Jump/Kick buttons in Technos's gritty founding titles, and a handful of their best-refined epigones. I consider Kunio nearly as distinct a subtype from Final Fight as Hishouzame is from DoDonPachi.

Ironically for such an infamously unrefined game, DD1AC actually has some compelling distinction between its Punches and Kicks. Former are weaker but rangier, useful on midbosses you don't want to get close to. Latter are one-shot staggers, but deliberately stubby, and can get you grappled. Better-used on zako you can comfily assail from off-axis.

Box biggamans, boot noobs

However, P's range can be very handy when backstabbers make staying off-axis tricky.

Deliberate elbow absence ;3

DD2AC is a much-refined game, but with a trivial bit of muscle memo, there's little reason not to assail targets with its vastly stronger kick. DD2FC actually restores a bit of distinction, with P's long combos letting you stunlock giant enemies at overlap. And... well, the command interpreter is slightly laggy, so turnaround kicks can't be executed as lightning-fast as on AC. The power move triad - Uppercut, Spinkick, Knee Bazooka - is a nice way to have P/K/PK share the spotlight. I prefer to play with a PK macro nowadays, putting it on parity with the arcade duo's PJK layout. I've been meaning to figure out a custom FC stick for this, actually.

Similarly, Crime Fighters 2 is technically two-button, but I think it's definitively better with a dedicated P+K input, for its KOF-prefiguring knockdown attacks. (as added by the ACA release) In this context, with P and PK doing most of the striking, and ground stomps being vital, K becomes more of a Tecmo-style Special Action button. Very comfy in the heat of battle; no worries about going to sock a would-be interferer, and stomping their fallen comrade instead, or vice-versa.

Pimping ain't easy? JUST GOT WORSE I'M AN ANGRY GAY GUY (■｀w´■)

Wasting good ammo is a sin boy (｀w´メ)

Autograpple discussion reminded me that, as is CF2's wont, it actually does have one; albeit only executable from the enemy's back. But thinking about it some more, that's just DD1AC's restraining hold, with a very nice (and literal!) twist for 1P games. [P] Converts it into a zako/midtier-executing headlock.

Riot Town Daisakusen: Plums Hazard

G-R-A-S-P button

They'll never escape!

[Sima Tuna]

DDA combos exemplify Sheiky Baby's Greater Principle Of Combinated Destruction. Each attack, a sturdy boxcar in a body-crushing martial trainwreck!

NSFW

Not safe for WEENIES

1] Put them in the Camel Clutch! (■｀w´■) [K -> G]
2] Break their back! (｀w´メ) [K x 2, UP+K]
3] Fuck their ass to make them humble! (◎w◎;) [PK -> K]

No triple-digit slap n' tickle here, son You're getting this Personally Autographed Bodycast - FO FREE!

Of course, it is merely a smoother, more connective refinement of classic Technos sensibilities, from DD otaku Muneki Ebinuma! Every hit tends to mean something in those games, within the rubric of 1] BEAT EM TIL THEY HEAVE and 2] SCRUFF EM AND BEAT EM SOME MORE - with the caveat that this can happen to you too, again and again!





Maybe you shoulda STAYED IN SCHOOL, so I wouldna had to HIT YOUR NUTSACK WITH THIS BROKEN BOTTLE (・｀W´・)

Good post as always.

Technos doesn't have walk-to-grab, but it does have something similar. K->G is less elegant than walk-to-grab, but it works just fine and is as essential to master as walk-to-grab in Final Fight. Grabbing allows you to pile on the big damage for single enemies, taking them from full health down to nothing so long as you aren't interrupted. Not too different from the infinite in practice. The backthrow is your crowd control with larger groups, especially useful since the AI in these games seems hardcoded to seek double-sided (dildo) flanking positions at all times.

My point is that even in Technos games, you still have grabs for all playable characters. It sounds like this new game that's coming out will only have grabbing for a single character. Not sure how to feel about that. Also, a dedicated grab button is usually clumsy in beat em ups. I know some of the latter-day Kunio games have one. As much as I like Kunio, grab buttons are not a game design decision I approve of.

Technos brawlers are their own beasts that arrive at the same destination via different means. But the fact there is a second legitimate type of BMUP doesn't mean reinventing the wheel WRT mechanics is a needed thing for new games.

Edit: I just noticed you hit his nutsack so hard with the broken bottle that it became invisible. JustNESthings

Edit yet again:

Spoiler

The point is that every attack button should have a very clear advantageous use.

Yeah... when you see two buttons attack buttons in a belt scroller, you can bet they only exist to input combo strings. And one combo string will work for 95% or more of the game anyway, leaving us functionally back where we started. Just give me different enders for tilting the stick up/down.

Technos games do actually have a reason for their punch and kick buttons. BIL explained. It varies by game. Punch in DDA/DD4/DD1 NES tends to be your fast, decent range combo starter for preempting enemies. Kick has a lingering hitbox so you can set up specific kinds of combos with it, plus it leads into the massive damage grapple. I'm not sure if these games can be 1cc'd using only one button. It's probably possible but you'd lose a lot of your ability to respond to threats. For example, punch is usually one of the better buttons to smash the fuck out of when an enemy is trying to hit you. Kick is too slow. But there are times when you need the damage, setup potential and grapple chain of the kick button. Not gonna talk about DD1 Arcade because Elbow dominates everything.

Punch and Kick combo enders also have different hitboxes, which becomes very obvious when you go for the wrong combo ender and get absolutely clobbered by enemies standing just outside your range.

For as jank as Technos brawlers can be at times, and the wide gulf in quality between games, I do love Technos beat em ups. I'm so glad that DD Advance is on modern systems now so I can recommend that one (along with Vendetta and DD FC) to people who think Technos brawlers suck. Technos (and technos-style brawlers) do the "every enemy is extremely deadly" concept better than almost everyone else.

[Air Master Burst]

I've never got on with Double Dragon, but part of that is probably because my first DD experience was Battletoads/DD for Genesis and I'm still a little traumatized. I don't blame Technos, of course, but the sprite style still gives me the ick.

