The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - Enjoying the Action Brawlers and Beat 'Em Ups Today
Need more recommendations on action brawlers and beat 'em ups from the 1980s? I've got you covered!
Beat ‘em ups are one of the most accessible genres in all of gaming, and just about anyone can pick one up and play it with little coaching. Since many beat ‘em ups came from the arcades, the games are generally short and easy to play. Most of the games on this list are fun even today.
The games we’re not going to cover (because they have been so extensively covered by gaming media) are the following notable or essential titles:
Kung-Fu Master (a.k.a. Spartan X and Kung Fu) (1984) – Irem’s beat ’em up classic is actually an adaptation of a Jackie Chan movie called Wheels on Meals and was designed by “Piston” Takashi Nishiyama, father of Street Fighter and Fatal Fury. It took on quite a life of its own through its popularity in the arcades as well as its Famciom port, which was designed and directed by Shigeru Miyamoto himself and released as one of the early NES titles. It’s often credited with being the first beat ’em up, but it’s mechanically quite different from the genre that followed it; standard enemies go down in one shot, and you’re constantly under attack on both sides. It’s a true classic, but also quite dated by today’s standards and beatable in just a few minutes if you know what you’re doing.
Rampage (1986) – You just can’t go wrong with giant monsters destroying cities, and Bally Midway’s 3-player arcade game was smart enough to include co-operative play with some light competitive aspects as players became George the Gorilla, Lizzie the Reptile and Ralph the Wolf and tore down buildings in Peoria before traveling all over Illinois, the Midwest and the entire USA before returning to where they started and doing it all over again. The game’s legacy extends not only to its many video game sequels, but also to the 2018 feature film, which is one of the best (and most faithful!) Hollywood video game adaptations.
Renegade (a.k.a. Nekettsu Kouha Kunio-kun) (1986) – Technōs and Taito had a major hit on their hands with this game, which served as the first entry in both the Kunio-Kun and Shin Nekketsu High School (River City Ransom and Super Dodgeball) series as well as the first entry in the Western Renegade series. This was the game that established the beat ‘em mechanics that would typify the genre in years to come, including the 2.5D perspective and bare-knuckle brawls with enemies who don’t go down from just one punch. The game even includes weapons that can be knocked out of enemies’ hands and picked up and motorcycles that foes have to be knocked off of. Designer Yoshihisa Kishimoto apparently based the game on his own teenage years when he got into a lot of fights. Little did he know what an influence his own experiences would have on arcade games.
Double Dragon (1987) – Yoshihisa Kishimoto followed up on Technōs’s Renegade with another major series for Taito featuring two brothers fighting across a grimy city to save Marian from the gang known as the Black Warriors and their boss Willy. Double Dragon was not only one of the biggest arcade games of the 1980s thanks to its co-operative play and incredible action, but also one of the biggest early games for the NES, even though its adaptation made some major changes (including making one of the brothers the game’s secret villain!). The Sega Master System, in the meantime, had a very solid arcade port with co-op play. A franchise spanning many games soon emerged, and there was even a cartoon show, a Marvel comic book series written by Dwayne McDuffie, a live-action movie and a crossover game with the Battletoads.
Altered Beast (1988) – I’d struggle to call Altered Beast a good game, but it was an impressive and popular arcade game for its day that rose in stature when an arcade-perfect translation for the Sega Genesis was included as that system’s first pack-in game for North America. Over five levels, power up your increasingly buff warrior until you become a wolf, dragon, bear, tiger or golden wolf to take on the nefarious magician Neff.
Bad Dudes Vs. Dragon Ninja (a.k.a Bad Dudes and DragonNinja) (1988) – Data East’s wonderfully weird beat ‘em up features the same one-hit-kill mechanics from Kung-Fu Master, but integrates weapons and platforming to keep things fun. As you fight your way through seven stages, you’ll take down tons of colorful ninja, face some odd enemies (including Karnov!) and eventually rescue President Ronnie, who’ll invite you to go out for a burger afterwards. It’s even more fun with two players.
