Between the 70s and the 90s, arcade machines were producing things home consoles at the time could only strive to replicate. Whether it was smoother framerates due to bigger processors; incredible music from the advanced sound chips; or just the ability to play in a social setting, to many, arcades were, and still are the pinnacle of the gaming experience. Legendary games such as Pac Man, Street Fighter II and Sinistar were born beneath the neon lights of the marquee, and many would argue that the only real way to play them is on an arcade machine, as they were originally intended.
Now, I am in no way an arcade specialist, I wouldn't even go so far as to say I'm arcade proficient, as I never could quite get to grips with the arcade-style joystick, pun intended. But that didn't stop me from sinking many, many coins into a machine, just to be met by incredible difficulty curves and unfair pay-to-play strategies. Fair warning - no arcade games from the 70s are included here due to my own personal tastes in games, so don't expect a lot of golden-age arcade games, and instead prepare yourself for a whole lot of Konami beat 'em ups.
Before the era of Time Crisis and House of the Dead, there was Point Blank; a shooting game that consists of mini-challenges where you compete to shoot the most targets, shoot the correct targets or protect the muppet-like duo of Dr. Don and Dr. Dan. It's a simple concept wrapped in a quirky visual package, and I wouldn't be surprised if it inspired the Warioware games to some extent.
The emergence of light gun games in the arcade was pretty exciting, and it offered something different from the usual joystick action, and while later games would improve on the arcade shooter formula, Point Blank was a fun, little game that you didn't feel you needed to feed endless coins to enjoy due to its bite-size playability. One challenge may see you shooting semi-realistic, pixelated, cardboard criminals in a rail-shooting challenge a la Lethal Enforcers, and the next may see you attempting to shoot an apple off a cartoon character's head with only one bullet spare a la William Tell.
Even though the visuals vary for most of the challenges, they're in no way jarring, and all seem to fit in their absurdity. Point Blank is the epitome of light-hearted, easy to understand fun, and it gave you the chance to show off your skills in a way that other games in the arcade couldn't. Even as a 1-player experience, Point Blank would draw you in, beckoning you to test those skills and beat previous scores.
1989 saw the release of not one, but two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games; first was the NES iteration with a certain infamous difficulty spike and graphics that left a lot to the imagination; the second, released shortly after, was a fun 4-player beat 'em up that took the vivid visuals of the cartoon series and brought it straight to the arcades.
The game sees our pubescent, reptilian heroes answering the call when April O'Neil gets kidnapped by Shredder. What ensues is a tour through some of the series' most iconic landmarks as your chosen turtle plows through a portion of their rogues gallery to save Channel 6 News' top reporter (sorry, Vernon).
As the oldest game on this list, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles definitely shows some effects of aging that have been rectified in later beat 'em ups, but Konami really set the bar high here, especially when you consider that there weren't a whole lot of games based on cartoons just yet, and the ones that were didn't have this level of polish. Great sprite-work, vibrant colours and a myriad of chiptune themes and sounds really made it feel like you were playing through an episode of the cartoon. This is Konami's first entry on this list, but definitely not their last.
The obligatory 'sports game' to make the list. Like most sports games that I like, what brings Heavy Smash: The Future Sports to the list is it deviates pretty wildly from real-world sports enough that it piques my interest. So light on exposition is the game that it refuses to waste your time giving the player any sort've backstory whatsoever; there is a sports tournament taking place in the future, and that's all you really need to know.
But this isn't just any sport; this is Hyper Handball: a game that is essentially a cross between soccer and American football, but with exploding goals and super moves involved, which are two things I feel are sorely missed in real-world sports. You choose one of several countries to play as, each with their own stats and tackling manoeuvres, and compete against the remaining countries for tournament supremacy.
