Whatever you want to call them—beat ”’em-ups, brawlers, hack-and-slash, belt scrollers—this genre is home to players’ all-time favourite games. However, it’s also a genre perceived as archaic, superficial, and repetitive – a game style that’s too basic to exist today.
While 3D entries continued to influence and evolve into games like Devil May Cry, God of War, and even Yakuza, modern brawlers frequently rely on RPG features to compensate for this perceived simplicity. Even the Yakuza series can be directly linked to several arcade games.
While it’s pleasing to see games like Fight’n Rage and Streets of Rage 4 bucking the trends of the previous decade and evolving, the reality is that for many people, including both developers and players, the secret to creating a good beat ’em up seems to be packing the experience full of time-wasting cruft. However, a good, compelling entry in the genre adheres to a few basic design principles.