Beat 'em Ups (Including Switch List)

[Sima Tuna]

Sodom is just a case of Capcom being particularly sadistic. Stage 2 in general is a rough one. I believe it's the hardest level until Uptown. Anyway, I wasn't talking about "double dragon gaiden should be more like final fight" in the sense of Sodom's weird strike resistance and bizarre spacing requirements. I meant more in the sense of your character feeling good to move around, of your superjoy being fully invincible and your frame data on your attacks being generous. Even slow characters like Haggar feel good to use because their attacks are snappy and they have a lot of i-frames. The game is still hard as balls but for different reasons than gamefeel.

When it comes to pure arcade beat em ups, I think pretty much all of them have some absolute horse shit in them. Except maybe Vendetta. Vendetta seems (to ME, at least) incredibly fair. Everything kills you super fast but you can kill enemies even faster. I think it's a case of all the jank cancelling out other potential frustrations.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Woah that is something. I just handle Sodom with desperation attacks, there's a health refill right beforehand so I just assumed that was why it was there! It's punishing though, you're done if he gets a couple of hits in. It's sort of what I love about about Final Fight though - it's doable but fuck you if you slip up

The rest of the stage is the problem - charging Andores and Holly Woods, fucking hell!

[1KMS]

Sodom is the only boss that doesn't get backup enemies, so that's why they made him more elusive. They could've communicated the concept better with more animation frames, but Final Fight is fairly austere for an arcade game. The developers have talked about how they had to fit the game within a certain limit due to the ROM chip shortage of the time. Capcom didn't get everything right on the first try, but it's pretty amazing what they established, including details later games would overlook, e.g. Night Slashers.

I just handle Sodom with desperation attacks, there's a health refill right beforehand so I just assumed that was why it was there!

Yeah, that has to be intentional. If you go in with full health and have an answer for the tackles, you can take a few shots and still keep your extend.

[Sumez]

Holy shit Violent Storm

[Lord British]

New He-Man beat em up by Limited Run

Looks sexy

https://youtu.be/m2e7An3DGpc?si=vk2ejrr8W-SPW2Yf

[Sumez]

New He-Man beat em up by Bitmap Bureau

[AGermanArtist]

Nice Golden Axe reference. Looks great!

[Sweatlord_STG]

New He-Man beat em up by Limited Run

Looks sexy

https://youtu.be/m2e7An3DGpc?si=vk2ejrr8W-SPW2Yf

Sick!!!

damn i cant get over this

[velo]

eventually someone making these games should recognize what Final Fight figured out in 1989.

Capcom didn't get everything right on the first try, but it's pretty amazing what they established, including details later games would overlook.

Old arcade developers at least tried to copy and refine Final Fight's mechanics. A lot of modern indies manage to overcomplicate and fumble all kinds of things that have been solved problems for decades. They're not coming up with anything better than the standard grab and superjoy mechanics that everybody cloned in the 90s.

Final Fight's a masterpiece and my love for it is well known, but comments about how Gaiden could be more like it in terms of difficulty feel a little strange, because Final Fights is super unforgiving. Sodom has crueler shenanigans than any Gaiden baddie and he's the stage TWO boss.

The difficulty's the thing I DON'T like so much: hits feel great, you've got a great toolset of attacks, every enemy type feels different. On the other hand, you can make Gaiden a lot harder by picking a weak character and maxing out all the difficulty sliders, but it doesn't fix any of the weak spots, it just means you die in one mistake and have to hit enemies twice as many times.

Vendetta seems (to ME, at least) incredibly fair. Everything kills you super fast but you can kill enemies even faster. I think it's a case of all the jank cancelling out other potential frustrations.

Towards the end it gets pretty bad about killing the player without much warning, with surprise molotovs etc. But overall I agree. It's so generous in giving the player ways to kill the baddies. I don't understand how half the stuff in the game works, but I think there are some write-ups around here I could look into.

[Sima Tuna]

Towards the end it gets pretty bad about killing the player without much warning, with surprise molotovs etc. But overall I agree. It's so generous in giving the player ways to kill the baddies. I don't understand how half the stuff in the game works, but I think there are some write-ups around here I could look into.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... r+vendetta

This is the man you want to see if you're figuring out Vendetta. I used the search result because he has a lot of runs that aren't posted to his actual youtube channel, but are on RGLTV, GDQ or some other speedrun channel. These are called speedruns but they are also 1ccs, or at least 1cc attempts.

