There's no shortage of throwback beat 'em up games, and there's certainly no shortage of new games being made for old consoles. In the case of Vengeance Hunters, though, developer Nalua Studio has its sights set on a classic platform that doesn??'t get as much attention: Neo Geo. 

While the side-scrolling brawler was developed with SNK's arcade/home system �specifically the Neo Geo AES, the home console version you might remember as being prohibitively expensive �it also has a date for current platforms. The colorful throwback side-scroller is coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam on October 28, 2024.

If this is your first time reading about Vengeance Hunters, here's a quick minute-lo??ng look at its characters and how their beatdowns look in action:

True to its Neo Geo roots, actually purchasing a physical copy of Vengeance Hunters on its intended platform is going to cost you. The standard version is priced at 349 Euros (about US$$382), with the special and limited editions set at 4??29 Euros (US$469). Folks who were lucky (and wealthy) enough to grow up paying out the nose for N?eo Geo cartridges likely won't flinch, but this is a niche market nestled further within an even more niche market.

Price aside, it's still cool to see someone making new Neo Geo games in 2024. Thankfully, it's not the only option for this one, because Vengeance Hunters looks like a lot of fun! There's a badass brawler named Candy, a top-heavy robot named Golem, and a rowdy, robot-armed hoss named Loony. The animation looks decent and the bosses are suitably screen-filling. We'll see h??ow it plays, with or without the pricey cart in hand, later this month.

The post Vengeance Hunters, a new Neo Geo beat ’em up, dated for consoles and PC appeared first on Destructoid.

Interabang Entertainment and The Angry Metal Company have given a new look into their upcoming beat-’em-up, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch. Alongside it is a 2024 launch window, a??nd apparently, Digital Eclipse (and Atari) are helping with the project as publi??shers.

I’m going to be upfront with you: I know next to nothing about Jay and Silent Bob. I’ve watched the 1999 film Dogma, which featured the characters, as well as 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and I mostly en?joyed them, but stoner humor just isn’t in my wheelhouse. I’ve abstained from drugs and alcohol my whole life, so I just don’t relate to it. That isn’t a moral stance, either, it’s just whenever I’m not in full control over my thoughts and actions, I always do or say something completely stupid.

I do know beat-’em-ups, however, and from what I can tell, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch is a beat-’em-up. 2020’s Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl was also a beat-’em-up, but while that title went for an NES retro-style aesthetic, Chronic Blunt Punch has a much more detailed cartoon look to it.

The trailer is mostly focused on an?? animated interpretation of the gameplay, but it also shows some scenes of the gameplay itself, with the eponymous heroes beating up road hockey players and phone-addicted teens. The animated portions show some super-hero sentai sequences and the genre-mandatory S&M boss. There’s probably a bunch of references sprinkled around that I don’t get, but hopefully, you do.

Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch is coming sometime in 2024. The targe??t platforms have?? not been revealed yet, but PC is one of them.

The post New animated trailer shows of Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch’s beat-’em-up stylings appeared first on Destructoid.

The Connoisseur's beat-'em-up is back

In recent years, the beat-'em-up, (or brawler, if you would prefer), genre has gone through a major renaissance. What was once confined to the golden coin-op age of the late '80s and early '90s �before ??falling short of expectations come the '00s �has found itself spraining fingers and cracking wrists once again �led by some bold new IPs and the return of some very familiar faces from the past.

In order to change with the times, these modern titles have been forced to add depth, variety, and longevity to what has mostly been a short-lived, quick-to-fatigue genre. In addition, the characters, worlds, and stories have been fleshed out to offer more context to the knuckle-dustin' action. And so, whether you're welcoming back franchises such as Streets of Rage 4 or TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, smashing up the playgrounds of Japan in River City Girls, or exploring new and exciting worlds offered in Mayhem Brawler, Final Vendetta, and Dragon's Crown. Beat-'em-up fans have it made.

But this renaissance did not, in fact, begin with any of the aforementioned games. It didn't even begin in the past few years. To look for a moment went the genre was reinvented with a roundhouse of vigor we should go back to September of 2017, and the quiet Steam release of Fight'N Rage, a game that wanted to not only capture the excitement of the games that came before it, but also offer players the excitement and depth expected of modern gaming. And it attempted to do all of the above with a?? single, solitary developer.

Six years later, Fight'N Rage is ready to do it, all over again, on PS5 and Xbox Series X. It's a game that is getting up there in years. But, as anyone who has watched the Rocky franchise knows, a true fighter is always ready ?for one more round.

[caption id="attachment_379548" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Fight'N Rage (PlayStation [PS5 reviewed], PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Seba Game Dev
Publisher: Blitworks
Released: March 1, 2023 (PS5), September 2017 (PC)
MSRP: $19.99

First released in the fall of 2017, Fight'N Rage is a passionate love letter to the heyday of arcade brawlers, developed and self-published by Seba Game Dev, which is a pseudonym for Uruguayan developer Sebastián Garcia. Garcia is the chief talent behind Fight'N Rage and created the world and its characters, crafted the in-game artwork, and coded the title itself all by his lonesome. Garcia's co-contributor is musician friend Gonzalo Varela, who composed and performed the scrapper's hard-rockin' soundtrack. The PC version was then ported to consoles by developer B??litworks.

History tells us that's it not impossible for one or two people to create something interesting, special, or at least intriguing, (for example Bright Memory by FYQD Studio), but it is rare for such a small project to not only pay effective tribute to a genre, but also to immediately present itself as one of the best offerings in that genre's history. And yet, Seba Game Dev readily handled this mammoth task, producing a title better than many of its influencers, while becoming an influence itself.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z6fl_yeaw0

Bottom of the food chain

Set against the backdrop of a miserable and dystopian future, where a devastating electromagnetic event known as The Big Pulse has destroyed all of mankind's technology, Fight'N Rage presents a world now ruled by a strange evolution, where anthropomorphized mutants have enslaved the human race. A literal natural climax to The Law of the Jungle. Most of humanity has now found itself languishing at the bottom of the foo??d chain, yet there are those who wish for a better tomorrow. Three such individuals are our player protagonists.