Ninja Gaiden (a.k.a. Shadow Warriors) (1988) – Tecmo’s first attempt at Ninja Gaiden offered a 2-player cooperative experience where the nameless blue ninja and orange ninja must fight their way across the United States through a slew of prisoners released from Alcatraz and defeat Bladeamus, a descendant of Nostradamus, before he can launch nuclear ICBMs for which he’s obtained launch codes. It’s a great-looking game that includes several special moves you can perform and even has a special button (originally on top of the joystick) for grappling onto poles, but it’s quite repetitive and not very much fun. The NES and Xbox games of the same name are definitely better.
Splatterhouse (1988) – Namco’s horror-themed beat ‘em up is a landmark for its willingness to go incredibly gory at a time when arcade games were really thought to be for kids. You play as Rick, a guy who’s put on the fearsome Terror Mask and turned into a hulking monster who has to beat down other creatures. You’re supposed to be rescuing your girlfriend, she turns into a monster halfway through and then you have to kill her. It’s amazing this game ever got made, let alone released in arcades. A Japanese parody game followed for the Famicom in 1989, and two sequels were released in the early 1990s for the Sega Genesis.
Superman (1988) – A fun adaptation of the DC Comics superhero from Taito that even allows you to play co-op with a clone (who, sadly, is not Bizarro – just a palette-swapped Superman-Red who looks a bit like Shazam.) I particularly enjoy the death animations, which has the enemies de-rez into wireframe models before they vanish. Beyond brawling just above the street, there are horizontal shooting sequences where you use your eye lasers to destroy enemies and vertical scrolling sequences that have you flying along skyscrapers and punching floating foes. Only a Japanese developer from the 1980s could have come up with this odd but compelling take on the source material.
Vigilante (1988) – Irem and Data East’s follow-up to Kung-Fu Master is not a sequel, but a revamping of the actual sequel, a 1987 game called Beyond Kung-Fu: Return of the Master that continued Thomas’s story but never made it past location testing. Vigilante changes the setting to North America and gives you the mission of fighting your way through New York to rescue your girlfriend Madonna from the gang known as the Skinheads and their leader, Giant Devil. It’s a good-looking game with great action, but it’s honestly not as memorable as Data East’s Bad Dudes Vs. Dragon Ninja, released that same year.
Final Fight (1989) – Capcom’s impressive late-1980s beat ‘em up was supposed to be a sequel to Street Fighter, but director Yoshiki Okamoto decided to make the games distinct. It’s a good thing he did, because Final Fight and Street Fighter II allowed Capcom to become the king of two of the 1990s’ most important genres, and Final Fight served as the template for many beat ‘em ups to come. The original game involves Guy, his friend Cody and Metro City Mayor Mike Haggar taking on the Mad Gear Gang to rescue Jessica, who’s Guy’s girlfriend and Haggar’s daughter. It’s a wild time with awesome graphics, great bosses and distinctive stages, and many of its characters have since appeared in Street Fighter games.
Golden Axe (1989) – Makoto Uchida and Sega’s famous beat ‘em up is remarkable not only because of its great graphics and distinctive color palette, but also because it allows three players to hack and slash their way through a fantasy adventure that includes rideable beasts and multi-tiered magical spells. But perhaps the biggest surprise comes in the ending, which transitions from the defeat of the villain Death Adder to three children playing the game in an arcade before then getting knocked down as enemies storm out of the cabinet and on a rampage in the 20th century. While the game had several sequels and spin-offs, none is quite as good as the original game.
River City Ransom (1989) – North American players might not have realized that this charming RPG-like brawler was connected to Renegade, but it didn’t matter; the game was so much fun it felt like it could be its own thing. As River City Ransom has developed a stronger reputation as one of the true classics for the NES, it’s received a modern remake, some spin-offs and sequels, including WayForward’s excellent River City Girls games.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989) – Konami’s arcade adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show was timed perfectly with the rise of a fad that would take the world by storm in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The game’s 4-player cabinet allows all four turtles to be in play, and the graphics and sound are so good that the game feels like it was designed by the same people who made the early episodes of the TV show. While the game can be a little tedious in places, this adventure offers everything a TMNT fan could hope for – lots of Foot Clan ninja robots to destroy, Mousers to shake off, pizzas to collect and, of course, the twin menace of Bebop and Rocksteady and the ultimate showdown with Krang and The Shredder in the Technodrome. It’s an amazing game that really holds up today, and it’s so much better than the disappointing 1989 NES game or the 1990 NES port of the arcade game that neither are even worth mentioning.
