Fighting games and beat 'em ups, the thread

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Shipyard Locked

Shipyard Locked

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As part of the research and planning work for my current martial arts campaign, I'm running across plenty of cool stuff related to fighting games and beat 'em ups. I think I'll post some of it in this thread in case anyone is also into this stuff. I'll start with a youtube video.

 
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Adam Hunter stuff from Streets of Rage 4.

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Played Barbarian loads as a kid. The main thing I remember was trying to go for a decapitation at every opportunity.

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Capcom Beat ‘em Up Bundle on Steam.

Get it.

Final Fight is a classic and the thematic beat ‘em ups like Armored Warriors, King of Dragons and Captain Commando are so, so good.

I’m actually sad that Marvel vs. Capcom and Final Fight 2 and 3 aren’t included, and that we doesn’t have a similar Konami bundle. Loved their takes on TMNT and The Simpsons.

Also the Captain America & The Avengers from Data East, and Sega’s Spider-Man. Great Marvel licenses from an age long before the MCU.
 
Shipyard Locked said:
Old magazine illustration of all the regular bad guys from Final Fight 2 on the SNES:



Double Dragon promotional art:


More Double Dragon promotional 'art'(?)
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Is it just me or does the one on the right look like Elon Musk?
 
Vendetta, the arcade game.

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Pretty brutal...

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Features a lot of guns, always controversial for a beat 'em up...

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But best known for being the game where dogs can violate you to death...

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TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, TMNT: Cowabunga Collection, and River City Girls 2 are all coming later this year. It should be a good year for brawlers.

Did ANYONE play the TMNT RPG with a focus on the hand to hand combat? Everyone I ever heard of just made up mutant animals with tons of guns, like what if the Punisher was a muskrat.

A few other brawlers:

Raging Justice = What if there had been a 90s brawler that used the digitized rendered style popular in games of the era like Donkey Kong Country or Killer Instinct, except in HD? Raging Justice is a game that is intentionally a janky brawler with a very mid 90s style to it. I have to admit that I'm not in love with it as a game, but I do give it utmost respect for it's dedication to style.

The Takeover = What if Streets of Rage 4 had taken a different visual path? That seems to be the core concept that The Takeover seems to want to address. It also tries to bring comic book storytelling to the table, and doesn't quite nail the dismount as the story is just too generic. The game also has a much better trailer than the game itself. Seriously, the trailer is awesome, but the game... it's pretty decent but not a standout.

Mayhem Brawler = I only recently got this and I have to say that I'm impressed by it. Superficially as well as deeper down it's just a lower budget copy of Streets of Rage 4. What Mayhem Brawler brings to the table is storytelling and worldbuilding. The game features a serviceable tale as well as examples of clear worldbuilding as well as some parody of social media.

Fight N' Rage = This one is vaguely themed like TMNT. It's a post apocalypse world with lots of mutant animals. It's not quite Palladium After the Bomb: the Brawler, but it leans that way. Gameplay is like a button mashy Konami brawler with a dash of Streets of Rage 2 style mechanics. It tries to have a story, but that story is about the same level of a 90s console brawler, so it's not really worldbuilding as much as its just a backdrop for the action.

Dawn of the Monsters = A Kaiju brawler somewhat in the vein of the old SNK King of the Monsters games. Can't say much about it yet because despite having picked it up, I haven't actually played it yet. :quiet:

Phantom Breaker: Overdrive = Chibi anime waifu brawler! The plot is... anime. Gameplay is a plane based brawler. Imagine something like Kung Fu Master, but with a foreground and background track you could jump between. In terms of actual play, it plays something like a more action based version of the early Tales of Phantasia games.

Phantom Breaker Omnia = Anime waifu fighter v 2.0. Anime girls and a couple of guys beat the crap out of each other for very anime reasons.
 
Gabriel said:
Mayhem Brawler = I only recently got this and I have to say that I'm impressed by it. Superficially as well as deeper down it's just a lower budget copy of Streets of Rage 4. What Mayhem Brawler brings to the table is storytelling and worldbuilding. The game features a serviceable tale as well as examples of clear worldbuilding as well as some parody of social media.
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Gabriel said:
The Takeover = What if Streets of Rage 4 had taken a different visual path? That seems to be the core concept that The Takeover seems to want to address. It also tries to bring comic book storytelling to the table, and doesn't quite nail the dismount as the story is just too generic. The game also has a much better trailer than the game itself. Seriously, the trailer is awesome, but the game... it's pretty decent but not a standout.
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What video was it? Shows as Video Unavailable.

Edit: I can see it now. Thanks.
 
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Should be fine now, Necrozius Necrozius Shipyard Locked Shipyard Locked but here's a repost for you and whoever saw it :thumbsup:.


Also, D drkrash of course fans of fighting games are going to try and dis the franchises they don't like, so endorsing everything gets you raised brows from both sides:grin:. I don't even know why, but I see it all the time on forums when different games are being compared!
So I decided the thread wouldn't be complete without an impersonation of that fact:shade:.
 
Shipyard Locked said:
Fighter's History Dynamite - underappreciated fighting game?
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I never played Dynamite, but I had the SNES version of the original game. I liked it at the time, but then again it was a relatively early SNES fighting game. After the next wave of games with their 24Mb carts started getting released, I sold Fighters History and can't say I missed it.

I'd say the one that deserved better was Eternal Champions.