They are the banished ninja F. Norris, the runaway slave turned martial arts maste?r, Gal, and the human sympathizer and rebel mutant minotaur Ricardo. Facing a world willing to kill them on site, and afforded only the abilities offered by th??eir fists and feet, our Heroic Trio finds themselves in the middle of a prison breakout, the first act of a brutal, one-night odyssey that will lead them to the throne of The Boss �A militaristic lion maniac who has dubbed himself King of this urban jungle.

The slight story is all atmosphere and little in the way of deep and meaningful musings on the human endeavor, but it is endowed with a melodramatic emotion �not to mention some surprisingly bleak moments of cruelty, that give it the vibe of 80s/90s dystopia comics such as Heavy Metal and 2000 A.D. There is something about Fight'N Rage's cartoonish pixelated world that is nos??talgic and inviting, while still maintaining an unnerving level of hopelessness and despair. I mean, we probably deserve it, right?

[caption id="attachment_379544" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Contrast (and Brightness and Color) in Style

The aesthetic of Fight'N Rage is quite obviously that of the gorgeous pixelated paradises of yesterday, with delightfully drawn and animated characters po?pping out of the pixels in each and every encounter. Color-wise, there is a strange vulgarity to the visuals, with purposefully over-saturated colors and vibrant palettes that recall arcade monitors that should have been replaced a long time ago.

Various filters are available to enhance or decrease these effects �such as blur options, scanline emphasis, CRT curves on screen edges, muted color schemes, and even a moody black-and-white option. But however you choose to melt your eyeballs, Fight'n Rage has a distinctly unique style that captures the vibe of '8??0s in a "warts and all" fashion.

Tribute must also be paid to Varlea's utterly apocalyptic soundtrack, a wild, pulse-pounding mess of wailing guitars, moody pianos, and 16-bit synth. Each track is perfectly attuned to the mood and chaos of the stage, whether our heroes are picking their way through dank caverns, fighting to the death in vicious thunderstorms, or even thro??wing down in a tropical paradise. Varela "understood the assignment", as the kids aren't wont to say, and his score is a key element to the brawler's overall success.

Varela's raw s?oundtrack demands your quarters. Hire this dude for mor?e projects, ah'm begging ya.

[caption id="attachment_379545" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

36 Crazyfists

The audio/visual package of Fight'n Rage counts for nothing if the gameplay doesn't deliver. And, as you might have gathered from the intro, Seba Game Dev's title is genuinely groundbreaking in that regard. Fight'N Rage filtered out the elements of brawlers that made them feel good in a Pavlovian sense, before adding key combat elements pulled from some of the finest on?e-on-one fighters ever made, including combos, oki, off-the-ground attacks, wall jumps, juggles, and parries —as well as multi??ple special moves and super attacks.

And while many modern brawlers, such as DotEmu's fantastic Streets of Rage 4, also understand this method of evolution, Fight'N Rage nailed this years ago, essentially setting a standard ??for brawler combat that all of its bigger budgeted contemporaries have since adopted.

It should be noted, however, that Fight'N Rage is proud of its knuckle-destroying challenge. And while anyone can enjoy the title on its easiest setting, players battling waves of dominatrices and Dobermans on higher difficulties will be forced to master the combat's intricacies. This has, in ensuing years, turned some away from the game, but the difficulty on display here feels true to the tools afforded the player. Fight'N Rage is hard, occasionally rock solid.

You always have the capability of protecting yourself in batt?le, but it's on you to learn h?ow to do so.

[caption id="attachment_379546" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Downloadable Whatnow?

And you can do just that in one of the many modes offered outside of the standard story. Unlockable simply by playing through the game (win or lose), Fight'N Rage also offers a Combo Trials, Training Mode, Tutorials, Vs. B?attle, Stage Practice, and Time Attack, as well as a metric ton of additional cosmetics including 15 costumes/colors for each character, playable villains, a jukebox, unlockable game modifiers, hidden special moves, and much more. Oh, and for Speedrun fans, a special Speedrun option adds an onscreen timer, and auto-skips all cutscenes for maximum frame efficiency.

None of these features, it must be pointed out, were paid DLC. Every mode, character, costume, and bonus feature is included with the title, which has always, generally, retailed at extremely low prices.

Perhaps this, more than anything else, is Fight'N Rage's greatest tribute to the gaming of yesterday.

[caption id="attachment_380513" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Flaws? Unfortunately yes, there are flaws. Fight'N Rage's limited budget leads to a sense of repetition in some enemy patterns, though this again is at least reflective of the game's old-school inspirations. There is no online co-op/vs option, though a three-player local co-op is supported. Fight'N Rage is most assuredly an excellent beat-'em-up, one of the very best, but it is somewhat specialist, and its true depth lies in repeated playthroughs, meticulous training, and a commitment to its punishing challenge. While there are modes suitable for a quick Friday Night knockabout with friends, so?me players may find it a little complex for their own hard brawlin' needs

Technically, the game runs extremely well, but the console port sweats a little with certain scenarios. Nothing game-breaking, but there are sporadic drops in frame rate, particularly during the ambitious, into-the-screen raft sequence. It's also important to note that the violent, flash 'n' shake heavy visuals will be rough on some players' peepers. Any video game fan who is affected by flashing imagery would do well to proceed with caution, as there is currently no option to reduce Fight'N Rage's range of full-scr?een flashe??s and possible strobe effects.

[caption id="attachment_379547" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

GO! GO! GO!

The beat-'em-up genre, almost as old as gaming itself, has been through two very specific "golden ages". The first happened in the very late '80s, and would see the arrival of Double Dragon, Final Fight,  Vendetta, and Kunio-kun. The second, well, we're in the middle of it right now, with modern classics such as Streets of Rage 4, River City Girls, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, and the upcoming Toxic Crusaders all capturing the excitement of their forebearers, while a??dding the depth and enhanc??ement afforded by modern gaming.

