Nice.  Undercover Cops and Golden Axe II for me I think, for starters anyway.  Believe it or not I haven't played the latter.  Will do the FF's too.

It's the next one I want to play, the arcade only one that hasn't had a home console port (aside from a weird retro device, apparently).  Hold on...

Don't get me started on the Sega Ages line.

So many games like this that deserved to reach a wider audience but all we kept getting was the same 16-Bit titles over and over.

Not a genre I've ever got into. I don't feel any sense of control with them.  I find them a good laugh played casually in MP though.

If Battletoads had more scrolling beat-em-up levels I'd have got more out of it in 2P. The SNES update was a real laugh and you had the option of switching off collision between players. But once you got to level 2 or 3 it was pretty much impossible to progress.

It is odd - probably why I like it.

Never played the DD crossovers either - think they were so-so according to reviews.

Ooh yeah, Combatribes was on my list after reading Go Straight. Will check that out. Haven't got the SNES ROM for Undercover Cops so I played Golden Axe II. Still love the basics but time has been a big ol' meany to it, especially in single player.

I must be missing something because the first boss won't let me stand up before he knocks me down again.

Time_on_my_hands wrote:

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Nice.  Undercover Cops and Golden Axe II for me I think, for starters anyway.  Believe it or not I haven't played the latter.  Will do the FF's too.

Undercover cops is ace but my MAME version doesn't have sound. Combatribes is worth a look - it's Double Dragon not taking itself seriously. There were so many games that were identikit to Final Fight, but Cadillacs and Dinosaurs stood out. Also Two Crude. Double dragon can fuck off - all three are crap, and the third wants to be an RPG.

Double Dragon (the first on the arcade) is possibly, arguably, the best coin-op of all time. I have no idea how you can think it's crap. The music alone is got tier. The fact you got to pick up scenery was god tier. The fight against your brother at the end was.. god tier.

mk64 wrote:

Nice.  Undercover Cops and Golden Axe II for me I think, for starters anyway.  Believe it or not I haven't played the latter.  Will do the FF's too.

Undercover cops is ace but my MAME version doesn't have sound. Combatribes is worth a look - it's Double Dragon not taking itself seriously. There were so many games that were identikit to Final Fight, but Cadillacs and Dinosaurs stood out. Also Two Crude. Double dragon can fuck off - all three are crap, and the third wants to be an RPG.

Double Dragon (the first on the arcade) is possibly, arguably, the best coin-op of all time. I have no idea how you can think it's crap. The music alone is got tier. The fact you got to pick up scenery was god tier. The fight against your brother at the end was.. god tier.

First Double Dragon was a great old laugh in 2P. I only remember it in the arcade though - so that's some time ago. The novelty of it was its biggest draw at the time.

The Capcom compilations have a few examples - I remember Knights of the Round. Wasn't there a couple of D&D games too? They were probably the later examples with bigger and bigger sprites and some really nice sprite work. Some of those were 3 or 4 player too.

MP is key to the genre - I remember even having a laugh with mates with Altered Beast on the MD in its early days.

I think that the real change in the genre came when it moved past 2 button control schemes, they were just extremely limiting, meaning that there was very little depth or variety available in the combat. I play 2 button examples these days and I’m usually getting bored by the end of the first level.

Some old reviews of mine in here for scrolling beat'em ups:

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu (NES) – 4/5
Double Dragon (Arcade) 2/5
Double Dragon II The Revenge (Arcade) 2/5
Rushing Beat (SNES) 2/5
Rushing Beat Ran (SNES) 2/5
Rushing Beat Syura (SNES) 2/5
Dynasty Wars (Arcade) - 2/5

Cross-posting today's clears from the 52 Games thread...

Golden Axe II - Mega Drive (50mins)

I booked today off to avoid rail strike carnage, and got home from work on Monday to find the rest of the fam dashing off to the family caravan for the week (mother in law had to come home and empty van = GO GO GO).  Which means I've had so much free time I haven't quite been able to work out what to do with myself and basically settled on watching Spiderman films, drinking pre-mixed M&S cocktails, not washing up and playing games.  

