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.