We battle through the best beat-’em-ups ever seen

With the recent announcement of Super Street Fighter IV and the upcoming release of Tekken 6, we thought now would be the perfect time to recount some of the greatest fighting games ever made…

Mortal Kombat II had an element of fun about it, unlike the rather dark original.

25. Mortal Kombat II
Year: 1993
Publisher: Midway
This game splits opinion in the RG office. In all honesty, we’re all in agreement that Mortal Kombat isn’t a great fighting game – it certainly hasn’t aged too well (boot the game up on the Mega Drive for unmitigated proof of that). However, the franchise deserves special mention just for the amount of guts it displayed when it was released. Blood, Fatalities and essentially trying to do everything Street Fighter II wasn’t (which, if you think about it, was actually pretty insane) and somehow, with their peculiar Enter The Dragon-themed Halloween party fighter, John Tobias and Ed Boon would pull it off.

It was their sequel that really upped the ante though, dropping the dark tones of the original for a more tongue-in-cheek approach that suited the series a lot better. With the addition of Babalities, Friendships, and even in-house jokes about crisped bread, you had a real sense that the team were having a lot of fun putting the game together, a fun that rubbed off brilliantly.

24. Bushido Blade
Year: 1998
Publisher: SquareSoft
To be fair, Square’s track record with fighters isn’t particularly hot. It’s known for making cult fighting games (Tobal No 1 being one that springs to mind), and by cult we mean a handful of people fawn over them when they’re brought up in conversation and cut relationship ties if anything nasty is said about them.

We fall in such a category whenever Bushido Blade is mouthed. Essentially a three-dimensioned oriental Barbarian, Bushido Blade’s mantra was all about realism, realism and more realism. There are no time limits or health bars; instead, wins are decided with the game’s innovative Body Damage System. Get struck on the leg with a rapier and your character will be forced to continue the fight on one knee, take a timely blade to the head and he won’t be able to continue the fight with a face. Oh, and you also had a nifty POV mode to help heighten the realism.

Square doesn't have a great record with fighters, but Bushido Blade was an exception.

Add to this the vast 3D stages that you could explore and occasionally interact with and the notion that you had to fight honourably (so no back-stabbing or calling out each other’s sisters) and Bushido Blade is perhaps as close as it gets to realistic sword-fight shenanigans.

23. The Way Of The Exploding Fist
Year: 1985
Publisher: Melbourne House
For many, the beat-’em-up genre didn’t really evolve and take off until the advent of 16-bit gaming. Nevertheless, there were some solid fighters available on the 8-bit computers and Melbourne House’s The Way Of The Exploding Fist is arguably one of the best.

Thanks to a combination of joystick directions and button presses, it was possible to pull off an impressive amount of moves, while a selection of different backgrounds (four in total) ensured that there was always something to look at while you were caning your opponent. Best of all though was the authentic scoring system called ‘shobu nihon kumite’, which helped give Fist a realism that few other 8-bit fighters were able to match. There was even a bull-punching bonus stage to add a little variety to all the hardcore fighting. Hiyah!

… continued