The Arcade Beat ’em Up revival.
Ninja Turtles and Street Fighter bring the nostalgia flooding back.
Last year I talked about how the classic arcade beat ’em up genre was having a renaissance after being out in the cold for decades, with the fantastic Streets of Rage 4, Mortal Kombat 11 and River City Girls bringing the genre to modern consoles.
Now as we head into the second half of 2022, we have a number of new beat ’em up games announced with online co-op support and the genre feels like it’s truly back.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
This is a return to the classic style of arcade side-scrolling beat ’em ups (sometimes referred to as side-scrolling beat ’em ups) not really seen since the early 90s, and continues on from one of the most famous and much loved games on the Super Nintendo, TMNT IV: Turtles in Time.
Announced last year by Tribute Games and Dotemu who gave us Streets of Rage 4, Shredder’s Revenge really is a great modernised version of the games you loved and grew up with.
The 6 player online co-op is truly amazing fun for those who remember the days of having 4 players in the arcade playing Turtles in Time or the original arcade game.
Having 7 characters to choose from is also a nice touch and something we’ve never had in any TMNT game, pick from the four Turtles, April, Splinter or Casey Jones.
You can’t help but smile while you play this and although this genre has a habit of becoming repetitive, this game really keeps you interested with easter eggs, power moves progression and the 6 player online support has changed the game for this type of beat’em up.
This game is going to really shine the spotlight back onto beat ’em ups, it’s a modern retro combination thats perfectly done like Sonic Mania and comes with an amazing soundtrack by Tee Lopes.
Shredder’s Revenge is out now on PS4 & PS5, Xbox/Game Pass, Switch and PC.
TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection
This was a huge surprise at a recent Playstation state of play event, the complete remastered HD collection of classic TMNT games from Konami. As someone who played all the originals when they were first released, this is something I have wanted for years.
The full list of games included in this collection.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (Game Boy)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)
The collection also has online support for 4 games, which include the two arcade games, Tournament fighters (SNES version) and the Hyperstone Heist.
I won’t go into detail too much as I mentioned earlier in my previous article, I spoke about how loved most of these games were with more detail, but the GameBoy games are a nice extra that are really worth playing and I really didn’t expect to ever see these ever return.
The collection will feature save and rewind features so you can return to your saved spot whenever you want or rewind if you make a mistake while playing, and that means I might finally beat the underwater level on the NES game.
My personal favourites from this collection are both Arcade games, Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo), Hyperstone Heist, Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo) and Radical Rescue.
I feel like this game was perfectly timed by Konami to ride the wave of nostalgia that recent beat ’em up games and especially the hype from Shredder’s Revenge have brought us.
The Cowabunga Collection is due out late summer 2022.
Street Fighter 6
The legendary gaming series returns with the 6th instalment, this time with new designs and animations, new open world mode and available on all platforms this time.
The game’s new World Tour mode shows a single-player story set in the streets, alleys, and rooftops of Metro City. This gameplay mode seems to borrow elements from games like Grand Theft Auto or Tekken, and gives Capcom the tools for telling a more intimate fighting game story with more detail, and less reliant on boring cutscenes.
This makes SF6 the most immersive entry of the series so far and gives the characters a lot more personality and detail.
Not much else is known about the game just yet, including the full roster or online modes, but we should expect it to release sometime in 2023 and I’m sure the hype will begin to build once we have more details.
Personally, I’m looking forward to this one as I didn’t enjoy SF5 and found it lacking. It seems like some real effort has gone into SF6 and the fact the new animations look stunning makes me excited for what else we might see within the game.
Street Fighter II is iconic and maybe the greatest brawl type beat ’em up game of all time, so I will always judge the sequels unfairly but I know we should be expecting more these days from modern games.
River City Girls 2
This series has been a silent hit, such a fun, bright and action packed retro style game set in the 90s, the third follow up from River City Girls Zero and River City Girls with more classic beat ’em up adventures with a modern twist similar to Shredder’s Revenge.
River City Girls Zero was the first time the series had seen a release outside of Japan, as it was originally a Super Famicom exclusive in 1994. It was remastered and renamed for the rest of the World recently, the 2019 sequel named River City Girls was a great modern take and my first introduction to the series.
These type of games are perfect for the Switch but obviously great on all consoles, I just love the retro feel of playing these types of games on a Nintendo system and the retro graphics are hardly taxing for consoles.
I love the 90s Japanese vibe, bright colours and music you get from this game series and it looks like River City Girls 2 will continue that with some fun 90s easter eggs and new gameplay experiences.
The manga cut scenes are always very well done and give you a more detailed story compared to what you’d get back in the 90s. With 6 characters to choose from as well, this gives you more options and gameplay experiences compared to the previous two games.
River City Girls 2 is due out Summer 2022.
MultiVersus
The last game on my list to watch out for, this entry comes from Warner Brothers and I’d describe it as a mix of Smash Bros and Fortnite.
This free to play game features characters from across Warner Brothers media, like Batman, Superman, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Game of Thrones Arya and even Velma from Scooby Doo.
There are also rumours of a lot more characters to come from properties outside of the Warner Brothers catalogue like Godzilla, Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, Lego, Naruto, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and possibly even Marvel characters.
The idea here seems to be similar to Fortnite where any character goes, you could play with your favourite TV, game, movie or comics star in a 4-player Smash Bros type beat ’em up that allows you to buy them within the in-game store.
This whole game looks insane but in a good way, early beta testers have praised the game but a public release is due sometime this year.
I like the idea of allowing fighters from all walks of media into the arena but I just hope they keep adding enough to keep this game going, but with a possible season battle pass rumoured, Warner Bros might just have a hit on their hands.
Overall, the beat ’em up genre is in a great place right now with Shredder’s Revenge getting rave reviews, Streets of Rage 4 and Super Smash Bros Ultimate still doing well and hype now building for Street Fighter 6, MultiVersus and the Cowabunga Collection. The revival is happening right now and as someone who was lucky enough to experience it the first time round at home and in the arcades, I hope we get some great new dynamic games that use modern consoles and some that use the family friendly retro styles as well.
I can’t wait to see what else we might get in the coming years with rumours of a new Mortal Kombat, a new Marvel fighting game and maybe some DLC for Ninja Turtles.
