Beat 'em ups, surprisingly did not seem to translate well into 3D, despite efforts from Sega and Eidos. 3D action games of the era started to focus more on platforming and exploring 3D world/stages alongside interactivity, something that the genre couldn’t offer when it first moved to 3D.
Interestingly enough, it was Capcom who was finally able to bring the “beat 'em up” to modern 3D gaming - except that when they did so, the genre had changed so much that it’s hard to call it a “beat 'em up” anymore. I’m talking about Devil May Cry, which, despite being called a “stylish action game”, still borrows a lot of tropes and mechanics from old beat 'em ups, first and foremost requiring the player to defeat a set wave of enemies before being allowed to move forward.
Investing in proprietary 3D hardware was not the thing to do, even back in 2000. The previous years had already shown that using someone else’s hardware was cheaper, what with Sony letting everyone use the PlayStation 1 in arcades (Namco’s System 11 and 12, and Capcom’s ZN1- and 2). The Naomi was Sega offering other companies the same thing, taking advantage of their 2 year head start since the PS2 based System 246 didn’t show up until 2001.
No way! The original Final Fight and SOR(2) are among the best beat’em ups EVER but, Konami has put out some damn good stuff too.
Most notably the X-Men arcade game. Great graphics, gameplay, a badass soundtrack, etc. It was the total package. Then you had the TMNT arcades, Simpsons, Metamorphic Force, etc.
Sure they recycled the formula and copy & pasted it a few times onto other games but, so did Final Fight and Streets of Rage with their other titles. If it’s not broken? Don’t fix it.
The DMC and God of War series of games as an example, are a natural evolution of beat-em ups which I totally agree with as far as 3D beat-em ups go. The good ones are few and far in between though.
Then Capcom goes and makes Final Fight Streetwise which was an atrocity and a big letdown for the series. Capcom hasn’t rectified that misstep and then they had Ninja Theory fuck up DMC as you all know. Who will save beat-em ups? Halp!
insert GoW and/or NG meme about saving beat-em ups here
Konami games have nice presentation but are not very good compared to Capcom games. Much less depth in the form of enemy formations, much worse physics, barebones combat. Capcom moved the genre forward and improved a lot after Final Fight, whereas Konami stayed basic pretty much until Violent Storm which is very close to a Capcom game in terms of physics and combat, although it has a few terrible design decisions like letting bosses counter attack during hitstun.
Also Capcom explored quite a bit, AvsP with its crazy mobility, huge swarms of enemies and refinement of Punisher’s gun system, Punisher itself with its myriad of weapons and grapples and the gun, Armored Warriors with the customizable mechs, Dungeons and Dragons with the branching paths and multiplayer focus, every one of them feels different and unique at a system level and stage design is ace.
Armored Warriors in particular is such a forgotten gem, so unique and flawless presentation. Every tune, every sprite, Kinu’s character designs and Sensei’s mechs, the synergy between parts, the vastly different mobility and weaponry, such an amazing game that was ignored due to lack of console ports.
I used to love Konami beat’em ups as a kid, but once I got seriously into the genre many years later and tried Capcom’s offers, I just couldn’t go back to them.
Sheesh. The games I mentioned require a little more finesse than all of Konami’s button mashers of a beat-em up since the latter used the same engine with minor mods for their games in that style.
Capcom’s devs tried to introduce better mechanics and improved the gameplay experience for solo or multi-player.
Just because you enjoy those games does not mean that I do. Seeing as my opinion is different from yours it would make no sense to combine the two purely subjective lists.
On the contrary, it is intentional. If you know the meaning of the word itself and are aware of the fact that 4 movies exist in the original franchise the message is quite clear.
I cant play anything in 3D from the PS1 era. It all aged badly. Generally I wont play games that arent HD era. Except 2D fighters. All pretty much eye bleeders.
Old random fighting games from SNES/Gens through PS2 eras. I’d used to think they were good back in the day, but if I happen to play one in let’ say a mytstery game tourney… I probably remember enough to win, but the games themselves are Horrible with a captial H.
We’re focusing on the gameplay instead of graphics because obviously 90% of the stuff before HD era looks like crap.
And if no one mentioned Mario Kart 64, I’d like to. Mushrooms are ass in that game, balance is somehow even wackier than the newer ones and there’s barely anything besides nostalgia holding it up.
That mostly the stuff that 3D and low polygon.
The 16 Bit stuff, while looking dated actually aged better due to a understanding of proper ascetics.
Something that went mostly out of the window with 3D.
Like how a 1950’s decor looks less out of place in a modern home than 1970’s decor. One comes off as Classy, the other comes off as Awful.
The only example I know of is that Most if not all CPS2 games on the PS1 being polygons. Although you would have thought it would have made it easier to keep more animations
Hence my statement about old random fighters. But even then I wont say 90%, because most 2D still looks good on the right display or filters. I’ll just say 100% of 3D graphics.
I’ll add… beat em ups and sidescrollers… just dont give a fuck about em anymore. Their ability to entertain hasnt held up at all. Basically I might play Sonic Mania, for side scrollers, as long as it has the original or better sense of speed, not that slow Sonic 4 shit. And a beat em up would basically have to have all the abilities of a anime fighter, comboing dudes all over the screen.
Lack of animation frames is due to limited memory. Even if they were mapped as textures to polygons, animation frames still take up memory.
PS1 could actually put out decent 2D, the only problem was the memory which limited the number of frames of animation. But a 2D game optimized for PS1 could look just as good as anything on the Saturn, especially when taking advantage of stuff it could do that the latter could not, such as having a near infinite number of background layers (compared to 5 on Saturn) as well as easier half transparency. The latter, while actually possible on the Saturn, often had issues thanks to how the images from both VDPs was rendered, resulting in certain objects disappearing behind transparent objects (which is why most developers just used the “mesh” command).
100% is a stupid generalization. There’s stuff that still holds up today. Especially stuff that went for stylized graphics or just had really strong art design. Just look at later Namco games from the PS1 era - Ridge Racer Type 4 for one is a game that to me still stands the test of time with strong visual design and a rock sold framerate.