The only super unfair bullshit moment I remember in Vendetta is the machine gun the last boss whips out. Little Rude can also put you into some very unwinnable situations if you don't control him right away. Big Rude is toothless until you start getting handled by Little Rude and then he's suddenly a problem.

[1000Eyes]

Taking a break from the Final Fight 1CC attempts. I'm firmly on the "fan" camp of this game, but I must admit that Stage 5 onwards is a bit of a letdown. Stage 2 is one of the great action game levels, just nothing but lock-in fights, especially impressive in how deadly they can be with just 3-4 enemies at a time. But from Stage 5 there are so many manual scrolling segments where the optimal strat is to "edge" the screen and defensively pick off foes one by one. There are still good fights scatted around but that's the dominant strategy. It's such a drag when it takes like half of the rather lengthy (by arcade standards) credit time of the game. FF's has possibly my favorite synergy between player and enemy dynamics in the genre, so it's such a shame that the game is flawed from this point forward.

[sunnshiner]

New He-Man beat em up by Limited Run

Looks sexy

https://youtu.be/m2e7An3DGpc?si=vk2ejrr8W-SPW2Yf

Shut up and take my money. Then do a G1 Transformers game and take more of my money.

[XoPachi]

Tried Battle Circuit and got annihilated. :)

[Sima Tuna]

Tried Battle Circuit and got annihilated.

It's a pretty brutal game. I seem to recall the bosses are extremely mean, like "Captain Commando's Shitrom on crack" kind of mean. I love the visuals and beat em up gameplay but I wish the levels were a little less unconventional. I'd prefer more long scrolling levels rather than minigame/boss rush type of stuff.

[lastemperorjubei]

Had a lot of fun with Absolum. At first I dismissed it (not into rogue games but enjoyed Hades 1). But due to the recommendation of John Linneman and some others I tried it and damn what a game. Needed around 10 hours to beat Azra and 15 to beat Absolum. It looks fantastic, sounds great and plays wonderfully. Another recommendation from me is Fading Afternoon for the whole experience.

[Sima Tuna]

I got Marvel: Cosmic Invasion.

The moves feel good to do. Graphics are nice. Sound is fine. The levels themselves seem... Ok. I think these Shredder's Revenge guys like stage hazards and ranged enemies a little too much, but it's alright.

What I'm not understanding though, is the boss design here or how you're supposed to avoid damage. It seems like most, if not all, bosses and many enemies attack faster than one can react, *even* in cases where you start moving up or down as soon as an enemy reaches the same plane as your character. That enemy could be entirely on the other end of the screen, but once they line up with you, most of them have a fullscreen, super fast fireball type of attack they can hit you with.

A lot of enemies also have area denial mixed in, if you decide to close against them. Many of your characters can fly, but these same enemies also have fast anti-airs. It really feels like the game can decide to punish you for moving, no matter what you do.

I also don't think super moves have any i-frames, because I take a ton of damage whenever I use one, and usually get knocked on my ass as soon as the animation ends.

I'll fully admit to sucking at the game. I know some characters have dodge moves and some have fully invincible throws. I do think the shield enemy is pretty annoying since it forces a very specific counter (either a timed parry or a timed dodge) in order to deal any damage to him.

I don't think the bosses are AS shit as the ones in Shredder's Revenge, but they are not good. Enemies are generally more obnoxious than I'm used to seeing in beat em ups outside of maybe Shitrom and that fat fire-breathing guy from Captain Commando.

[1KMS]

The best Marvel Cosmic Invasion player I've seen:
https://www.youtube.com/@radicalratretro

[velo]

I don't think the bosses are AS shit as the ones in Shredder's Revenge, but they are not good.

I think they're way worse. I don't understand how you're supposed to fight some of them, and there's no practice/level select for hard mode. Based on the patch notes they apparently keep nerfing them.

The best Marvel Cosmic Invasion player I've seen:
https://www.youtube.com/@radicalratretro

That might help, thanks.

[Sima Tuna]

I don't think the bosses are AS shit as the ones in Shredder's Revenge, but they are not good.

I think they're way worse. I don't understand how you're supposed to fight some of them, and there's no practice/level select for hard mode. Based on the patch notes they apparently keep nerfing them.