But in the middle of these two wonderful eras, there's a transitional bridge, and that bridge was built by Fight'N Rage. Seba Game Dev's humble release offers gratitude and deference to the past, while paving the way for a fantastic new era of scrappers for the future. It's affordable, it's feature-packed, it's compact, and it's available on almost every platform. If you are a beat-'em-up aficionado, you owe it to yourself, (and the genre) to pick it up as soon as possible??.

But then, if you are a beat-'em-up aficio??nado, chances are you already ha?ve.

Six years on from its initial release, Fight'N Rage retains its reputation as one of the greatest beat-'em-ups ever made, as well as a testament to the magnificent talent of its two-person development team. While its vulgar, neon nightmare visuals won't be to everyone's taste, and its rock-solid challenge is not to be denied, Fight'N Rage stands above many of its contemporaries as a lesson in retrofuturistic game design, bolstered by the ??power of a screa??ming guitar and a well-placed roundhouse.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Fight’N Rage appeared first on Destructoid.

Like a (Double) Dragon

Modus Games and Secret Base are teaming up to beat Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons right into our faces this summer.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons brings back the brothers Lee, as well as a couple more dragons to make quadruple dragons. Marian joins the brothers, after becoming tired of bad guys constantly carrying her off. Meanwhile, I hope Uncle Matin is actually their uncle?. There’s reportedly going to be a total of 13 playable character?s, but the gameplay only supports two-player local coop. That’s probably a bummer for a lot of people, but I’m okay with it. I don’t like playing games with people who are out of Charlie Horse range.

The big combat chan??ge here is that it’s all “tag team combat.â€?You select two characters and can switch between them freely. There are co-op combos and other moves to pull off between your pair.

//youtu.be/TVvlBr6hVXA

Secret Base is best known for Streets of Red: Devil’s Dare Deluxe. They’re applying a twist to the main campaign of Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons. Yo?u select the order you'll tackle the levels, and that will affect the length and difficulty of the following stages. You can?? also gain cash by performing special KOs and upgrade your fighter.

This is, by my count, the dozenth return of the series following 2012’s Double Dragon Neon and 2017’s Double Dragon IV. ???Secret Base seems to be bringing their own style to the series, so it should stand out from other revivals. I dig the art style, and the animations really pop.

We won’t have to wait long, as Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons releases this summer on Switch, PS4??, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S??, and PC.

The post Bimmy and Jimmy set to return this summer in Double D??ra?gon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons appeared first on Destructoid.

Fascism? Not in my city

After writing about Final Fight 2 for the SNES, a few people suggested I look more into Final Fight 3. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I last played it. Thinking about it, I was probably just out of college when I last went through it with a roommate. It has at least been long enough that I forgot about the enemies that are literally Nazis. Stahlhelm, stielhandgranate, the name “Fritz.�Guys are Wehrmacht as all get out. So now I get to see Mike Haggar pile-drive Nazis into the pavement, and I wonder how I’ve gone so long without it. I previously said the original arcade Final Fight was the only one worth playing, but anything that lets you suplex the Germa?n infantry is?? required reading in my book.

In any case, Final Fight 3 is the last sequel to the brawler that we’d see for a good while. If you want to exclude 2006’s Final Fight: Streetwise, ??there has never been ?another sequel. And really, it’s tempting to.

Jingle All the Way: The Game

Final Fight 3 returns us to Metro City where a different gang has taken over. I guess it’s kind of difficult to come up with a plot that doesn’t just involve a gang taking over, but let me try. Okay, so it’s Black Friday. Your child desperately wants one particular toy for Christmas, and you’re being pressured by your wife to get it. You have to bash your way through holiday shopper crowds. Crap, that’s just the plot of Jingle All the Way. Was there a Jingle All the Way?? game? No? Obviously??, that was a missed opportunity.

In any case, Mayor Mike Haggar teams up with Guy from the first Final Fight, a lady cop, and Dean, a guy who Capcom thinks is far more interesting than I do. If you asked a robot to come up with a Street Fighter charac??ter, Dean is what it would churn ??out. It doesn’t matter, though, since Mike Haggar is here, and as we’ve already established, anyone who is not Mike Haggar is at a steep disadvantage.

This time around, Mike Haggar has become a fashion disaster. He’s wearing baseball catcher shinguards, bike shorts, a single suspender, and somehow grew out a tremendous ponytail since the last game. Once again, someone at Capcom thought this looked cool, and they are offensi?vely wrong. This time, however, it was plainly done by someone with a soul, because no machine could create such visual disarray. Hopefully??, that person’s soul can feel shame, as it should be steeped in it.

Unfriendly framerate

One cool feature of Final Fight 3 is that, if you’re like me and don’t have friends, you can enlist a computer-controlled character to join you. This is a welcome feature, but it has some substantial drawbacks. Th?e biggest is that it slows the game to a crawl. Having a second protagonist on screen is obviously too much justice for the SNES to handle because every action brings the framerate to its knees. It’s surprising the feature made it through in this ??state, but I also welcome it. I accept the decision to choose between multi-player fun and a stable framerate. I appreciate the option.

However, if you choose to have a computer-controlled second player, make sure that you go into the options menu? and tweak the setting HIT CONFIG into the off position. What does HIT CONFIG mean? It’s friendly fire. While this is often an option in beat-’em-ups, it really only makes sense when the other player is actually rubbing two brain cells together. The AI does no??t care about your feelings and will mercilessly unload a flurry of punches to the back of your head. To make matters worse, you can’t just turn and charlie horse them like you could a physical person.

Finally, the computer-controlled character has their own stock of lives. Once they run out, they go into a game overstate, and I don’t know how to feed them a continue. I’ve researched it, pressed random buttons, and read th??e manual, but found no way to revive them. I considered plugging in a second controller and pressing start, but I was afraid that would communicate to the game that another? human wanted to play and I’d be stuck juggling two controllers. No, thank you. Better just to skip the option unless you’re painfully lonely and have a really good imagination.

Big dad energy

The combat has also been overhauled, and it’s awesome. Things like dashing/charging have been added. The characters have special abilities, including one that you can trigger after filling up a pain gauge. It’s not only the best the series has seen, but it’s also a damned good beat-’em-up system. It’s fast, varied, and allows for some extra strategy where it’s needed. On the other hand, it’s a bit more on the cartoon-y side, eschewing much of the grit the original arcade title was touting. To be fair, though, Streets of Rage 3 had a playable boxing kangaroo,? and fortunately, we’re n??ot quite there.

