Side scrolling beat-em-ups

Permabanned
Joined
15 Jan 2006
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388
Why has this genre seemingly died a death? They were my favourite type of game back in the 8/16 bit era and even to this day I still pop Streets of Rage or Ninja Turtles in Time and have a blast. I'm aware of the Streets of Rage remake on PC but I'm talking console and current gen.

Every game these days is the same. First person, open world, set some years in the future, pickup quest/missions from NPCs and so on so forth. It's redundant.

I feel the best hope for the type of game I'm wanting would be an indie creation. The graphics don't have to be ultra realistic, infact they should be somewhat cartoony. All that matters is that it plays smoothly. Think Rayman Legends.

So basically take Streets of Rage. Improve the graphics and animations, add some more moves for variety (it doesn't need to go overboard and have the move set of Tekken though), the levels should be big and the environment interactive, perhaps the choice to take different routes, a levelling up system (maybe), plenty of different types of weapons, enemies and bosses and a bunch of difficulty settings. Local or online multiplayer. It'd be great.

Why is no one doing this?
 
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Caporegime
Joined
28 Jan 2003
Posts
39,857
Location
England
I agree with you, used to love Double Dragon on the NES and Streets of Rage (or Bare Knuckle as I had a jap Megadrive) back in the day.

Great games and a real shame we don't get anything like it now.

The same can be said for the isometric view games like Desert/Jungle Strike as well.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 Dec 2012
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17,494
Location
Gloucestershire
There are some good indies around: Shank 2, Dust: Elysian Tale, Guacamelee, Dusty revenge etc.

Whilst fun, though, none of them really capture the spirit of Final Fight, TNMT Arcade, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage etc IMO. Or maybe they're just not quite the same style - they've all got their merits.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Sep 2003
Posts
6,188
I hear that. It's not just 2d beatemups - but pretty much old genres in general haven't been realised with today's tech. At best we get kickstarter versions of the games we had before - but what about building on the gameplay of these older titles and giving us something better? Like you said - multiples paths, levelling. I'd like to be able to throw a bad guy through a shop window, follow him into the shop, take a can of beans off the shelf and go old skool on him! I'd like shed loads of characters that trigger different events and paths through the game. Basically Streets of Rage * 10 with online and local co-op. It'd be massive.
 
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