Kunio is fine I guess, but my initial experience was River City Ransom, which really didn't click for me at all. I love his sports games, though!

Combatribes is pretty dope. The less said about Shadow Force the better.

Edit: I just noticed you hit his nutsack so hard with the broken bottle that it became invisible. JustNESthings

Well, I suppose I'll have to give it a fair shake someday.

[BIL]

DD2FC is probably the Famicom entry to play. DD1FC is very good at what it does, an Umechanesque reimagining / expansion of the arcade game. Its engine is actually pretty solid. DD3FC's stage designs aren't quite as ambitious as the previous games', though Chin and Ranzou are undeniably entertaining, with their respective PPP bulldozer, and divebombing death from above. Sadly, I think it controls slightly worse, too... Technos's FC canon tends to have input dings here and there - middle of post - but perhaps DD3FC's stern difficulty level accentuates. It's no jovially roughhousing RCR, it wants you quite dead. Still, no regrets keeping it around.

DDF2FC takes the original's Umechanism a step further, with wildly ambitious stage and moveset redesigns alike. FC Hard is notably brutal! Outrageous yowling treachery from a mere two enemies onscreen. Important to note NES Hard is nowhere as fiendish. It's sometimes mistakenly claimed that FC Hard merely gives enemies more HP, and while it does, that is a woefully incomplete picture. It also jacks their aggression through the roof:

NES Williams 'Hm I might considering hitting u lmao' >;3

FC Williams 'IMMA WHOOP YO ASS BOY' >83

Changes the game's entire character. I remember watching a live NES speedrun, trying out my FC cart, and getting beaten into the asphalt. Thought I just sucked, then tried the NES on a hunch and cleared it blind, dozy enemies eating knee after knee fo free.

The platforming segments tend to piss people off, and the TRVE DRAGON SOVEREIGN knee bazooka timing is genuinely mean; especially without easy-activating buttons. I like to play with the most hair-trigger I can. I think it's a great experience overall, though. One of the FC's most credibly arcade-rugged. The knee's also a lot less dominant on FC Hard, since even if you connect, it won't kill enemies outright, and will also trade without careful setting up. It's still your single biggest bang, and still perfect for blasting enemies into pits, but the other two power moves gain utility, being easier to both execute and connect cleanly.

The FC trio (and their famously troubled SFC cousin) are ultimately a scrappy, dog-eared bunch. I love 'em grappling with 'em all, even before considering Technos's peerless mastery of the bi-lateral OWCH FACE. DD3FC has my favourites; so endearingly OTT, without losing its ruggedly compact aesthetic. Buddy up there ruefully contemplating his recently-clapped ballbag a prime example!

Good place to link the MGS2-prefiguring INSTRUCTION MANGA. Man I love those. <3

CONTAINS INSTRUCTIVE VIOLENCE (｀w´メ) (◎w◎;)

[Durandal]

I spent the last couple of months playing SpikeOut and after some blood sweat and tears managed to clear the original version on the Hardest difficulty, and let me tell ya, people have been missing out big time. Apologies if anything here sounds like stating the obvious. This was originally written with a different audience in mind.

The honors of making a true 3D adaptation of Final Fight and belt scroller beat ‘em ups are often bestowed on God Hand or the ill-begotten Final Fight Streetwise, but few know of the attempts that came before it. In 1996, Dynamite Deka / Die Hard Arcade came out as the first ever 3D beat ‘em up. It featured 3D polygonal graphics, but in terms of gameplay it was a very literal translation of belt scrollers to 3D–down to having your facing directions be limited to only left and right. In 1997 Dynamite Deka 2 / Dynamite Cop would allow for eight-way movement and attacking, but the levels themselves were by and large flat squares. That same year, the Tomb Raider developers released Fighting Force on the PS1. This one featured a third-person camera with more complex 3D environments, but it fell flat with its enemy and behavior design, which really lacked the means to pressure you effectively in 3D space (one example is them being able to chase you, but always exactly stopping their chase when they get .

But in 1998, the madmen over at SEGA would leverage their expertise in 3D gaming and the sheer absurd power of the Sega Model 3 to the at-the-time waning genre of beat ‘em ups. Stuck on one of the harder-to-emulate arcade platforms that rarely ever appeared in Western arcades, and with an obscure and forgotten Xbox OG remake/sequel as the only home system release, it was forgotten by the public for years. Until finally, a port of the arcade version in the newest Yakuza game reignited some interest. This game was called… SpikeOut: Digital Battle Online / Final Edition.

It's the complete package: lethal enemy crowds that demand respect and stick to you like glue, a combat system that emphasizes spacing and whiff punishment, crowd control that relies on both aggressive i-frame deployment and manipulating crowds via positioning, a juggling system that allows for damage optimization and flexibility in picking up enemies without being either too easy to pull off or overpowered as a strategy, a strict timer refilled by K.O.ing enemies/damaging bosses that puts a hard cap to how much cheese you can afford to spend time on, and get this, bosses with supporting minions that are not reliant on hidden hard counters to your movesets or some other gimmick that disregards the game's fundamentals. And all of it wrapped in those pleasing vibrant Californian early 3D SEGA aesthetics, with some neat background choonz to top it off. But what makes SpikeOut interesting isn’t just that it’s a good beat ‘em up, but how committed it is to making full use of 3D space.


SpikeOut is also probably the first ever game to have your infant child shadow your moves and attacks like a Gradius option.

Translating belt/side scrolling beat ‘em ups (subgenres where usually a character can only face either left or right) to 3D (where characters can face almost any direction) requires a strong rethinking of genre fundamentals and its notions of offense and defense for situations to not become uncontrollable for the player. For example, in what ways should enemy groups attack the player in 3D? What role could complex 3D environments even play in combat when most of the fighting takes place at point-blank range? What kind of toolset does the player need to control 3D space? What kind of camera should we use to frame 3D action?