On top of those improvements, there are branching paths that open up when you break doors in the background and walk into them?. It’s not the biggest shake-up, but it does add some nice replay value, which is always helpful in the genre.

The enemy variation is also a lot better in Final Fight 3. I mentioned punchable Nazis, but there are also little hairy dudes and even lady brawlers, which is a nice change from the usua??l censorship the North American versions get. There are some returning faces, such as Andore/Hugo, just in case you pine for the old days.

Finally...

The soundtrack is also decent, bordering on enjoyable. I wasn’t a fan of the sounds of Final Fight 2, so I feel like breathing a sigh of relief. Weirdly, Final Fight 3 doesn’t have credits anywhere that I could find. I did some research and was only reall?y able to find a few ??without any stated source. It suggested that the music was done by some of the same composers, but I guess they hit on a better theme this time around.

Overall, Final Fight 3 is a much better package than Final Fight 2 for a number of reasons. ??Heck, it feels a lot better than the SNES port of the first title. If it hadn’t been released so close to the end of the Super Nintendo’s lifespan, it probably would have been better remembered. It’s still a good Saturday afternoon affair, but you will definitely want to consider if pulling in a second player is worth sinking the framerate to the depths.

For ?other retro titles you may?? have missed, click right here!

The post Final Fight 3?? SNES is the final Final Fight�on SNES appeared first on Destructoid.

Vote Haggar

In the debate between 1989’s Final Fight and 1991’s Streets of Rage, I’m in the latter camp. Don’t get me wrong, I love Final Fight and understand that Streets of Rage was just Sega’s answer to Capcom porting their seminal brawler to the SNES. I also realize that Streets of Rage is a blatant rip-off of Final Fight. However, I? just love the sense of style and the fact that it’s bet??ter suited to consoles.

However, Streets of Rage doesn’t have Mike Haggar, former pro-wrestler and beloved mayor of Metro City. Haggar is amazing not just because he’s built like a pizza oven, bu??t also because his backstory is so sparse you can apply whatever features you want onto him. Is he a mayor who only knows how to address crime with his fists? Maybe. Or perhaps he was working on addressing crime through social support programs to help the vulnerable population and guide them to making better choices than crime. Then Mad Gear kidnaps hi??s daughter, so he has to put that on hold while he pile-drives some punks. He doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.

Unfortunately, Final Fight was clearly made for arcades, which made its Super Nintendo port a bit of a disappointment. It was made to eat quarters, and when you add on limited lives, it becomes a near-impossible endeavor. Also, it was single-player, which is just bizarr??e.

Final Fight would get two sequels that were exclusively on the SNES. There’s a good reason?? why they’re not quite as well-rememb??ered as the original, but Mike Haggar is still in it, so I don’t care.

Guy's Fiancee's Sister

I’m not going to try and convince you that 1993 Final Fight 2 is as worth playing as the original arcade title, but there are two ways that it’s better than the original SNES po??rt. First, it has two-player co-op. Beat-’em-ups are best enjoyed with friends, always. Secondly, one of the playable characters is a female ninja. The first game completely omitted ?the fairer sex when it comes to playability. However, this doesn’t really matter much because I’m only interested in playing as Mike Haggar.

This time around, the whole kidn?apping thing is a mess. Guy’s fiancee, Rena, has been kidnap??ped along with his sensei. So Guy’s fiancee’s sister joins Mike Haggar and some other dude to get them back. It’s the Mad Gear gang again, but rather than just being some local roughs, they’re all over Europe. That kind of international expansion seems like quite a step up.

It’s really just an excuse to have Mayor Fridge pile-drive abroad. Unfortunately, the locals are kind of lame. All the colors are muddy and washed out, and Holland is full of landmines for some reason. I dunno. I guess riding a train through London might be a bit better than suplexing Beefeaters in front of Buckingham Palace. Wait, no it isn’t�/p>

Chest Toupee

It’s a lot more monotonous than the first game in the series, which wasn’t all that varied, to begin with. There’s a very small collect??ion of enemies, and while Andore/Hugo shows up, Poison doesn’t. In fact, no women do in the North American version. I understand that Nintendo was pretty cagey about having women as villains in fighting games, b?ut it doesn't really help the visual diversity when every dude's a dude.

Even the bosses aren’t all that special. Sometimes, I wasn’t even certain I was fighting a boss at all because the music wouldn’t change. The second boss looks vaguely like Macho Man Randy Savage with a chest toupee,? but that’s the only reason I remember him.

Speaking of the music, it’s awful. I don’t usually bring up soundtracks unless they’re really good or really bad, and Final Fight 2 fits into the second category. I don’t know how this happened, as it was created by a group of Capcom composers, many of whom worked on the publisher’s Mickey & Minnie games. The tracks just seem to be meandering messes with no core theme. Not that I really remember Final Fight’s soundtrack very well, but I don’t r??ecall it being this bad.

Doable difficulty

On the plus side, however, Final Fight 2 is a perfectly serviceable beat-’em-up. While I have my complaints, there are ones out there that are substantially worse. The gameplay in Final Fight 2 is in the upper regions of okay. The grabs have always been my favorite part of the series, and Final Fight 2 allows Mike Haggar to grab an enemy, then jump high into the air to slam them back down in a spinning piledriver. Yes. Even if the overall package is a little bland, I can’t knock?? the combat.

Plus, as I mentioned before, th??is supports a second player, which means it’s a great little title to break out in the afternoon with a chum. Unlike the SNES port of the original game, getting through it on its default difficulty is totally doable. A little tricky but more in line with the difficulty of other console beat-’em-ups.

The greatest

Final Fight only had one true classic in the series, and that was Final Fight. But if you want more than that, the SNES sequels are as close as you’ll get. They’re?? not bad. They’re just not great, either. I kind of wish Capcom put their whole ass into creating some great platforms to showcase Mike Haggar, but we remain to be weirdly de??ficient.

