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.
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| 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.