Most of the first 3D forays involved radical changes to its fundamentals. Controlling crowds by throwing one enemy into another became rarer as 3D "hack 'n slash" games would instead focus on attacks with wider hitboxes. SpikeOut's even lesser-known fantasy-themed sequel SlashOut would do away with grabs and throws entirely to expand the width and range of your basic strikes, while musou games and the Greek God of War games went even further in that regard. Games like DMC1 and Bayonetta would give you permanent access to ranged attacks and more i-frames on demand to deal with enemies coming from any direction, while games like Oni and Ninja Gaiden gave you powerful block buttons or mobility options to deal with attacks from all directions and disengage/engage from fights as you please. Fighting Force and the Dynamite Deka games, while overall staying close to beat 'em up fundamentals, disappointingly opted to limit enemy aggression and the maximum number of enemies on screen to about four–way below what even Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun and Final Fight could render in the late 80s. Although to be fair, not having 3D-capable hardware as HUMONGOUSLY powerful at the time as the Model 3 must have also factored into that decision.

SpikeOut sticks out from all these precisely because of how tightly it adheres to beat ‘em up fundamentals. Your main attacks have relatively pitiful range, enemies always move faster than you, you are always outnumbered, enemy attacks are often not reactable, disengaging from crowds is not free, the main method of defense is to simply move out of range, and i-frames are earned rather than given. Still, a basic setup of jabs, jump kick pokes, and grabs that grant you invincibility isn't going to be as effective in 3D space when you have to worry about attacks from all 360 degrees instead of to your immediate left and right.

One of the most important details to consider is that in 3D, enemies can't overlap with each other or occupy the same space. In 2D one enemy would simply visually overlap the other, but if you did that in 3D they'd clip through each other, which would look grizzly. Enemies being unable to overlap also means that enemies are fundamentally going to be spaced and spread out from each other more. The implicit 2D victory condition of rounding up enemies into one big pile and looping them to death is simply not possible by default anymore. Jab strings and jab infinites in general are going to be much weaker if the space covered by your attacks remains relatively the same, so at best you can only keep one enemy stunlocked at a time. And if enemy behavior is such that if you miss an attack or hit an enemy close to another, it's basically guaranteed you are going to get punished with a counterattack.

To this end all player characters in SpikeOut received some necessary new moves to control these more spaced-out crowds more effectively. You get a sweep meant for hitting horizontally-lined up enemies, you get a homing jump slam that serves as an (unsafe) guaranteed approach tool, and more importantly: your charge moves. Depending on how long you hold the charge button, you can perform: a C2 launcher that launches every single enemy type in the game without exception; a C3 stun blow that leaves all hit enemies in an extended stun state, and a powerful C4 bowling strike that with the right timing, space, and firing angle can knock over entire crowds like bowling pins. You can imagine that a move like C3 would have been rather busted if enemies could occupy the same space and be hit all at once. Likewise, a move like C4 that knocks down all enemies in front of you would have also been rather busted if all enemies had to align with you on the Z-axis to be able to hit you at all. But because this is 3D, you need to actively manipulate crowds through movement to even get them to line up at all.


Disappointingly, Virtua Tennis was never followed up with Virtua Bowling.

Being able to line up enemies is only made possible because SpikeOut actually nerfs general enemy behavior from belt scrollers in one key aspect: most enemies aren't going to try and circle around you. Some bosses and enemies do have this ability, but on most regular enemies this was left disabled, and for good reason. Think back to Resident Evil 4, and how for all the beat 'em up traditions Resident Evil 4 translated to a third-person shooter format, enemy circling is one it also left out! Could you imagine trying to keep track of circling enemy crowds using the original PS2/GC controls? Now, in 2D belt scrollers having most enemies circle around you was necessary to prevent you from always being able to backpedal into safer territory. Since every character could only attack directly left/right and therefore always keep one side covered, one way enemies could then break your space control was to move towards your uncovered flank. Otherwise you could hang back and have enemies be forced to walk into your jabs, which is also why actual walls to cover your back with aren’t always present in belt scrollers. But when we're dealing with 360 degrees of freedom and your standard attacks only covering about 5 to 10 degrees, having enemies always circle around you and attack you from multiple angles would quickly turn into an uncontrollable nightmare. Imagine, you could be throwing an enemy while the other five have already aligned in a kung-fu circle around you, the ones outside the range of your throw ready to clip you right after your throw invincibility ends. Aggressive i-frame deployment would become a total liability under such conditions, leaving a backpedal-and-poke playstyle as the only viable option (if you’re out of limited space-clearing specials). The trio boss fights in SpikeOut are good examples of what dealing with a group of fast enemies who constantly circle around you would look like, and it's not pretty.

That covers how the enemy approaches the player, but how does being in 3D affect the player approaching the enemy? Consider how you’d approach enemies in a belt scroller: if all characters can only face two directions, and being in range and aligned on the Z-axis with an enemy triggers an unreactable attack, then one safe approach is to use long-range pokes such as forwards jump kicks (which run the risk of being intercepted with an uppercut or having their recovery punished), or alternatively, approaching an enemy diagonally. You’d move off-axis towards an enemy where their attacks can’t reach you, but meanwhile other enemies would move towards or away from you. This jockeying for positions and angles is then what drives the “neutral game” of a belt scroller. But how is this going to work in 3D when all enemies are always facing you by default? There is no way to move “off-axis” now. Moving in a straight line into an enemy’s face was guaranteed to get you slapped in a belt scroller, but now they’re always facing you. With no way to safely approach beyond using a (punishable) poke, it would seem like your best bet is to wait for enemies to move into your attack range.

SpikeOut’s solution against that is rather subtle: there is now a greater emphasis on whiff punishing enemies. In belt scrollers most enemy attacks would start and recover too fast to be reliably whiff punished, so in SpikeOut the average recovery and duration of enemy attacks has been significantly extended. Instead of moving off-axis for a safe approach, you create an opening via baiting an enemy into attacking by sidestepping through their attack range and see their attack whiff. You can keep circling around most lone enemies and basically never get hit (that is, unless they can bust out grabs or spin attacks), since most enemy attacks don’t have massive hitboxes or tracking. Of course, what prevents you from being able to do this whenever you want is that in most cases there are other enemies standing right beside one another. Circle around one enemy and you will find yourself in the attack range of another enemy, circle around him to find yet another, and keep doing this long enough and you’ll eventually eat a homing kick to the face. Or, your path will simply get blocked by a wall. *Here the aforementioned choice to have enemies intentionally not circle around you but instead clump up together synergizes wonderfully*: if enemies spread out from each other around you, then they couldn’t as effectively cover each others’ blind spots and prevent you from whiff punishing enemies uncontested! It’s then up to the player to create an opening in the crowd before they can really start focusing on whittling down individual enemies.