And that’s a shame because Mike Haggar is the greatest. What they really need to do is add Mike Haggar to Streets of Rage 4, because then we’d have the perfect beat-’em-up. I’m not sure how anyone would make that happen, but if I had three wishes, that would be one?? of them. The main reason why I chose this game for my column was so I could talk a??bout Mike Haggar. You can mark my words that this won’t be the last time you find me writing about Mike Haggar. Vote Mike Haggar.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here??!

The post Final Fight 2 on SN??ES is barely more final than the original appeared first on Destructoid.

Don't worry about the differences too much, though

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is getting a new version this month. The latest TMNT title is getting a native PS5 version on? November 15.

What's different? Aside from running natively on the PlayStation 5, not much. Tribute Games and DotEmu have made it clear this version is identical to the PlayStation 4 version of TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Previously, TMNT would run on backward compatibility for the PS5, usi?ng the PS4 version.

This does mean that PS4 users aren't getting a free upgrade to the new version. But again, this is apparently not a substantively different option. So the reason why DotEmu and Tr?ibute are making this? Well, ??it looks like for a possible physical version.

"The PS5 version is necessary to eventually offer physical PS5 copies ;)," the Tribute Games account noted.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozKsDzumb0c

So if you've got one PlayStation copy, you still seem set. And down t?he line, this might allow for a ??PS5 physical version of the turtle-based beat 'em up.

A new platform for TMNT

Shredder's Revenge was released earlier this year, and brought a whole lot of Saturday morning cartoon action to PC and consoles. The TMNT beat 'em up did pretty alright in sales too, so it's not too surprising to see these ??studios considering future options with?? the native PS5 edition.

Whether we see more content arrive in TMNT: Shredder's Revenge in the future or not seems up in the air. I'd love to see the crew dip deeper into TMNT nostalgia, but considering DotEmu especially has a good track record for beat 'em ups, I'm eager to see whatever's in store next.

The post TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is getting a native PS5 version this month appeared first on Destructoid.

Punch ’n�Click

Several years ago, back when covering PlayStation Vita games was still a viable option for gaming websites, I took a chance on a review for an indie adventure game called Demetrios: The Big Cynical Adventure. Not to rehash bad memories, but like many of the reviews I go out on my own to find, I didn’t care for it too much. Clearly, others did. The game has been ported to just about every major piece of hardware on the market, including a 4K version on the PlayStation 5 and Japanese localization on the eShop.

While the game’s creator, Fabrice Breton, and I didn’t see eye to eye on the game, several months after my review was published, he invited me to take an extremely early look at his next project. Squeezing out an unoptimized Mac version of the demo, I thought the concept of combining the classic point-and-click puzzle solving of Demetrios with a beat-'em-up action game showed some promise. It was a bit rough around the edges, but its potential was extrao??rdinary. I wished him good luck with the project, not really knowing if I ??would even be writing for Destructoid by the time it came out.

Five years and some change later, I’m still here, and that little demo has blossomed into a full-?fledged game that might be worthy of being o??n your wishlist.

BROK the InvestiGator (PC)
Developer: COWCAT Games
Publisher: COWCAT Games
Released: August 26, 2022
MSRP: $19.99

BROK the InvestiGator is an example of a game where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s set in a dystopian world where society is divided into two groups: the Drumers, ??those who live in a domed city where life is pretty easy, and the Slumers, those poor unfortunate souls who have to survive in the toxic wasteland that surrounds the dome. Set over a tumultuous three-day period, players will take control of two characters whose fates are linked. Brok is an anthropomorphic alligator who works as a lowly detective for people in the slums. His adoptive cat-son, Graff, lives with him and is in the final week of exams at a ??school that will guarantee him a life in the dome if he passes. Over the course of six chapters, players will explore the lives of these two characters and the shared trauma that defines their relationship.

And actually, the game goes harder into the trauma than thought it would. Brok is continually haunted by nightmares of a fuzzy past he may not fully remember. Graff tackles unanswer?ed questions about his parents while trying to escape the hell that is the slu??ms. Their journey together will shine a light on some of the revelations of their past. I think the narrative handles these concepts with care even if the dialogue for some characters could use a little brushing up.

Except for RJ. He’s perfect in every way.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG6t21-Yfys

Fight with your brain and your fists

For both Brok and Graff, players will make their way through the world in classic point-and-click adventure fashion. You’ll talk to a lot of different characters, complete some intelligently conceived puzzles, and collect clues to solve the mysteries Brok is faced with. You’ll also need to find time to help strangers, pay bills, and do a little fighting, and I’ll be honest, getting the best ending for this game will probably require multiple playthroughs or extensive use of the game’s many save slots. BROK can be a bit brutal with how it doesn’t let you fix your mistakes, but it isn’t unnecessarily unreasonable. Jus??t be sure not to accidentally kill someone like I did.

That “whoopsie�death happened when I inadvertently hit the button to switch Brok to his action stance, which constitutes the “punch�of this punch ’n�click adventure. Brok and Graff can do a little fighting throughout the game and they’re pretty decent at it. Both characters feature a simple one-button combo with a few special attacks, but there are some significant differences in their abilities. Graff is far more capable of fighting in the air than Brok with a dive kick worthy of Iron Galaxy Studios. Most of the fights will have ?you squaring off against the different robots that are meant to keep order inside the dome, but you’ll fight some Slumers and cops as well. Or, you can do your best to avoid the fight.

At many points in the narrative, you’ll be given two paths on how to escape a situation: with intellect or with violence. Naturally, the violent path is far easier than trying to piece together the often too-many steps you need to take to avoid a confrontation. As I said, the fighting here is pretty simple, even simpler than what we got in Super Punch Patrol. But it holds up?? well. And it would hold up a lot better if Breton ?approached this game from a different angle.

Not always a peanut-butter-in-chocolate situation

BROK the InvestiGator is primarily? a point ’n�click adventure title. It has the feel and presence of those classic Sierra games from the �0s. Beat-'em-up action is thrown in where possible, and for the most part, the adventure side of the game doesn’t get in its way. But when it does, it can be aggravating.