Yeah, a lot of them will do a move like "glide to the bottom of the screen, immediately charge and shoot a fireball, move to the top of the screen almost instantly and charge another fireball." And the fireballs will have AoE hitbox around the boss so you can't really hit the boss' back while they're firing their lazorz. This seems to be a basic pattern which turns up over and over. I think Hela and Beetle both do it.

The fights aren't exactly hard but it's more, how are you supposed to do this hitless? When do the bosses give an opening to attack that they can't cancel into hitting you?

When I saw Iconoclast's play, he seemed to lean heavily on Panther or Wolverine as his team anchor so he had mobility and i-frames. I don't know what you do with the slower characters. I did watch some of the posted video but the guy is clearly a memo master. He moves into position to hit enemies before they spawn. I didn't check his strats for the bosses though.

[velo]

The fights aren't exactly hard but it's more, how are you supposed to do this hitless? When do the bosses give an opening to attack that they can't cancel into hitting you?

Yeah, that's it. I feel like if I could figure them out with a save state but having only one chance at it in a lengthy run is frustrating. All the characters seem to have at least a little cheese. A lot of enemies, including some bosses, can't really do anything about ranged throws like Phoenix's telekinesis. Parries are really good. The trouble spot for me is bosses in their final stage, when they're low on health and get a lot of armor... that's especially tough for me without a fast "dodge" character like Wolvie.

[Lord British]

Konami/Limited Run is bringing 6-Player Online X-Men Arcade (and other games) in this collection to modern consoles

https://youtu.be/XwzjDboeb5Q?si=EjOAoFK56HvjR-Dm

[Mortificator]

I had fun with those games back in the day, but none of them are exactly... good

[Lord British]

New He-Man beat em up by Limited Run

Looks sexy

https://youtu.be/m2e7An3DGpc?si=vk2ejrr8W-SPW2Yf

RD: 4/28

[1KMS]

Bitmap Bureau stepped up their animation posing. I see a lot of Warzard's Leo in He-Man. Speaking of "homage" I wonder if Maximum Carnage's OST will remain intact. Tons of swipes in that, the most blatant being one of Black Sabbath's "The Mob Rules". I'm halfway tempted to make a compilation to see if I can delay the release date.

[EDIT] "No changes to the soundtracks!" according to this.

[sunnshiner]

I got Marvel Cosmic Invasion too. It's ok. It was worth the entry fee to see Wolverine's Feral Throw but I blasted through the arcade mode to unlock the characters and haven't played it since. It looks and sounds ace but there's just something missing. Maybe it's a proper 'move in close to grapple//throw' mechanic that it needs or a couple of oversized tank characters like Hulk or Abomination?

[dr0gulus]

I got Marvel Cosmic Invasion too. It's ok. It was worth the entry fee to see Wolverine's Feral Throw but I blasted through the arcade mode to unlock the characters and haven't played it since. It looks and sounds ace but there's just something missing. Maybe it's a proper 'move in close to grapple//throw' mechanic that it needs or a couple of oversized tank characters like Hulk or Abomination?

I watched a few playthroughs of cosmic invasion and it looked pretty boring... One thing that astonished me is there are almost never more than 3 enemies on screen at once (not counting corpses, obviously). It's like Final Fight SNES all over again!

[BurlyHeart]

Mr Din, a long time supporter and contributor to beat em ups, is making his own beat em up and it looks great.

https://youtu.be/FUASWamGCTE

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3921 ... etropolis/

I don't normally back games on Kickstarter but I'm hoping this one will get fully funded: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/di ... metropolis

[Sima Tuna]

Looks very interesting. Seems like a combo-heavy game with a lot of ability to link moves in a flexible and free way. I think the "snap" of the moves is solid as well, at least just from how it looks. A lot of beat em ups don't nail the speed or fast recovery of how a beat em up character is supposed to feel. It's not like a fighting game, where you want the characters to be "fair" and have recovery animations after each move. Since it's a one-vs-many game, the beat em up character should feel overpowered in a satisfying way. Double Dragon Gaiden is a good example of a beat em up that didn't learn this lesson imo.

[ExitPlanetDust]

Yeah Deadly Metropolis is looking good. I hope they’re successful and I’ll be there for the finished product for sure.

I also noticed that The Takeover is getting a sequel. It seems like it’s doing all the right things by expanding on what worked in the first game. I think there’s also a demo on Steam.

[it290]

Had no idea this was a thing, but apparently Jay and Silent Bob are getting a beat 'em up.