If you haven’t played these games, you ought to.
Games I’ll Feature in the Book
I’ve spotlighted quite a few arcade action titles already, but a few titles I’ll additionally feature in the book edition of The Greatest Games You’ve (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2 include:
Knuckle Joe (1985) – Do you like tough games? This arcade brawler from Seibu Kaihatsu and Taito is so hard it actually broke me when I was playing it. But I hung in there for the tense battling, the tight mechanics and fast and fluid action. I’d recommend turning the sound down, though - the music is atrocious.
Black Belt (a.k.a. Hokuto no Ken) (1986) – Sega released this Fist of the North Star Mark III game as Black Belt in the North American market and also included some casual racism and misogyny in the manual. It’s a shallow Kung-Fu Master clone with a touch of Yie Ar Kung Fu, but it’s still fun.
Mr. Goemon (1986) – If you’ve played The Legend of the Mystical Ninja or any of Konami’s Goemon games, this arcade game is the foundation for that series, but it’s also quite different, depicting Goemon in a kabuki-style costume in a world inspired by ukiyo-e style artwork. It’s not terribly hard, but it is fun.
Kung Fu Kid (1987) – Have you ever wanted to kick a lobster into a group of bad guys and watch them go flying? Believe it or not, your dreams have been answered, and all you have to do is make it a couple of levels into Kung Fu Kid, a 1987 Sega game which deserves to be better known if for no other reason than because it’s so darn weird. It’s a good-looking game that’s a sequel to the Japan-only SG-1000 game Dragon Wang.
Games You Might Want To Try
A few other titles that I opted not to feature in detail, but which are worth checking out, include:
Chinese Hero (a.k.a. Super Chinese and Kung-Fu Heroes) (1984) – The starting point for Culture Brain’s Super Chinese series. The game takes place from an overhead perspective and involves a pair of top-knot ponytailed monks named Jacky and Lee fighting through screen after screen of enemies to retrieve treasures and rescue Princess Min-Min. It’s a well-made game, and its NES version is not only a great port on its own but included as the battle mode for the RPG Little Ninja Brothers featured elsewhere in this volume.
Chan Bara (1985) – A tough samurai game in the vein of Kung-Fu Master from Data East. You progress from left to right, taking down several different varieties of enemies with one-hit sword swipes, hacking off limbs or slicing them in half.
Metal Clash (1985) – A unique brawler from Data East where you play as a flying robot and bash enemies into explosive bursts of pieces while you rescue yellow-suited workers. Because you’re constantly in the air, the game has an unusual feel to it that requires completely different tactics than most brawlers.
Shao-Lin’s Road (a.k.a. Kicker) (1985) – A Konami-made follow-up to the competitive fighter Yie Ar Kung-Fu that translated its art style and acrobatic moves to a Kung-Fu Master-style multilane beat ‘em up game. You’ve got to love how the hero shouts “Guts!” and flexes his muscles whenever he clears a stage.
Nunchakun and Lady Master of Kung Fu (1985) – A Japan-only game from (possibly?) Kaneko and Taito that feels like a combination of Kung-Fu Master, Yie Ar Kung-Fu and Elevator Action. It’s debatable which version is the original, but Lady Master of Kung Fu has the titular hero (heh heh) remove her clothes between stages, so there’s speculation that it was the pirated game.
My Hero (1985) – Coreland and Sega’s take on Kung-Fu Master is a rather strange arcade action platformer with one-hit beat ‘em up mechanics and cartoony graphics. Perhaps the strangest thing is that the final level (before the game begins looping) seems to take place on the Planet of the Apes. It’s a difficult game (and nigh-impossible in its Sega Master System port), but it does have some charm that makes it worth at least checking out.
Typhoon Gal (1985) – An arcade brawling game from Taito where you strap on your pink gi and take female karateka Yuki through an endless series of dojos and beat the students and masters senseless, one at a time.