Let me give you an example. In?? the game’s second chapter, Brok will be in jail. One of the ways you can get him out is by fighting his way through the police station. Now, the jail and police station are designed in a way that makes them ideal for an adventure game with plenty of interactive objects and some great scenic design. But for a beat-‘em-up, they’re too clustered and claustrophobic to work that well. From the vantage point, it can be tough to tell if my characters are in the enemy’s attack line and I had to go through a lot of game-over screens to make it through this section. If you fail enough, you will have the option to lower the difficulty, but that wouldn’t be necessary if the action portion of BROK was a bit more fine-tuned with increased immunity frames and more useful dodge.

If anything, I wish this game were developed primarily as a beat-'em-up, rather than an adventure game, because I think the whole package would have benefitted from that approach. I know one of the themes of the game is about avoiding violen??ce, but when you are forced to resort to fisticuffs, it would be nice if ??the gameplay were the best it could be.

I want more of this

And that’s what I mean when I say BROK the InvestiGator is more than the sum of its parts. I charted little issues throughout the game (as well as one big one where it? will consistently needle you if you make a mistake in an investigation) but none of them overshadowed everything I enjoyed about it. I really like what Fabrice Breton has put together here. He did an outstanding job bringing this world to life with outstanding character art, a well-realized world, a??nd a story that’s worth seeing through to the end.

I think Brok is a brilliant little creation, Graff could very well be the star of his own game, and Ott, Graff’s best friend who is a half-breed, is the ?perfect little sidekick for this adventure. When comparing it to Breton’s previous game, this is leaps and bounds better and I would love to see this mash-up of genres further explored and evolved in the future.

BROK the InvestiGator is very much an experiment, but it’s an experiment that works. ??As the second title out of COWCAT Games, it shows real growth and actually has me looking forward to what comes next from this one-man studio.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Fight for a new high score

Sloclap's Sifu is already a fairly challenging game to conquer. But for those who want even more of a mountain to climb, a Sifu update is adding some new?? modifiers and a scoring system later this month to really up th??e bar.

The summer update for Sifu goes live on August 31, and adds several new features. Gameplay modifiers are a big one, letting those who have already mastered the motions in Sifu impose even more challenge.

Sifu's new modifiers can change a number of things. Maybe it takes away guarding, ??or reduces your main character to a? single hit point. Or maybe it makes things a bit easier, letting the player ignore enemies' guard or stopping them from picking up weapons.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CeRPCV_bog

Two examples were shown off in today's trailer. One is a "hardcore run," where enemies are stronger, the player has only one health, and they cannot guard or use the pendant. The "fun run," meanwhi?le, imposes "bullet time" and low gravity, along with weaker enemies and a gold weapon.

Setting the pace

A new scoring system also arrives as part of the summer update, with mechanics that will analyze ??all the moves you do for smoothness, efficiency, and variety. This will also be tracked level??-over-level, so you can see your current high score in an area and whether you broke it.

Lastly, there are some special outfits for Sifu players who want some extra style. The Enforcer armor will be available for anyone with?? the Deluxe Edition, giving the protagonist some tactical armor.

The Master Hand, meanwhile, will be available for all Sifu players. This slick trench coat and hat ensemble has one goal in mind: don't get hit. An enemy's strike knocks the hat off your head. And you can't go about your quest for vengeance without your ??stylish hat.

Sifu was already pretty tough (in a rewarding way) when I played it earlier this year, so the thought of adding more challenge is daunting. But? some of the fun modifiers do sound like a good time.

Those who have a copy of Sifu will be able to check it all ?out when the update goes live on August 31.

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I really can’t keep the name straight

Violence in video games gets better and better as the years go on. I thought it was cool when you could shoot the hats off of enemies in GoldenEye and the guns out of their hands in Perfect Dark but now�wai?t, those things are stil?l cool. Why aren’t they done more often?

Anyway, video games have done ballistic violence well for decades, but physical violence only seems to have gotten enjoyable around the time of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Or was it Assassin’s Creed? It’s that punch-parry-throw combat that makes you feel powerful and helps the action flow? more cinematically. Maybe you’re just smashing buttons when the game prompts you to, but it feels impactful.

Midnight Fight Express is, concisely, that. It’s a beat-’em-up that f??eatures a similar combat system while adding a few twists of its own.

Midnight Fight Express (PC [reviewed], Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox Series X)
Developer: Jacob Dzwinel
Publisher: Humble Games
Released: August 23, 2022
MSRP: TBA

Thugs have taken over the city, and you’re an amnesiac protagonist who really likes the feeling of bone breaking against their knuckles. You’re guided by a drone that coyly tells you they know? everything but tells you absolutely not??hing. That’s okay! Who needs motivation when you have fists?

Midnight Fight Express is a level-by-level beat-’em-up. You know the type: you walk into a room, and all the doors get kicked in, signaling another wave of thugs. It’s probably better that they don’t knock since Midnight Fight Express is constantly judging you and will score you at completion. The best way to rev up your score is to keep your combo going. Mercifully, that isn’t a matter of avoiding pain but rather just k?eeping up a solid pace and not dying.

That’s maybe oversimplifying the overall design, but Midnight Fight Express isn’t a particularly deep game. It has its sights set on Hotline Miami and John Wick. It wants ??to be fast and messy, and it largely succeeds.

[embed]//youtu.be/FfjaXFJNKdg[/embed]

Midnight Flight Express

Each level presents something new. The locations are your typical city fighting spots, like subway tunnels and an airport. Gangs are swapped out as you proceed, so you go from fighting mutant rat people to corrupted priests. Some levels get a bit creative, and then some others get a bit annoying. There’s this one where motorcycle dudes drive in circles trying to run you down. They’re easy to take out if you have a gun, but if they run into a wall, they explode, potentially killing?? you outright. It’s just annoying and doesn’t tie into the combat system at all.

One issue with the combat is that a lot of it is locked behind upgrades. Most of the parries, for example. And it’s really unintuitive when you can parry somebody when they are unarmed, but not when they have a weapon until that ability is unlocked. You can never parry everything, which feels like it makes sense, but to have some of it merely locked away is unsatisfying. It also means that you need to go back to previous levels?? so you can get S ranks with your new repertoire of moves.

