What happened to beat em' ups?

[dsheinem]

Best Beat 'Em Up of the past decade or more: Mother Russia Bleeds. It's everything you are looking for and more. IMHO it even surpasses the classics mentioned in the OP - a fantastic game! Check it out!

[BogusMeatFactory]

Best Beat 'Em Up of the past decade or more: Mother Russia Bleeds. It's everything you are looking for and more. IMHO it even surpasses the classics mentioned in the OP - a fantastic game! Check it out!

Was just coming here to say that. surprised no one said it until now.

As to what happened to the beat em ups is that, like with all games, they became amorphous and melded with other genres. Like the adventure game of old, popular genres just took elements of them. Once in a while we get pure forms of the genre, but mostly it just gets incorporated into other styles of games.

[alienjesus]

That, and I think the beat-em-up genre has just evolved. People talk about stuff like Bayonetta or Dynasty Warriors as different genres, but the fundamentals of a beat-em-up are there. Modern 3D action games and Musou games are just the way the genre has gone imo.

Mmm, I don't quite agree with that. The basic premise is more or less the same, sure, but the gameplay details aren't. Beat 'em ups, at least the classics Xeogred is talking about, are designed to be played through in a single sitting and nothing carries over to the next run, which already makes a huge difference in my book. They also have little or no character development in terms of stats and abilities (of course there are notable exceptions like River City Ransom and D&D), what you start the game with is also what you'll fight the final boss with. So it's all about learning the fine details of even the basic attacks because you'll be using them throughout the game, rather than buying a superior move/better equipment somewhere down the road and never using the early stuff again.

Then there's the whole co-op aspect, which character action games lack completely.

I'd say beat 'em ups are their own niche, though carved from the same tree where Devil May Cry and Musou sprung from.

2D platformers were often meant to be beaten in a single sitting too, but 3D platformers are very different. Genres evolve over time.

[Ghegs]

2D platformers were often meant to be beaten in a single sitting too, but 3D platformers are very different. Genres evolve over time.

Not sure where you're going with that, as 2D platformers are still being made and are, indeed, different from their 3D counterparts. Like beat 'em ups are different from character action games/musou, and shmups are different from Ace Combat.

Saying a genre evolves in this way is something of a misnomer, because that would imply that the "old" version of the genre disappears completely, ie. would not be made anymore. Yet clearly that isn't the case, because we still get new 2D platformers, beat 'em ups, and shmups.

The new games take inspiration from the old games and do something new and a bit different with it, thanks to new design philosophies and technical capabilities of the systems running the games. So they become new genres. That doesn't invalidate the old ones, they just keep doing their own thing and refining their own gameplay elements within the limits of their framework.

As for a genre that really does evolve without becoming a new genre, look no further than sports games. Soccer on NES is still undeniably part of the same genre as the latest FIFA, despite three decades of technological and design improvements. Or puzzle games. Heck, many new puzzle games could be recreated on old hardware exactly, aside from the audiovisual part.

[BogusMeatFactory]

No. No. No no no. Genres don't evolve into more genres. What is devil may cry? A 3d action Shooter slasher? No. It is a beat em up. What do you do? You beat them up.

why does soccer get a pass now that it is an adventure simulator soccer game?

When we sit here and pick apart these labels we realize how useless they are. 2d beat em ups are still around but aren't as popular. 3d beat em ups are everywhere.

[Ghegs]

You can call Devil May Cry a beat 'em up all you like, you do you. I'll call it a 3D action shooter slasher. A label is nothing but a descriptive word or phrase, and they're quite useful if, for example, you're looking for recommendations for games that follow certain gameplay designs and principles, but exclude others. Why not use it?

You're already marking the difference yourself with "2d beat em ups" and "3d beat em ups", if the two were indeed the same, you shouldn't need to note the amount of dimensions, even for clarity's sake.

why does soccer get a pass now that it is an adventure simulator soccer game?

Sorry, don't understand what you mean by this.

[BogusMeatFactory]

You can call Devil May Cry a beat 'em up all you like, you do you. I'll call it a 3D action shooter slasher. A label is nothing but a descriptive word or phrase, and they're quite useful if, for example, you're looking for recommendations for games that follow certain gameplay designs and principles, but exclude others. Why not use it?

You're already marking the difference yourself with "2d beat em ups" and "3d beat em ups", if the two were indeed the same, you shouldn't need to note the amount of dimensions, even for clarity's sake.

why does soccer get a pass now that it is an adventure simulator soccer game?

Sorry, don't understand what you mean by this.

Fifa isn't just playing soccer. There is now an adventure game campaign mode where you make choices that affect the outcome of a fictional player. You also can be a football manager.

You do you, but I think it is dumb to start going more and more specific to a genre. We don't have first person shooters anymore we have first person action rpg arena shooters. It is ridiculous and superfluous.

[Xeogred]

I've wishlisted Mother Russia Bleeds. Looks promising.

What's the point of a beatemup after Streets of Rage Remake?

I've outplayed it to death?

Still think more people need to know about it though, seems like an underground fan remake. It's essentially SoR 1-3+4+more combined.

[marurun]

The beat em up / belt scroller genre is one which has, at times, been overly simple. As classic as Final Fight is, the gameplay is overly simple and reductive. And since they tended to be arcade focused, they tended to have cheap gameplay like overpowered priority attacks. The problem is that some of those elements have persisted. I don't know that I think belt scrollers have mastered the transition to non-arcade environs, even years later. River City Ransom may be as close as we have ever come, IMO. I love the genre, but it still needs more change.

[alienjesus]

2D platformers were often meant to be beaten in a single sitting too, but 3D platformers are very different. Genres evolve over time.

Not sure where you're going with that, as 2D platformers are still being made and are, indeed, different from their 3D counterparts.

And 2D beat-em-ups are also being made. They're just not very popular anymore.

My point is that genres evolve in different ways, and sometimes the evolutions are more popular. 2D beat-em-ups never quite disappeared entirely, but they're clearly not the preferred way to play that kind of game anymore.