Another curious change is how SpikeOut handles variable enemy wakeup timing–or rather, how it doesn’t handle it at all. In belt scrollers it was generally a good thing to have enemies wake up at different times in order to prevent you from easily rounding up enemies into a pile and looping them to death. Now consider how this is supposed to work in 3D or what the point of it even would be, when enemies can no longer overlap the same space. Enemies waking up at the same time in SpikeOut ironically ends up making things more difficult for you. Should you knock down multiple enemies with a sweep and try to meaty one of them, then depending on how you positioned yourself, the other enemies getting up at the same time can quickly jab you during the recovery of your meaty attack. Knocking over enemies at the same time ends up being something you want to avoid, and juggling enemies ends up being something you do not just for the damage but also to ensure multiple enemies recover at different times.

Then there's the particular matter of SpikeOut's controls. One thing will immediately stand out: turning your character about and around ain't instant. Which if you think about it, is the case for a lot of 3D action games where character orientation isn't controlled separately from movement (as you would with a mouse or right joystick). Ninja Gaiden, DMC, Bayonetta, take your pick. If you try to turn 90 or 180 degrees there is usually a maximum turning rate or a special turnaround animation, and SpikeOut is no different. One reason being that a 3D character instantly flipping or turning around looks off when all other animations in the game use smooth interpolation, especially when the camera is closer to the character. It'd be rather disorienting if you were trying to approach an enemy from behind only for them to almost instantly turn around. For the sake of fidelity we can then implement a maximum turning rate, but this will come at the expense of the pixel-perfect movement precision and responsiveness you’d normally get in a 2D belt scroller. 3D games have found a lot of ways to compensate for this: dodging/blocking abilities with wide coverage, larger hitboxes and/or magnetism on player attacks, reduced aggression on enemies, or more commonly: strafing movement via a hard lock-on button. SpikeOut does apply some magnetism on your attacks (on the horizontal axis only), but your main lifeline for precise control in SpikeOut is called Shift.

Shifting is basically Ocarina of Time's Z-targeting, except SpikeOut came out 5 months prior (and Sega's Virtua-On preceded both of them with a 3D lock-on). Not only does it let you move more precisely and circle about enemies while keeping your character's orientation fixed on the crowd, and not only does it also let you walk in perfect circles and navigate the not-so-rectangular level layouts using SpikeOut's 8-way digital joystick, but it also has a higher base movement speed than normal walking (albeit lower than running). In fact, if you are waking up with an enemy behind you, it is usually faster to avoid their meaty by shifting forwards away from them than it is to try doing a backsweep or turning around and jab, as you can't move while doing a quick turn. Another thing about shifting is that you’re locked out of grabbing enemies while doing it, which, in a 3D game where you grab enemies by walking into them, is really *really* useful to have. Accidental grabs can already happen quite often in belt/side scrollers, but at the very least you can throw said enemy to clear some space. Having accidental grabs happen in 3D where your throws don't cover as much space would be just grueling, so being able to toggle walk-in grabs when trying to move out of a crowd is a godsend.

But the most pressing justification of shifting/lock-on existing in SpikeOut is enabling you to more precisely aim the position and angle for your C4 attacks. With your orientation already fixed, you only need to move left/right to adjust your angle and forwards/backwards to adjust your 'firing' position. In a lock-on-less control setup where you’d instantly turn towards your movement direction, you'd have to reorient (and therefore slightly move) yourself towards the enemy each time you adjust the angle or position of your C4, effectively creating some inaccuracy. In games where the player can only face 2/4/8 angles this inaccuracy isn't a big deal, but with 360 angles, especially with the hitboxes on C4-launched enemies being as narrow as they are, it kind of is. You could then increase the width on the enemies launched by C4 to compensate for this inaccuracy, but that is only going to create different balance issues and possibly make it too strong. As they already are, C4 attacks strike a good balance between their power/effectiveness and the execution required to make the most of them.

Now, the first obvious thing anyone will try to do in SpikeOut is to spam the C3 and C4 charge moves to oblivion. This might carry you for the first few areas, after which you are forced to come to grips with two facts about SpikeOut's universal enemy behavior:

1. In a neutral state, most enemies can backstep away on reaction if you try to hit them with a charge move, and only charge moves specifically (and also jump throws in Final Edition). Landing charge moves is not free.
2. If you move away from enemies too much they will turn into metaphorical homing missiles. They will outrun you at a speed slightly faster than your fastest run speed, and then hit you with a homing kick/slide/tackle that needs to be sidestepped or interrupted with an attack at the right time. On Hardest Difficulty, absentmindedly moving backwards for a second is enough for enemies right in your face to spontaneously bust out a homing kick without warning. Disengaging to find time and space for charging your charge moves is not free.

At first glance these come off like static interactions which the player can only (not) react to in a few clearly predetermined ways, but in practice their implementation is so tightly woven into time and space–and therefore everything else tied into them–that more than anything the options and outcomes for any situation or interaction are fuzzy. An enemy can decide to backstep away from your charge move 80% of the time, but what if they are blocked by the environment? What if they are bodyblocked by another enemy with a lower backstep chance or an enemy that wasn't in a neutral state? What if you hit them with a charge move right after they wake up from a knockdown? What if you just so happen to release your charge attack right as they started an attack of their own? What if you bowl them over by launching into them an enemy that rarely ever backsteps anyways? What if you launch them after first knocking them down with a homing jump slam that they can't backstep from, and is the situation such that that the jump slam itself is safe?

