The Top Ten Best Beat 'Em Ups

Despite being a dying genre, the Beat ‘Em Up is one of my all-time favorite genres of video games. Very few things come even close to being as satisfying as walking down the streets of some run down city and pounding criminal’s faces in with fists, kicks, pile drives and lead pipes. They’re such a product of the ‘90’s, it’s a shame they haven’t been as prominent ever since the arcade went out of style. Since most Beat ‘Em Ups were designed to be as hard as possible to rob kids of their quarters, they were everywhere in the heyday of the arcade and boy, do I miss those days.

The manliest of beat 'em ups.

So, combined with my love of Beat ‘Em Ups, including recently doing a Let’s Play of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and attempting to play through some Japanese Sailor Moon game, I’m doing a list of what I consider to be the ten best Beat ‘Em Ups. These are the games that are the most fun to play and simply bring the most joy when bashing somebody’s head in and eating floor chicken.

Now, since I’m not a professional game journalist and don’t get to just play whatever games I want for free, there are some pretty big games missing from this list (The most prominent being Castle Crashers and the fan-favorite, God Hand) simply because I haven’t played them. I’m sure if I had, I would have put them on this list but since I haven’t, unfortunately they aren’t here. So take it all with a grain of salt, is what I’m saying.

Abobo's Big Adventure is the Game of the Year

Do you like the NES? Of course you do! Everybody does. What if their existed a game that combined all your favorite NES games and was free to play? Well, then Abobo's Big Adventure is the game for you.
                      
                    


Yes, that is Abobo, the big muscle dude from Double Dragon, punching his way through hordes of Kung-Fu guys, Death from Castlevania and the old man from the Legend of Zelda. My personal favorite part is that the seaweed in the Mario Bros. underwater stage electrocutes you. That's just cruel.

The game is set to be released later this year and is going to be free to play, likely to avoid copyright issues. Hopefully all of the companies who hold the rights to the games and sprites have any sort of sense of humor and allow this game to exist. I'm looking forward to this love letter to the NES one way or another.

You can find more information at the game's official site located here.