The skills also range from indispensable to detrimental. Finishers, for example, allow you to stylishly take down stunned foes. However, I stopped using t??hrows pretty quickly because they can be easily interrupted and sometimes feel like they arbitrarily won’t work on some foes. Enemies back off while you perform a finisher, but grappling leaves you wide open. It doesn’t feel worth it.

Murder Fight Express

That’s not to say you can’t get into the flow of Midnight Fight Express. There’s definitely a learning curve here, and it feels rewarding to keep improving. Learning to cycle between dodging, attacking, and tossing weapons can lead to some great moments. Moments that Midnight Fight Express turns into gifs you can save after each level.

There’s also a favorite combat feature of mine: targeting priority. Some enemies carry the risk of dealing more damage tha?n others, and you need to learn to deal with the most imminent threat. You need to spot enemies with guns and handle them first, or maybe it’s better to take out the little guy wi??th the sledgehammer so you can better take on the bigger fish.

The point is, when Midnight Fight Express works, it really works. But when it doesn’t, it can be frustrating. Boss battles, in particular, really grilled me. A lot of your moves j?ust don’t work on them, so you’re down to light a??ttack, heavy attack, and dodge. If you’re lucky, there are weapons in the environment, but I always had more fun taking down hordes of thugs.

Fight Night Express

Speaking of getting grilled, the writing really got on my nerves. I’m already not a fan of the amnesiac hero angle, but then everyone acts coy with you for the entirety of the game. Yes, providing bits and pieces of exposition throughout the narrative is an effective way of storytelling. However, when the characters are constantly telling you that you don’t know the whole story, but they aren’t goi?ng to tell you, it’s easy to just lose interest. It doesn’t even really pay off that well in the end, mostly because you’ve got an amnesiac hero devoid of personality, so why should I even care?

Midnight Fight Express also lean??s heavily on references. References to action movies, other games, and to memes. I found them somewhat annoying, even though I probably didn’t even notice ha?lf of them. It just feels kind of lazy.

It also has heavy reverence for Hotline Miami, but then, everyone should. You can even get animal masks and wear a letterman jacket. There’s a group of dudes in animal masks asking if you’ve heard a payphone ringing. This feels most apparent with the soundtrack, which feels like an abridged version of Hotline Miami’s. Just maybe less weird and a little more cohesive. I don’t mean it’s bad,?? goodness no, it just feels really obvious.

Midflight Espresso

I have mixed feelings about Midnight Fight Express. There are times when it clicked with me, and I tore through the levels?, and others when I found myself sighing and hitting the retry button. There was no real middle ground. ?I was either entertained or completely annoyed.

Another pass of the floor polisher probably would have helped. There are 40 missions which equal about six hours of runtime with a lot of highs and lows. A tighter narrative wouldn’t have even been necessary if the moment-to-moment gameplay was a little more consistent. Midnight Fight Express is just a mixed bag. There’s a lot here to ap??preciate, but just as much is going to have you curling your fists.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Way more cowabunga, dude

A new stability patch is live for TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, across all platforms. The update is set to address bugs and make game stability improvement?s for all the turtle-po??wered action.

According to publisher Dotemu, the patch addresses som??e "tedious bugs" and adds a number of improvements, both for?? gameplay and online features.

"Tribute Games to the rescue!" Dotemu declared on Twitter, shouting out the TMNT developer alongside the? announcement? of the update.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozKsDzumb0c

The patch notes are fairly lengthy. In i?t, Tribute Games and Dotemu detail a number of fixes, some big and some small.

For example??, under the Gameplay Bug Fixes, there's a ??fix for enemies sometimes getting frozen after a Fling Slam. That's a bit jarring to the action, and probably uncomfortable for those Foot Clan fighters.

There's also some fixes for online co-op play, addressing crashes and connection issues. Thus, it should hopefully be a bit smoother to form a Turtles crew over ?the web.

A smoother Turtles experience

Broader improvements have also been made to the game. Perfor?mance should be improved as now, all possible enemi??es that will be used in a stage will be preloaded. Transitions and boss position snapping should also be improved.

Plus, platform icons are now listed for online games and friends. And for the Steam Deck players, support for?? input glyphs specific to the Steam Deck has been added.

All-in-all, it sounds like a good update for TMNT: Shredder's Revenge fans who might have? run into some issues playing through the game. Having seen some of these online issues firsthand when some pals tried to organize a co-op session, it's nice to see this up?date.

The TMNT: Shredder's Revenge patch should be live now on all platforms. And if you think that's it for the summer in terms of Turtles games, I have some good news. TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection is set to launch later this month on August 30. And yes, it has rollback netcode.

The post TMNT Shredder’s Revenge stability patch tunes up the beat ’em up appeared first on Destructoid.

Mega Man, Comix Zone, blast-from-the-past memes �what more could you want?

It has taken a while for Nintendo Switch Online to get here with its small-batch, subscription-based rollout, but the Sega Genesis lin??eup is starting to come into its own. Whereas the N64 additions for Switch Online + Expansion Pack have been solo drops, Sega fans get a few Gen?esis games at a time, and this week's lineup is surprisingly good.

As of June 30, Expansion Pack subscribers can play Comix Zone, Mega Man: The Wily Wars, Target Earth, and Zero Wing on Ninte?ndo Switch. So what'll it be? Pain or ple?asure?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTmTXonIRao

If it's been a while, the trailer will catch you up to speed with some stage-setting clips. There are plenty of longplays out there, too. I recently slid into Treasure's Light Crusader kn?owing next to nothing about it, and that fresh-eyed experience was bewildering yet fun.

Four more Sega Genesis games join the mix

I was always terrible at it, but Comix Zone is a classic Genesis beat-'em-up in many households, and decades later, its comic-book art and animation still hold ??up well. During times like this, I really apprec??iate the rewind feature in retro re-releases.