Likewise, every enemy type being hardcoded to eventually chase you if you move backwards can be used to your advantage. It can be used to bait any enemy type into doing a single predictable action, but the question remains if you got the time and space to do so. You need time and space to sidestep, and doing this for more than a second against a crowd of enemies will result in multiple enemies trying to hit you with homing kicks from multiple angles and timings. On top of that, when enemies start chasing you is (as far as I could tell) triggered semi-randomly, so you can’t even predict with full certainty either the when or where of enemies entering a chase state. Even more interesting is that you can force enemies to cancel their chase by standing still or moving forwards; during their chase recovery animation they are completely vulnerable and can’t backstep from charge moves. This requires good timing and spacing to pull off and take advantage of, but the exact threshold for when they will cancel their chase is also vague.

That’s the thing with SpikeOut. Not only is the combat such a sensitive clockwork machine where even the slightest change in your actions creates unforeseen consequences down the line, but you also have the actual RNG adding further chaos into the mix. Nor do you have any overcentralizing abilities like an omni-directional dodge or a parry that could reliably mitigate all this chaos. Whatever’s the best approach in any given situation ends up being fuzzy, and this fuzziness extends to the grand majority of interactions. For better or worse, nothing is guaranteed to succeed, nothing is free, everything has several edge cases and everything depends.

Consider how time complicates things. An example is the literal timer itself, which is a bit special. It counts down rather quickly by arcade standards, such that if you spend too much time slowly cheesing enemies by baiting them into doing homing kicks, you'll likely game over by timeout. However, it is refilled by K.O.'ing 8 regular enemies or a boss enemy, so this constant time pressure puts a hard limit to (but doesn't entirely forbid) the cheesing you can do, while also pushing you to take risks you otherwise wouldn't have if you are close to running out. A smaller example of time inducing fuzziness is in the timing of inputting strings. While you can mash out a basic BBBBBB string, more damaging strings (like BBBCCC) and keeping enemies stunlocked with jab strings (like BB-BB-BB or BBBCC-BBBCC) requires a very strict rhythm where messing it up slightly creates enough of a time window for the enemy you were stunlocking to interrupt you. While it's theoretically possible to have a perfect rhythm, in practice there's always something that will eventually mess up your rhythm and leave you scrambling trying to recover from it--something much less likely to happen if the input timings for strings were significantly more lenient.

But perhaps one of the strongest examples of time as fuzziness is the way the charge gauge itself works. A beat 'em up developer's first instinct would have been to have moves as powerful as your charge moves be executed via motion inputs or lock them behind resources/cooldowns, meaning you can make it come out as fast as you can input it or can spend the resources for it, such that the aspect of time spent in landing the move itself plays a much smaller role. But by tying different charge moves to different charge time windows they are more tightly woven to Time itself, and therefore everything else connected to it. So it's up to you to judge whether you have the time or space to charge a C4, because your enemies aren't going to make it cheap. An enemy deciding to pressure you while charging can force you to decide whether you want to go for a pre-emptive C2/C3 or risk going for the C4. Nor can you hold a charge forever, as you can only maintain a maximum charge for 2 seconds before the gauge resets. Nor can you sidestep the time pressure by charging while running away, because charging while running (and jumping) is explicitly disabled, and enemies will chase your ass if you do turn tail.

Of course, then there is also realizing fuzziness via space. For example: the arc on your homing jump slam is calculated at the start of the move, meaning that if the enemy suddenly moves or already was moving after you initiate it, the jump slam will likely whiff. To manipulate them into not moving you need to keep proper distance and not back away, and then it depends if the enemies give you the time or space to do that! Then take as another example SpikeOut's "strike grabs". In Final Fight 1, if you held UP during the last hit of your jab combo you'd consistently back-throw whatever enemy would have been hit even if they were outside grab range (although with how brutal enemies there are, it really needs something like that). But in SpikeOut? It depends. Here there are no 'true' strike grabs, and you cannot grab an enemy that is in an attacking state. Whether you can safely grab an enemy after a double jab depends on how close you were to the enemy afterwards, so it's up to you to judge whether you need to do another double jab to close the distance or change plans entirely.

And what else could contribute more to the fuzziness than adding an entire new dimension? Stages in SpikeOut aren't all flat planes: they've got complex layouts, they've got undulation, they've got multiple floors, they've got *moving* floors, they've got level geometry in the middle of a stage, they've got throwable physics props that can collide with each other and impede you, they've got escalators, they've got an area with a giant Sonic the Hedgehog statue in the middle, and they've got--god forbid–*corners*. In addition, your elevation relative to enemies now matters because your attacks don't track or extend downwards on the vertical axis, which counterintuitively makes having the high ground on enemies actually a disadvantage and fighting on slopes or spaces with undulation tricky. Another consequence of that is there being minor high crush / low crush shenanigans a la Tekken where because the hitboxes are tied so accurately to character models, certain player and enemy attacks can duck under high attacks. Then consider that health/special attack items also have physics applied and can bounce down a flight of stairs. Juggling enemies is now made a bit more complicated with the existence of walls and wallsplat states. Just ask any Tekken fan about the consistency of off-axis interactions near walls. There is even a merry-go-round area at one point where the floor is split in three rings turning at different speeds!


I am very certain that Sega very definitely didn't mean anything by having the enemies in the Sega-themed mall entrance be all yakuza.

And... for some reason launching enemies into walls sometimes nets you a wallslump state with no possible follow ups instead of the usual wallsplat state from which you can continue juggling. And if you throw a weapon alongside a wall with your throwing arm too close to the wall, your weapon will collide with the wall and just drop on the ground. And the collision detection will sometimes shit itself if too many bowled over enemies are colliding with each other in a tight space. And also enemies easily get stuck everywhere because their pathfinding can't move around obstacles. The third dimension may make interactions more complicated, but It's not all flowers and sunshine.