Gladiator (1986) – A strange side-scrolling game from Allumer and Taito where you control a warrior who first has to make it through a corridor of fireballs before you engage in sword and shield combat with another fighter, knocking off their armor until you defeat them. The odd controls allow you to toggle the height of your shield to block attacks.
Guardian (1986) – An odd scrolling arcade beat ‘em up from Toaplan in the style of Ultraman, but way uglier. One of the things I love is the backgrounds, which include a Tyrannosaurs Rex who’s resigned himself to being frozen into a glacier, an Egyptian sphinx with devil horns and a food stand advertising a seemingly nonexistent video game called Redrum.
China Warrior (1987) – A really great-looking beat ‘em up for the TurboGrafx-16 with huge, awesome-looking sprites and an exciting Bruce Lee martial arts style with Kung-Fu Master mechanics. It’s a simple and repetitive game that’s often criticized for style over substance, but there’s a sort of zen in making it through the game’s twelve levels and fighting bosses who resemble characters from Hong Kong action films, including a staggering drunken master at the end.
Kozure Ookami (a.k.a. Lone Wolf and Cub) (1987) – I was really excited to play Nichibutsu’s arcade adaptation of the epic manga series, but it’s a repetitive brawler that gets dull pretty quickly despite its great music and fun theming. It’s also entirely in Japanese, which is one reason I elected not to feature it in more detail. It’s certainly worth a try if you know the source material, but it’s a challenging and repetitive experience that wears out its welcome by the second or third stage and long before the conclusion, which says “Congratulations! You next world, let’s challenge,” before starting you over for another round.
Kageki (1988) – While it may look like a competitive fighter, Kaneko and Taito’s Kageki is a single-player beat ‘em up where cartoonish characters beat the heck out of each other in punchy slugfests as you try to take down every member of a motorcycle gang. It’s a game that looks a lot better than it plays, but there’s some fun to be found if you enjoy boxing-style brawlers. The arcade original is far better than the Sega Genesis port.
D.J. Boy (1989) – A strange hip hop inspired arcade game from Japanese developer Kaneko where you play as a b-boy crew that skates around and battles weird enemies in a variety of urban locales before heading out into a Western ghost town for some reason. The narration in the North American version is done by famed DJ Wolfman Jack, and the game’s over-the-top enemies and art style are certainly memorable. Unfortunately, the game includes several caricatures of African-Americans that are extremely racially insensitive. Kaneko must have realized they’d crossed a line because they tried (very sloppily) to censor the game in console releases once they understood it was offensive, but these home versions are also worse to play due to other changes made to the gameplay itself.
Hachoo! (1989) – A gloriously stupid beat ‘em from Jaleco up set in ancient China where you battle a variety of cartoonish enemies while you try to defeat an evil magician that escaped from his imprisonment within a stone statue. It’s best known for allowing you to throw enemies at the screen, often with over-the-top animations.
Tough Turf (1989) – If you enjoy Double Dragon and Renegade, you might enjoy this blatant arcade copycat from SunSoft and Sega where you play as a grunting salaryman who jumps out of the back of a truck and then starts beating up a gang for reasons that are never explained. The game’s slow and dull for the most part, focusing on knocking foes down with weapons over bare-knuckle brawling. But then you get to the gang’s boss. As you fight him, you see a blond woman in a red dress who’s in a cage. Once you set her free, she takes a swing at you and you have to battle her on the roof as the final encounter! Presumably, she’s the hidden mastermind, but the game sure doesn’t care to tell you.
The Ninja Warriors (1989) – A massive three-screen, two-player cooperative robot ninja brawler from Taito that resembles Kung Fu Warrior in style, Rush’n Attack in theme and Shinobi in action. The game is very cool-looking thanks to its triple screen display and impressive artwork, but its combat is slow-paced and has aged badly. We will definitely revisit the 1994 SNES remake/sequel in a future volume because Natsume took the original concept and cranked it up into a cult classic that deserves to be better known. I’ll also note that the heroine, Kunoichi, is perhaps one of the coolest video game ninjas there is, swinging a blond ponytail and a killer attitude.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!