So Madworld is out for the Wii, and it seems to hearken back to the good old days when one man just goes out of his way to beat the crap out of anyone or anything in his way. Except Madworld is a bloodier and Frank Miller (pre-All Star Batman & Robin insane) vision of those old beat-em-up games that we use to play in the arcades or at home. So what better way to celebrate the hostilities with our personal top five beat-em-ups that wowed us back in the day?

But first, we should impose this one guideline: one beat-em-up per company. Seeing as two rather prestigious companies have as many beat-em-ups as they have stock profits (*coughKonamiCapcomcough*), we wouldn’t want the list to be flooded with games from said companies. So onwards, in no particular order:

1) Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystaria (Arcade) – Capcom

Final Fight, King of Dragons, The Punisher, Aliens vs. Predator, Knights of The Round: these are the side-scrolling beat-em-ups that shaped our childhood. Yet the one with a license stuck onto it manages to be different from the rest. I’m referring to Capcom’s take on the Dungeons & Dragons series, with their beat-em-up-RPG-hybrid subtitled Shadows Over Mystaria. You get six selectable classes, from the weak-but-multi-spellcasting Mage to the heavy-hitting Fighter. Yeah, Capcom isn’t so good with giving these classes actual names like Mythra Ellengrove or T’hok The Unruly, but what they’re good at is putting in a level-up and inventory system into a deep fighting engine with tight controls.

All your characters can pull off special moves via Hadoken motions or some other joystick tomfoolery, and all the enemies you face vary in fighting style and exaggerated looks, from displacers to the big red dragon as the last boss. No two playthroughs are the same due to branching paths, and up to four people can play swords and sorcery with a finesse of Capcom’s flair for violence.

2) Double Dragon 2 (NES) – Technos Japan

The arcade legend Double Dragon was a foresight to bigger and better things for the time-tested genre. But who knew that a supposedly gimped version of a Double Dragon sequel succeeds even its predecessor in terms of quality and sales? You and a team mate has to fight through a horde of wasteland combatants from the city (with platforming segments), to a ship(?) and forest, to an evil temple (with one of the most frustrating platforming bits when you play co-op), right down to an epic showdown with a dude with green hair and a cape sporting a kick-ass final boss theme song. Don’t believe me? Check out the remix below.

Awesome, right? You and your partner have a repertoire of moves at your disposal: helicopter kick in mid-air, uppercuts, and the vicious-sounding knee jump attack. While the first game on the NES was lacking, and the third game was stupendously hard, the second game got it just right. Interestingly, this is one of those rare moments where the notorious Acclaim actually ported a good game in the States. If you missed out, it’s on Virtual Console for 400 points.

3) Streets of Rage II (Megadrive) – Sega

Back around 1990, Sega had to pimp the Sega Megadrive into giving the best kind of experience. While Altered Beast sort of did that, Streets of Rage sealed the deal due to the fact that it had two-player mode, replicating the feel of an arcade beat-em-up without leaving your home. Streets of Rage II just blew the first game out of the water, with a revamped graphics and fighting engine, a kick-ass soundtrack from Yuzo Koshiro, and the level design and layout is phenominal. Each character brought their own fighting style to the table: Max grapples a lot and deals most of his damage there, while Blaze is speedy but packs a punch with her faux close-range firepalm special.

The game introduces the unique dash attacks; yes, it’s a weird label, given that you can’t actually dash in the game, but it makes sense. Double-tapping the left or right input and then pressing the attack lets your character pull off their specific move, be it Axel’s Grand Upper, or Max’s slide. Mostly used to deal more damage or chain a combo, it’s also useful to clear off enemies without expending your life for a crowd control special. I’d hate to bring in the “bigger, better, and more badass” phrase in, but part II definitely represents that phrase to a tee. If you haven’t played this yet, you have no excuse: it’s out on both Virtual Console and on Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis/Megadrive Collection.

4) Sengoku 3 (Arcade, Neo Geo) – SNK

Dammit, woman. Can’t you summon the pastel background and recite your haiku some other time?

SNK isn’t just relegated to making fighting games or shooters: they had their hand at beat-em-ups. While Mutation Nation and Sengoku were forgettable in the least, Sengoku 3 was not. Not to be confused with the Psikyo shooter, Sengoku 3 basically took lessons from other beat-em-ups and put it into their own game. Different types of playable characters with their specific movesets and strengths/weaknesses? Check. An intricate combo system that lets you chain your attacks to boost your high score? Check. “Shiok”-looking graphics and backdrops and good-looking enemies that move just as fluently as Garou: Mark of The Wolves? Check.

Seriously, you get to control a white guy who can chuck phoenixes and a guy who summons the devil as attacks. If you don’t find that’s worth checking out, you need to reevaluate your standards.

5) X-Men (Arcade) – Konami

Konami had dozens of license-based beat-em-ups: Asterix, Simpsons, TMNT. But when it came to Marvel’s bunch of outcasts, they upped the ante with not four, but SIX player beat-em-up action. There’s not much to say here: you control one of the X-Men (Storm, Wolverine, Dazzler, Cyclops, Colossus, and Nightcrawler) and proceed to lay waste upon the hordes of robots and mutants and second-rate villains Magneto tosses at you. All you had were two buttons: Attack and Jump. You initiate your screen-clearing move via pressing both buttons together. That’s it. The main draw was what I said just now: SIX player beat-em-up action. Each X-Men machine was a wide-as-heck arcade cabinet with six joystick setups.

X-Men is the reason why arcades thrived. Even until now, there’s no substitute for a scenario where you’re playing a beat-em-up alongside five other people, friends or strangers, while the screen gets chaotic with special pyrotechnics and enemy dogpiling. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a friggin’ idiot.

Honorable Mention:
Ninja Baseball Bat Man (Arcade) – Irem

When’s the last time you ever see stuff like this in videogames nowadays? Realism is overrated, I tells ya!

Irem’s lone entry deserves mention, because not only was it an absurd premise (you control ninjas who play baseball fighting against other morphed-up enemies around the game’s acid-fueled depiction of the US of A), but it was surprisingly fun. Ninja Baseball Bat Man’s, er, bat men had different strengths and weaknesses, had four-player co-op, and a ton of items and weapons to interact and attack with. It’s a shame that the cabinets weren’t as common as the other arcade beat-em-ups mentioned here and overseas.

So, readers, what are YOUR favorite beat-em-ups, past and present?