You rarely see these kinds of more involved environments in melee games nowadays. The trend in modern melee games has been to abandon complex environments in favor of clear open flat arenas. These are much less likely to create inconsistency or bugs for player-enemy interactions and--perhaps more importantly--don't obscure the camera. Fights in older DMC games tended to take place in more distinct areas, and by DMC5 the majority take place on indistinct flat open spaces. Tekken and Virtua Fighter both once experimented with stage undulation and more complex environments (coincidentally, SpikeOut's lead programmer was also the one responsible for programming the undulation in VF3's stages) before reverting back to flat arenas for all future games. The inconsistency and unpredictable edge cases it wrought proved undesirable for high-level competitive play, whereas SpikeOut as a singleplayer/co-op romp seems to embrace the chaos. Certainly simpler layouts are superior from a quality-of-life standpoint both to develop and to experience, but there's also certainly something about levels feeling like actual places instead of flat killboxes. And as mentioned before, it allows for more varied layouts to create more varied encounter scenarios. So fighting crowds of enemies in a small tight square gives you barely any room to breathe, long narrow spaces on the other hand can be used to your benefit to group up enemies and send them all bowling over with a C4, and areas with height differences introduce more chaos. Had SpikeOut been so inclined, it could've even used the new possibilities in stage layouts to introduce platforming to the mix (thankfully it didn't, because the physics for ascending/descending platforms feels horrible, like you're teleporting up/down ledges).

SpikeOut's strong grasp on beat 'em up fundamentals and the strength of its own system stands out even more when you notice there is barely any "overt" variety or gimmicks or paradigm shifts in enemy behavior, yet the game rarely ever feels stale even on the umpteenth replay. Although every 2-3 areas the previous roster of enemies gets thrown out and a new unique set of enemies is introduced, the behavior of each new enemy remains largely universal. Enemies might have particular attacks and stats and traits, but how you *individually* deal with them and how they deal with you remains largely the same, except for the many boss enemies who instead have their own universal set of rules. It’s why you can’t really pick out a single good or bad enemy type in SpikeOut–most of their behaviors are basically the same. Compared to something like Final Fight 1 or Streets of Rage, you don't have enemies that specialize in doing a particular thing, such as guarding or grabbing you or jumping behind you or ramming you or throwing shit at you or just flying around the place, and the game isn't like a Treasure game where there's a paradigm shift every two minutes. There are some enemies in SpikeOut that are specialists, such as enemies wielding weapons that can't be knocked out of their hands or the flamethrower guys that can sweep the area in front of them, but those are the exception rather than the rule. It's more accurate to say that almost all enemies draw from the same universal behavior, but have their dials slightly tweaked this and that way.

And yet, the fuzziness of SpikeOut's gameplay makes it susceptible enough to the butterfly effect that even minor tweaks in enemy behavior and traits combined with slight offsets in spawn patterns, level geometry and other factors are enough to cause unique scenarios to spiral out by themselves. One thing leads to another which spirals out in yet another and you’re back in unknown territory where memorized routes can’t (completely) save you. For a game made to be replayed infinitely, this is ideally the way to go. In another context where player-enemy interactions were made more consistent/explicit/controlled and resistant to outside interferences (so things like attack magnetism, lenient super armor/invincibility for the player and/or the enemy), or if we’re dealing with 2D space instead of 3D, it would be more unlikely that such minor fluctuations could spiral out into something major, and it would be more unlikely that identical interactions with identical enemies could remain interesting across multiple replays. It certainly wouldn’t have hurt if SpikeOut added more specialized or gimmicky enemies, but it’s nonetheless impressive that SpikeOut never gets boring even without them.

Now, all this fuzziness is certainly nice for creating uncertainty in replays and drawing on your skills to read the situation and improvise accordingly, but it can also make survival feel inconsistent simply because 3D space adds more room for error (try imagining having to dodge a bullet hell pattern in 3D). There will be unforeseen edge cases biting you in the ass, or enemies sneaking in jabs and potshots from more angles than you can reliably cover. SpikeOut theoretically gives you all the tools you need to succeed in 3D, but being in 3D also gives you more room to mess up how you use those tools, like getting the angle on a C4 or sweep slightly wrong. Considering clearing arcade games usually involves being able to play it consistently without taking too much damage, then avoiding damage being too chaotic to do consistently will quickly result in a frustrating experience. You could theoretically clear SpikeOut without taking a single hit, but with the timer being as it is that would only be possible with a TAS. At the same time, reducing the fuzziness of the gameplay to be fundamentally more consistent would come at the expense of its replay value, so some kind of balance needs to be struck.

Here SpikeOut manages to strike a good balance by biasing certain outcomes in the player’s favor through ways that would be overkill for most 2D belt scrollers. For example, your C4 and homing jump slam–both being your two moves with the most wind-up– have light super armor, meaning they won’t get interrupted by light jabs (but will be by heavier attacks). You are also briefly invincible while waking up to prevent you from being stunlocked or having to bust out a special, which is common for platformers, but actually quite rare to see in beat ‘em ups. And more importantly, you get a big health refill after clearing an area with a boss fight (every 1-2 areas or so). This health bonus is determined depending on how many enemies you K.O’d, and while playing solo this usually means getting 60%-90% of your health back. Crucially, SpikeOut opts to be more forgiving *when* you mess up instead of preventing you from being able to mess up at all, while still being only lightly forgiving in a way where you can’t intentionally try to rely on it.


In line with tastes at the time, SpikeOut: Battle Street for the Xbox would take all of SpikeOut’s vibrant Dreamcast locations and make everything look like it's set in the UK. Yuck! At the same time I'd say Battle Street's SuperSweep-powered soundtrack headed by legends Shinji Hosoe and Ayako Saso is several steps up from the original soundtrack. You win some, you lose some.

SpikeOut is really interesting to analyze, not only because it is a rock-solid game that successfully translates genre fundamentals to 3D, but also because it shows us this alternate history of what could have been had classic beat 'em ups not receded into the background after the shift to 3D. During an age of radical reexamination and reinvention of beat 'em ups, SpikeOut proved that the old traditions could just as well be made to work in 3D. SpikeOut’s only problem was that nobody outside Japanese arcades was around to see it, nor its spin-offs SlashOut and Spikers Battle. The only available Sega Model 3 emulator not being very user-friendly to get up and running didn’t help matters either. SpikeOut: Battle Street failed to catch on or inspire a mini-revolution in the same way that DMC1 did, and neither did other 3D beat 'em ups like Gekido, Fighting Force, The Bouncer, Urban Reign, Oni, Final Fight: Streetwise and God Hand. Meanwhile SpikeOut director Toshihiro Nagoshi's new beat ‘em up franchise would stray down the dark path of RPG-ification until they started making full-on turn-based RPGs. Ironically it’s because of the newest turn-based Yakuza entry that some public interest in SpikeOut was reignited.