 
Loved me some side-scroller beat 'em ups. Bad Dudes was my favorite of the bunch. Never much cared for 1 v 1 fighting games. Fighting hordes of ninjas because they kidnapped the president is way more fun than fighting one dude because you're both in a tournament.
 
I tried Tekken 7 and was mildly disappointed. It's only my sons that like playing it, because it's got a damn bear:grin:!
Part of it is controls. I have come to prefer the Virtua Fighter/Dead or Alive controls where you just have punch, kick, block/hold and throw. Tekken has each key controlling one limb, which I barely tolerate in UFC, but can see the logic with a sport emulator. With a game as cinematic as Tekken, however, I don't see the point.

OTOH, the story mode of Tekken 7 is in my "that's how you're supposed to do that stuff" file. Same for the story mode of Soul Calibur 6, BTW...accidentally, I bought a combo of them together, so they're literally in the same box to this day:tongue:!
And I think the story mode is quite relevant to RPGs. Hey, I've read campaigns that were just as railroady:gunslinger:!







But what I think is a better model for a campaign is EA UFC4 Story mode:



So lately, I've been kicking mostly EA UFC4 when I get some time. Most of my fights end in the first round, though it's a game where getting to the decision is quite possible. I just can't be bothered, usually:shade:.
My only complaints are that joint submissions are much harder to land due to the controls (poor Ronda Rousey). So in the end, all my fighters end up strangling people instead of locking them!
Also, the so-called "standard chokes" are safest. Almost any other submission gets you in a worse position if it fails (shoulder locks excluded, mostly), but with at least one standard choke you can actually improve your position - go for arm triangle from half guard, and you end up in side control if it fails.
That was literally my winning combo last night. Arm triangle from half, denied, inverted triangle from side and the opponent is tapping out!
(Of course, I had just prestiged triangles, too).
Still, the controls for submissions are better this time around than they were in UFC2&3, so I'm not exactly complaining.
Well, I must also add that the highest difficulty in UFC4 isn't made for casual play. Just sayin'. But then why would you need to play on the highest difficulty if you're playing casually:devil:?
 
Me and Tekken parted ways with either installment #6 or Tekken Tag Tournament 2. It was then that I realized that despite all my time playing the game and practicing, I was beneath the lowest scrub in ability and was never, ever going to get any better. I also kind of realized that even though I was drawn to the franchise because of the large character roster, there were only a couple I actually had any interest in.

I used to be a big Soul Calibur fan, but I parted ways with that franchise too. Installment #5 completely shit the bed. Installment #6 just continued spewing diarrhea, at least from my POV. Adding that meter nonsense just turned it into another meter management game like every other fighting game on the market.

I guess I've also parted ways with Mortal Kombat. I liked the initial reboot, but XL and 11 had lots of stuff that I either don't want in my fighting games or don't want in my games period. I bought both XL and 11 on sale for my PS4, played them each once, and immediately realized that I absolutely loathed them and never wanted to play them again.
 
Bad Dudes never worked for me, but in the late 80s it seemed that game was in every convenience store.

Recently, I discovered Crude Buster/Two Crude/Two Crude Dudes. I had seen the game in the past, but I had never given it a try until recently. It's good cheesy fun.

 
Shipyard Locked said:
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Update for 2022 possible, but let's not get RL politics into it...:shade:

Gabriel said:
Me and Tekken parted ways with either installment #6 or Tekken Tag Tournament 2. It was then that I realized that despite all my time playing the game and practicing, I was beneath the lowest scrub in ability and was never, ever going to get any better. I also kind of realized that even though I was drawn to the franchise because of the large character roster, there were only a couple I actually had any interest in.

I used to be a big Soul Calibur fan, but I parted ways with that franchise too. Installment #5 completely shit the bed. Installment #6 just continued spewing diarrhea, at least from my POV. Adding that meter nonsense just turned it into another meter management game like every other fighting game on the market.

I guess I've also parted ways with Mortal Kombat. I liked the initial reboot, but XL and 11 had lots of stuff that I either don't want in my fighting games or don't want in my games period. I bought both XL and 11 on sale for my PS4, played them each once, and immediately realized that I absolutely loathed them and never wanted to play them again.
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I've parted with MK as well. I liked it, it was my first fighting game, but I knew I wouldn't want anything to do with MK11...
Soul Calibur would have been order of magnitude better without the meter as well! I can attest that having it off the screen in UFC makes a large, positive difference - especially since there are also a stamina meter, a block meter, and various meters for various body parts!
I call that "the UA effect" because the first game I played that told you to hide the number of remaining HP from the players was Unknown Armies.


Later, I also find that damage saves that allow any strike to be fight-ending achieve the same effect by hiding the meter from the GM as well:devil:!
However, the only fighting game that does that is MMA Rivals, AFAICT. And it's an Android/iPhone game. But yeah, the developer has confirmed that any strikes that damages the KO gauge can potentially end it - though the odds are low.
 
The other side-scroller beat-em-up that I loved, besides the original Double Dragon, of course, was Shinobi. My friend and I would stop at the Milk House (like a 7-11, but not a chain) on our way home from school and spend whatever quarters we had playing Shinobi. I don't think I ever got past the first boss. I wasn't especially good at video games.
 
E-Rocker said:
The other side-scroller beat-em-up that I loved, besides the original Double Dragon, of course, was Shinobi. My friend and I would stop at the Milk House (like a 7-11, but not a chain) on our way home from school and spend whatever quarters we had playing Shinobi. I don't think I ever got past the first boss. I wasn't especially good at video games.
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I think I'd also spent a lot of lunch money on that one.
 
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