Heavy Smash: The Future Sports forgoes penalties, corners and timeouts and replaces them with fast-paced, frenetic fun. Your team can pass, jump, shoot and kick your way to controlling the ball, as your power bar steadily increases allowing you to unleash a devastating super-shot that can ricochet all over the field, or knock the goalie back into the goal, causing it to explode. Coming out just a year after Neo Geo's Soccer Brawl, this isn't a wholly unique concept, but the more sports games that non-sport enthusiasts can get behind the better.
The 80s/90s era of The Simpsons animated series was when the show peaked, and I'm happy to die on that hill, so it made sense that a video game would follow. Many films and cartoons have translated terribly into video game format, but I would never have guessed that you could take The Simpsons and make one of the most memorable beat 'em ups an arcade has ever seen out of it. The game sees you choosing one of the titular Simpsons' family members as you pursue Maggie who has been kidnapped.
Each character has their own pros and cons, and depending on who you play as and with, you'll be able to pull off special duo attacks, making you want to test out different combinations with your friends. The game pulls out all the stops to remain faithful to the source material by showcasing many familiar characters and locations plucked straight from the tv show, while adding in some new ones that would fit Springfield perfectly.
What makes it all even better is that I'm pretty sure the main cast reprised their voice roles. The animation is smooth, and the music and sound effects stand out in a good way. Yes, it's difficult as all hell, and unfair in that way that arcade games were to try and eat all of your money, but dammit if I didn't lose my money with a smile on my face.
Gals Panic is a Japanese puzzle game that sees you as a glowing cursor that uncovers a hidden background in polygonal chunks while avoiding an assortment of critters that fly around the screen attempting to stop you. Once you uncover around 80% of the background, the level is finished and you progress to the next stage. Oh, and those backgrounds - they consist of images of highly pixelated, semi-naked Japanese women, of course.
But it's not the lewd reveal that earns Gals Panic its position on my list, when I first played this game, I could barely complete a stage to even find out what I was working towards, but the puzzle aspect of the game is actually quite fun! As it turns out, trying to avoid giant spiders, living flames and isometric shapes as you daringly try and capture more background before the time limit runs out can be quite addictive.
Gals Panic is really a simple concept wrapped in a mad-cap package, one that proved popular enough in some territories that it spawned off a slew of sequels, spinoffs and clones. Modern puritans would choke on their own virtue than see Gals Panic make a comeback, but it will always have a place in my naive heart, though I'm pretty sure it won't be hitting the Nintendo Switch anytime soon, much to everyone's chagrin.
Take the post-apocalyptic setting of Mad Max, throw in a damsel in distress storyline, and mix in a soundtrack that is sharp enough to slice you in two, and you get Violent Storm; one of the most incredibly named arcade beat 'em ups you're going to find. The game gives you a choice of 3 playable characters, who might as well forego the burden of names and just be called “Fast”, “Strong” and “All-Rounder”.
Your chosen character sets off to rescue a lady from the clutches of a villain who commands an army of thugs, travelling through stages that consist of ruined parks, desolate streets and industrial factories until you come face to face with the final boss who resides in an elaborately decorated setting. This game takes all the beat 'em up tropes and revels in them, creating what is essentially a Final Fight clone but with the absurdity cranked way, way up.
Violent Stormn is fun, it's light hearted, and it manages to poke fun and pay homage to the titans that came before it. The visuals are great, the gameplay is enjoyable, and the pace is actually more frenetic compared to Streets of Rage and Final Fight, which isn't bad for a game seen as a parody. The game doesn't bring anything innovative to the table, but it doesn't try to, and that gives it the room to just be a great arcade game with a sick soundtrack and a title that, let's be honest, is worth the price of entry.
Not only is Capcom's Red Earth one of the newest additions to this list, it's also one of the strangest. If Darkstalkers is the red-headed stepchild of Capcom's fighting genre, Red Earth is the lab-grown experimental child we locked in the attic and refuse to speak of at the dinner table.The game ticks all the usual Capcom arcade boxes: 2D fighter featuring a variety of colourful characters who perform flashy special moves, all presented in incredibly smooth animations. But with Red Earth, Capcom decided to do things a little different.