This is purely wishful thinking, but had Sega given it a home system port for the Dreamcast alongside Sega Rally 2 and Virtua Fighter 3(tb), and had Sega capitalized on their ownership of Streets of Rage–the flagship franchise of beat 'em ups in the eyes of Westerners at the time and even today--to market it as a spiritual successor to Streets of Rage or even reskinned SpikeOut to be the long-awaited SoR sequel released 4-5 years after the last SoR game (especially after Sega HQ inexplicably refused to give the go-ahead for a proper 3D Streets of Rage by Ancient, a decision which at the time could only be made under the influence of a gas leak), it might have ushered a minor renaissance of 3D brawlers in the same way Streets of Rage 4 did for belt scrollers, or at least established some kind of cultural canon through which future 3D brawlers could be better understood by the public, in the same way that Super Mario 64 did for 3D platformers. Only releasing a home port/sequel on the (relatively less popular) Xbox of all consoles in 2005--a time period when understanding and tolerance by the public and professional game reviewers for arcade sensibilities was fast approaching rock bottom, as we’d see again a year later with God Hand--it was doomed to die forgotten and appear antiquated, especially when compared with the paradigm shift and complexity of Ninja Gaiden Black that was released on the Xbox that same year, or the spectacle offered by God of War or the freedom of Devil May Cry 3 on the PS2. One must imagine what the current landscape of 3D action games would have looked like had there been a proper Streets of Rage 3D.

The past couple of years the trend in 3D action games has been to lean more heavily on timing and rhythm game elements as the meat and potatoes of combat. How you move and where you stand doesn't matter as much as pressing the right defense button at the right time does. Ever since the success of the Arkham Batman games and especially after the success of Sekiro, the idea of offense and defense as rhythm minigames proved to be popular with mainstream audiences. The idea of “hit the right button at the right time” is simple to understand and feels good to execute, whereas concepts like spacing and positioning and manipulating enemy behavior are obtuse and don’t come with simple answers on how to approach them. The simplicity of timing-focused combat might be its appeal, but is also its weakness. When designing challenges for your game, you can’t do as much with only time than if the gameplay was designed to test your mastery of both time and space. This becomes a problem if a lot of developers in the same space look at what’s popular and well-liked, and decide to reuse this inherently limited template for their own new action games. Their gameplay all starts to blend together, and market oversaturation starts to kick in.

It’s at times like these that it’s worth looking back at the lesser known games, at the forgotten experiments and weird genre hybrids, to see for yourself what could have been and decide what could be. With some luck you stumble upon something like SpikeOut, and realize that there can be more to games about punching people than playing Guitar Hero.

Some extra addenda:

Since I couldn’t find any comprehensive information about the changes between the original DBO version and Final Edition, I decided to compile a changelog myself. You can find a work-in-progress list of it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
Once I’m confident that I caught most changes, I’ll put those changes side-by-side in a video.

Final Edition adds some extra content, like two new stages, character emotes, bonus rounds, and some secrets. But it also changes the combat in some ways. For example, super grabs are actually useful now and deal extra damage to surrounding enemies. Certain stages flow better now that they make use of progressive spawn waves instead of only spawning the next wave after you K.O’d the entire current wave. Most bosses also had their HP reduced. Plus, what most bosses would do on wake-up was usually consistent (backing away while invincible), but in Final Edition this was made random–you now have to rely on option selects instead of guaranteed meaties. Another key change was that the invincibility was removed on your grab side switch. It used to be that you could leverage the invincibility of side switching and jump throw startups to i-frame through entire enemy spin attacks into guaranteed jump throws (jump throws are the only non-special throw capable of knocking down bosses, so boss fights would see a lot of jump throw spam). But now? Side switching to the back into jump throws ain’t free. It *depends* on the enemies around you if you can safely pull it off. And to spice things up even more, some enemies can now recover mid-air from jump throws and C2 attacks, although that’s just getting kind of silly. Overall I would recommend Final Edition over the original DBO version, unless you really really can't stomach the new intro stage and the bonus rounds.

Thankfully boss enemies in this game largely behave like regular enemies, and are always accompanied by supporting minions to prevent you from being able to stunlock them. There are no annoying boss gimmicks or static sidestep-then-strike patterns the likes which we’d see later in SlashOut. However, all boss enemies do have their own special set of rules to make them spicier. Many of them are resistant to being knocked down from most moves (except your charge moves, specials, and jump throws), they have access to invincible or super armor moves, and they can randomly break out of jab strings. This sounds really annoying to deal with, and in some cases it definitely is, but it’s more manageable than you think. The random hitstun breakout sounds horrible until you find it doesn’t apply to being grabbed or being stunned by a C3 (except for a few bosses who are immune to C3 stun), after which you can go jugglin’ with the boss. Mostly it just serves to make you do more commitment-heavy combos on bosses to make the most out of each opportunity instead of basic jab infinites. Hitstun breakouts being random is rather inelegant, but it works. Bosses doing invincible moves in the middle of crowds also both keeps you on your toes and reminds you to prioritize the minions for throws and i-frames. It’s only when those invincible attacks are very long (over 3 seconds) that it really gets annoying, as with the anchor and scythe bosses.

The only strange thing with bosses in general is that the minion spawns are always finite. This means you can clear out all the mooks first and then go loop the boss in a corner, which goes against the entire point of the genre–fighting enemy crowds. I do understand why they did this, since time refills are tied to bosses spawning in, dealing enough damage to a boss, and K.O. ‘ing enemies, so having infinite minion spawns means you could milk those for score or time forever. Although I don’t see why the game couldn’t have made an exception to time refills from minion K.O. 's after getting a time refill once or twice. It’s not like it doesn’t already apply exceptions for time refills, where duo or trio boss enemies only net you time refills on K.O. instead of also taking them down to 50% HP like all solo bosses.

