8 Best Beat Em Up Games That You Should Know Update 04/2024

best beat em up games

When it comes to the beat ’em up genre, though not as popular as it used to be, it still has some fans in the indie scene. It doesn’t matter if you do it alone or with your friends. It’s just a simple and relaxing thing to do.

If a game is well made, it will have moves, enemies that are different colours, and bosses that are very hard to beat up, but also fun to play. As you can see, there are a lot of changes and deviations, including the addition of RPG elements, which seem to work well with the game format. Some of the best beat ’em ups have been made, and here are a few of them.

1. Streets Of Rage 4

Streets Of Rage 4

Streets of Rage was one of the first games in the genre, along with Final Fight. It doesn’t need to be said again because it was one of the first. STREETS OF RAGE 4 is the most recent game in a long-running series. It was a polished brawler game with unique characters, a crazy story, and a tight stage design.

Streets of Rage 4 is famous because it was made by indie developers DotEmu. They kept the arcade nature of the original Streets of Rage game while adding modern features like better checkpoints and online multiplayer. Plus, the art style is so beautiful.

2. Cuphead

If you look at the surface, Cuphead might not seem like your typical beat-em-up game. However, when you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that this amazing game shares a lot of features with other games in the same type of game genre. When you play Cuphead, you have to fight your way through a gruelling and exhausting action game that blends brawler and shoot ’em up elements.

There are a lot of easy deaths in Cuphead, so it’s not hard to think of it as being a beat ’em up because of that. As Mugman, if you can bring a friend along for the ride, you’re in for a great “beat ’em up”-like experience that you should spend time and attention on.

3. The TakeOver

The TakeOver

In The TakeOver, which was made in the 1990s, many of its ideas came from games like Streets of Rage and Final Fight. Besides its beautiful art, the game has a lot of impressive environmental effects that make combat feel more like a movie and more dangerous.

Because the controls are so tight, you don’t have to worry about the game getting boring. There’s also co-op and a lot of weapons to choose from, which help a lot in this way. Compared to Streets of Rage 4, it isn’t as well-made. But the occasional glitches don’t ruin what is otherwise a very fun game.

4. River City Girls

The Kunio-Kun series has been a huge hit in Japan since it first came out in 1986. Until 2017 when River City Ransom: Underground came out, the western world didn’t really start to like the series as much as it did in the east. River City Girls, which came out two years later, shows how far the series has come. Many people think it’s the best in the series.

It’s hard not to fall in love with this beautiful beat ’em up brawler because of its great sprites and fast-paced gameplay. It’s a lot of fun to play, has a lot of great humour, and has the perfect soundtrack for kicking ass and taking names. If you have a current-generation console, you can play it. That’s not the case with many of the best games in the genre because they don’t work on older consoles.

5. X-Men

X-Men

A lot of people thought that Konami was the best company for making arcade games like “beat ’em ups.” They had licences to some of the biggest and best-known brands in the world, which they used to great effect. This isn’t how it works now. So, there were many great Konami games in arcades over the decade, with X-Men being one of the best.

The X-Men were huge in the 90s thanks to the show and comics so a four-player beat ‘em up featuring different mutants in a well-made beat ‘em up from Konami created the perfect storm. Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Dazzler are some of the characters you can control as they try to fight Magneto, and you can even make them do things.

6. Final Fight 3

Street Fighter II was supposed to be a follow-up to Final Fight at one point, but it was changed into the legendary 1 on 1 tournament fight it is known for today. Many characters from Final Fight appear in Street Fighter, like Guy, Cody, Rolento, Hugo, Poison, and more. This is because Street Fighter is based on the beat ’em up game.

Final Fight 3 was the best game in the series, and it was also the last game in the series to be played in 2D. All of the other Final Fight games instead took place in 3D. In the end, though, they lost a lot of the things that made the original games so fun, which led to the series becoming a thing of the past.

7. River City Melee Mach!!

River City Melee Mach

Kunio-kun: River City isn’t a typical beat ’em up. The second Kunio-kun game in this roundup is not. As a result, River City Melee Mach!! takes the series’ basic combat moves, like punching and kicking. It adds special moves, stage tricks, and last-man-standing contests, as well as power-ups and other special moves.

Arc System Works’ River City Melee Mach!! gives the high school rivalries in the series a new lease on life. The game has retro-style graphics, fast-paced action, and almost 200 characters. Like River City Girls, it has a few problems that keep it from being a top beat ’em up.

8. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game – Complete Edition

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game came out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2010. It was a big hit. The game was made by Ubisoft Chengdu as a tie-in to the live-action movie that had just been released. It was a fun twist on the Brian Lee O’Malley comic book and a nod to other genre classics.

It’s not clear why Ubisoft took the game off of the PlayStation and Xbox digital stores in 2014. One thing that hasn’t changed in seven years is that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game looks and sounds just as good as it did when it came out. Dodgeball and Zombie Hordes are modes that were only available as DLC. The Complete Edition has all of them.