Red Earth's Quest Mode lets you select from 4 playable characters, pretty slim pickings for a fighting game, but the game makes up for this by throwing in RPG elements into the mix. As you progress through stage after stage of battling weird and wonderful mythological creatures, your character gains experience points to level up their stats, granting them elemental resistances and new weapons.
Now, I'm not sure if Capcom were the first crazy bastards to combine fighting and RPG game elements, but it was something of a rarity in the 90s, so huge props to them for creating what would have been a pretty high-risk concept game, when they could've just as easily played it safe and called it a day. Red Earth feels like Capcom trying to stretch the limits of a gaming genre, and I'm all for that. Give me a turn-based strategy game with equal hekpings of survival horror and dating simulator over another Street Fighter any day.
Konami's love letter to furries: Metamorphic Force, is the mutts nuts. The plot of the game is your usual copy and paste; four good persons set off to defeat powerful, evil persons while obtaining power-ups along the way that turn you from a mere man into a were beast, it's all very Golden Axe meets Altered Beast, and doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of plot, but while it doesn't reinvent the wheel, it sure as hell has polished that wheel up nice and good with some sexy rims and mudflap girl stickers.
This was one of Konami's last forays into the beat 'em up genre, and they weren't going for subtlety. Incredible amounts of garish colours fill the screen at all times, while the gameplay adopts a blink-and-you-die level of speed which together, give the game a truly 90s Saturday-morning cartoon feel.
Metamorphic Force isn't remembered by many, and will forever be overshadowed by the likes of Streets of Rage and Final Fight, but like the mosquito trapped in amber, it's a curio that reminds us of a time long ago, one where Konami weren't so obsessed with soiling their IPs with gacha games and focused more on being, well, good.
Capcom's Aliens Vs Predator, thankfully, is not a game based on the similarly named Alien Vs Predator movie franchise. What it is, is one of the most action-packed, bad-ass beat 'em ups ever released to this very day. Based incredibly loosely on the events of both Predator and Alien franchises up to that point, this 1994 tour de force saw gamers choosing between 2 predators; a cyborg version of Predator's Dutch Schaefer; and another cyborg character who was NOT Alien's Elena Ripley, as they tear through a horde of aliens that have overrun the Earth.
While it's somewhat of a linear experience compared to today's offerings, the level of passion that went into this game sets it apart, with homages paid to both franchises peppered all throughout the game, including the familiar sound of the pulse rifles that litter the games' battlefield.
Boasting hard-hitting sound effects, tight controls and some of the slickest 2D animations found in an arcade machine, the game is simply a treat for the senses on all fronts, and with each of the 4 characters to choose from offering a completely varied play style and moveset, blasting your way through the alien menace solo or with a friend has never felt better.
And now for something a little different. Fighting Mania: Fist of the North Star is a boxing-arcade machine that was released in the 2000s by, you guessed it, Konami. For those not familiar with the Hokuto no Ken series, You play as the eponymous Fist of The North Star, Kenshiro, a fighting legend who battles his way through a post-apocalyptic future, crossing fists with all manner of bandits, warlords and demigods.
Konami decided to bring the fist-flying action of the series to your own hands by equipping the arcade unit with punch pads that swing out at you for you to hit with the accompanying punch gloves. You deliver a flurry of punches, and your opponent receives a number of corresponding fists to the face, for each pad you miss, you take damage. It's a pretty simple concept, but its a refreshing take on the arcade standard, replacing the usual joystick and buttons for the chance to dole out some punishment with your own strength and speed.
Fans of the anime series are sure to get a kick out of advancing through each of the familiar characters, and even those unfamiliar are sure to find some fun out of keeping up with the game's rapid-fire punch mechanic until they're completely exhausted. Is the game going to win any awards for in-depth plot threads? No. Is it a fun, unique arcading experience that I shared with friends and will never forget? You're damn right it is.