[BIL]

I spent the last couple of months playing SpikeOut and after some blood sweat and tears managed to clear the original version on the Hardest difficulty, and let me tell ya, people have been missing out big time. Apologies if anything here sounds like stating the obvious. This was originally written with a different audience in mind.

You never disappoint! But I am EXTRA not disappoint

[Lander]

Hory shiet! Awesome write-up, Durandal.

It's beginning to feel like we need a BEAT-GD: SpikeOut to gather all the interesting bits and pieces the game has to offer, if not a BEAT-ST

I spent the last couple of months playing SpikeOut and after some blood sweat and tears managed to clear the original version on the Hardest difficulty, and let me tell ya, people have been missing out big time.

Astounding! It's great to see high-level solo play that really engages with the mechanics, and doesn't devolve into well-trodden corner rope-a-dope at every opportunity. I figured Hardest was a concession to 4-man play rather than genuinely solo-viable, so double bravo for that

Artful punch calculus; setting up a corridor cannonball scenario to wear down tricksy bosses like Randolph is a great idea, and that Homing -> Charge OTG is seriously meaty. Will have to steal those for myself

(Also, it's slightly comforting to see that a seasoned Hardest player still gets caught by the bald guys' throw resistance on occasion )

Mind-opening approach to the HELL fight - I often get caught up fighting the mob head-on down the bottom, relying on dense crowd-clear chaos and iframes to stuff Belial whenever he throws out that irritating invincible spin. I daresay it's only just tractable due to playing on the lower difficulties, given the aggression boost.

And god, the ring-out timer scam and deceptively tight re-entry jump in Mikhail's fight. Nightmarish, and well handled. I'm curious, did you intentionally leave his sword intact for the stylish in-canon finish, or was it emergent from the chaos? I tend to chuck that shit ASAP to despawn it and rob him of the weapon advantage!

I am very certain that Sega very definitely didn't mean anything by having the enemies in the Sega-themed mall entrance be all yakuza.

In line with tastes at the time, SpikeOut: Battle Street for the Xbox would take all of SpikeOut’s vibrant Dreamcast locations and make everything look like it's set in the UK. Yuck! At the same time I'd say Battle Street's SuperSweep-powered soundtrack headed by legends Shinji Hosoe and Ayako Saso is several steps up from the original soundtrack. You win some, you lose some.

Jam-packed with content too; nice training mode, and every boss is unlockable as a playable character if you're a bad enough dude to beat them no-hit. Plus an EX bonus that you get by taunting the Spiker's Camp stage boss to death as Fiona. No mean feat, given how aggressive and mixup-heavy the mechanics are!

Shame about the presentation and waste-of-FMV storyline. It could have been a gloriously definitive console SpikeOut if they'd dropped the Let's go shopping! / I hate my cool punch dad >:( nonsense and given it a vibrant Sega Blue Skies makeover. Perhaps the latter will be fixable via texture pack in time, if OG Xbox ever catches up to GC and PS2 emulation.

This is purely wishful thinking, but had Sega given it a home system port for the Dreamcast alongside Sega Rally 2 and Virtua Fighter 3(tb), and had Sega capitalized on their ownership of Streets of Rage–the flagship franchise of beat 'em ups in the eyes of Westerners at the time and even today

I'm sure I read somewhere that SpikeOut was originally intended to use the Streets of Rage brand, but ended up as its own distinct series for some reason or other. Crying shame that it languished in obscurity, because the systems really are something else. I've compared it to a one-man-army VF before now, and standing up to full-complexity fighting game systems is a fantastic - but tragically rare - quality for a beat 'em up.

Since I couldn’t find any comprehensive information about the changes between the original DBO version and Final Edition, I decided to compile a changelog myself. You can find a work-in-progress list of it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
Once I’m confident that I caught most changes, I’ll put those changes side-by-side in a video.

Impressive attention to detail! That's much broader in scope than expected, having put most of my efforts into DBO.

[Air Master Burst]

I spent the last couple of months playing SpikeOut and after some blood sweat and tears managed to clear the original version on the Hardest difficulty, and let me tell ya, people have been missing out big time. Apologies if anything here sounds like stating the obvious. This was originally written with a different audience in mind.

This post is pure quality and sums up many of my own feelings toward SpikeOut. I am planning to buy the Yakuza with it at some point, but am curious how much Yakuza I will have to play to unlock it. Will I have to physically run to the arcade and spend fake money every time or have they finally added a menu option to boot straight to the arcade games?

Hopefully the next Yakuza does Planet Harriers.

ETA: Durandal, you should do Urban Reign next!

[Durandal]

I spent the last couple of months playing SpikeOut and after some blood sweat and tears managed to clear the original version on the Hardest difficulty, and let me tell ya, people have been missing out big time. Apologies if anything here sounds like stating the obvious. This was originally written with a different audience in mind.

This post is pure quality and sums up many of my own feelings toward SpikeOut. I am planning to buy the Yakuza with it at some point, but am curious how much Yakuza I will have to play to unlock it. Will I have to physically run to the arcade and spend fake money every time or have they finally added a menu option to boot straight to the arcade games?

Hopefully the next Yakuza does Planet Harriers.

ETA: Durandal, you should do Urban Reign next!

I haven't played Yakuza LAD myself, but from what I've read online from achievement hunters' exasperated attempts at trying to beat this 1-2 hour long minigame, it's going to involve some money grinding and manually going to the arcades. If you intend on playing SpikeOut seriously, I think it's easier to deal with the hassle of getting the Supermodel emulator up and running.

Urban Reign is on my bucket list, even though in most footage I've seen of it looks like the enemies are designed like fighting game bots. Maybe the tools you're given can work around that, but we'll see.

[Dazzymank]

Fight N Rage on ps5/4 for first time

13hrs one day totally addicted

[Sengoku Strider]

Rushing Beat X - Return of the Brawl Brothers trailer from TGS.

All the magic of the 16-bit era, updated with the power of the PlayStation 2!