I've never played Golden Axe II before, so until today it sat in a gap in my Sega knowledge alongside a handful of other big hitters such as Kid Chameleon and the Thunder Force games.  I owned the adequate but nerfed Master System port of the original, borrowed the MD version more than once and even read the Sega Power novel, plus I've revisited the MD and arcade versions plenty of times in co-op.  I do like a bit of Golden Axe.  

It's tough to judge an entry I have no instilled fondness for though.  This is supposed to be a top tier MD scrolling beat 'em up, but for me it's very similar to the original, albeit with new layouts and unfamiliar music, ergo it can't hide behind the fuzzy nostalgia feels. The vast majority of scrolling beat 'em ups are better with at least one pal in tow, and the GA experience suffers from the solo doldrums more than most.  

I enjoyed myself because it's Golden Axe, but time has been unkind to it.  It's not the simplicity that feels off, more the irritating aspects of certain enemy attacks.  You couldn't put a pad in the hands of someone unfamiliar with these games and expect them not to complain about what they're playing.  Still, the improved magic system is a good addition (you can choose how many vials to use now, the all-or-nothing approach is gone) and there aren't many things in any games that beat the successfully throwing a baddie down a hole feeling.  Or tricking the AI to walk into one, ha.  These games play well within their own rules, but my hot take is that that's only something someone who formed that thought in the early 90s would say today (convoluted sentence but it can stay because I know what I mean).

It probably is better than the original, but for me it's not even close - I'd happily play the first game in two player right now, whereas I'm not sure if I'll ever feel the need to revisit this ahead of it. Harsh but true.  The music is weird too, some of it wouldn't be out of place in Streets of Rage, which is an odd choice stylistically.  74%




Combatribes - SNES (45 mins)

Objectively speaking this is awful.  Some retro scrolling beat 'em ups just are, even if they weren't once upon a time.  Initially I wasn't sure if I could make it through, after watching the first boss batter my prone, crumpled body around the screen with a wooden plank until I had to use a continue, but it does have a rhythm you can settle into if you firm out the initial urge to run for the hills.  Grabbing opponents you've knocked down seemed key to success, and once I found a character I liked - the 7ft 1" guy with blonde hair, I forget his name.  Probably Johnny Lightning or something similar - I started to get to grips with it.  

The layout is unusual as you'll only have to beat a few baddies in each stage before the boss appears.  Stage 5 has multiple levels, separated by the tiniest elevator segments in any scrolling beat 'em up ever (there's no room to swing a cat, but somehow you can still swing the enemies).  You'll face all the bosses again in this building, because of course, which means that stage is roughly as long as the previous four put together.  Odd.

I would have been amazed by this when I was 9 or 10 - around about the same time my mate's copy of Wrestle War on his shiny new Megadrive was making me yearn to double the bits of my lowly Master System.  The problem is, this wasn't out in late 1990 - the SNES port didn't arrive until two years later, by which point it would have been eyebrow raisingly out of date, imo.  So I don't quite know when, if ever, this version would have appealed to a young me.  

56%.  I didn't hate it, but I can't even begin to imagine the heartbreak of kids who used one of their limited games a year tokens on this.  It's got a password system too, so persistent players probably would have seen it off in a day or two anyway.

OK, so here's all my scrolling beat 'em up reviews from this thread:

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu (NES) – 4/5
Streets of Rage II (MD) - 5/5
Captain Commando (Arcade) - 3/5
Knights of the Round (Arcade) - 3/5
Warriors of Fate (Arcade) - 3/5
Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja (Arcade) - 2/5
Two Crude (Arcade) - 2/5
Splatterhouse (PC Engine) - 3/5
Final Fight (Arcade) - 5/5
Final Fight 2 (SNES) - 4/5
Final Fight 3 (SNES) - 4/5
Double Dragon (Arcade) 2/5
Double Dragon II The Revenge (Arcade) 2/5
Rushing Beat (SNES) 2/5
Rushing Beat Ran (SNES) 2/5
Rushing Beat Syura (SNES) 2/5
Vendetta (Arcade) 3/5
Double Dragon (GB) 3/5
Dynasty Wars (Arcade) - 2/5

I was halfway through Mighty Final Fight on NES before moot suggested this, so I will finish that and definitely play Golden Axe 3.

Did you discover the special and super moves? The inputs for them are like Street Fighter moves, fireballs etc.