Mega Man: The Wily Wars is another big one �it's three spruced-up games in one, and this Switch arrival is one of those "kinda never thought I'd see the day" modern digital releases. If you've only experienced the original three Mega Man games on NES, you should check this out. And after clearing the trilogy, there's a Wily Tower to topple.

If you're a run-and-gun fan, Target Earth (also known as Assault Suit Leynos), will test your mettle. While I lack personal experience with it, I do own the prequel, Cybernator, on Super Nintendo. Cool. Tough, but cool. I think it'll be hard for me to? go back, b??ut that's one benefit of the subscription model �once you're in, everything can be an impulse play.

Rounding out the bunch, we've got Zero Wing from Toapla??n. While the iconic translations ("Somebody set up us the bomb"; "How are you gentlemen"; "All ??your base are belong to us") have taken on a life of their own, it's worth laughing again for old times' sake and sticking around to actually play this side-scrolling shooter. It's more than a meme!

Altog??ether, this is one of the more interesting groups in recent Switch Online history.

The post Nintendo Switch Online’s four new Sega Genesis games are a pleasant surprise appeared first on Destructoid.

Snitches get Stitches

Independent developer Hero Concept is currently working on an all-new sequel to its street-smashin' comic-book beat-'em-up, Mayhem Brawler. Titled Mayhem Brawler II: Best of Both Worlds, the new scrapper was premiered in the pages of brand new beat-'em-up magazine Brawler's Alley.

According to project lead Serkan Ozay, Mayhem Brawler II will retain the frenzied beat-'em-up ac??tion of the original 2021 release, but will utilize a fully revamped combo system, as well as a roguelike approach to enemy placement and stage design. Hero Concept is aiming for a total of eight playable characters, (less cops this time, please), with the development team also focusing on new mechanics, multiplayer engagement, and new endgame content.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPxK9Cq9RXA

A dual storyline will focus on the current affairs of Christina "She-Wolf" Vasquez, enemy-turned-ally and winner of the Best Rockabilly Lycanthrope Sweetheart award, while a second narrative, set in yesteryear, will recount the legend of Megan "Stellar" Gardner, an early years Stronghold officer who also happens to be the mother of Mayhem Brawler's protagonist, ?Star. Fans can expect more mutant busting on the avenues and alleyways of Mayhem City in this chrono-chaotic tale.

Mayhem Brawler, available now on PlayStation, PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch platforms, has received a steady content rollout since its initial release back in August 2021. The first major drop came in the form of the Air Supremacy 2.0 update, which added the opportunity for aerial combos, OTG attacks, and extended juggles. This was then followed by the Wolfpack update in Ja?nuary 2022, which added four-player co-op, level select options, and introduced mah moon-howling gal as a new playable character.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzUIOZLrzc

No doubt Hero Concept will be hoping that Mayhem Brawler II will improve and expand upon its pred?ecessor, while still maintaining its fun character design, comic-book aesthetic, and retro-inspired button-pounding action. It's gonna be a long wait, as the sequel has a tentative release date of 2024, but with the beat-'em-up renaissance in full swing, there's plenty of street justice to be dished out in the meantime.

Mayhem Brawler II is currently in development at Hero Concept. For more details and first images, (along with other news and reviews from the beat-'em-up world), be sure to check out the first issue of Brawler's Alley, available to download free of charge.

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The Saturday morning beat 'em up is looking great

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had some spectacular beat 'em ups over the years. Games like Turtles in Time have become nostalgic classics of the genre. But the turtles haven't had such luck in recent years when it comes to games. TMNT: Shredder's Revenge feels like a callback t??o those golden oldies, capturing rosy nostalgia in a pixelated cartoon brawler.

Shredder's Revenge comes from the one-two punch of Tribute Games and Dotemu. The former has developed some rad retro-inspired action games like Flinthook and Panzer Paladin, while Dotemu has collaborated on projects like Streets of Rage 4 and Windjammers 2. It's a ?good match. And that becomes readily apparent when the action gets underway.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RfrrEF1VLo

In my demo at PAX East 2022, a quick TV newscast introduction informed me the Foot Clan was up to its usual hijinks. ?My co-op pal and I locked in our fighters—I went for Raphael, they chose Splinter—and we burst onto the scene.

The action feels right at home for retro action game fans. Go right, beat up bad guys. There's a basic attack button, as well as a special attack with a corresponding meter. Jumping and flipping (both forward and back) round out the face buttons, and we coul??d also taunt to build meter and do a ??"cheer up" move (high-fiving each other) to help share health around.

It feels simple and straightforward in a good way. It's not quite as complex as something like Streets of Rage 4, where you might be gambling with risky special attacks for longer combos. A focus of Shredder's Revenge, one dev told me, is cro??wd control. Enemies can quickly gang up on you, and the F?oot Clan brings no shortage of variety to the rumble.

Turtle power

As more varieties showed up, we had to start varying our tactics and balancing use of our specials. I could T-pose (turtle-pose?) and spin around, using a whirlwind of sai to clear the screen. We needed to make sure we used i??t well, though.

Helping us out were some power-ups, as specialty pizzas gave us some boons like infinite specials for a limited time. And make no mistake, it wasn't all flashy moves: the basic brawling of the turtles, their master, and intrepid reporter April O'Neil is solid and fun. Combos can be simple, but I found little ways to mix them up and could see some p??otential for racking up big combo numbers.

April is a great example of just how TMNT: Shredder's Revenge nails the charm. Her arsenal feels like a mixture of interesting martial arts ?moves and little visual gags, from her dashing boom-mic attack to her taunt having April bust out a mic and talk smack, R. Mika style.

One of my favorite little touches was in one of April's throw attacks. Players can grab enemies by walking into them, a beat 'em up staple. Once they have someone grappled, they can directionally throw them, do a damaging throw combo, or chu??ck the Foot Clan fighter directly in?to the screen. I guarantee, that never got old.

April's special throw sees her fling an enemy back and forth in a series of slams. And on the last one, she whips out her camera and snaps a shot of the poor, shattered soul she just demolished. The turtle smackdown is full of little charming moments like this: high-fives, neat animations, fantastic tunes, and lots of little touches that make it all feel like a cartoon episode. Add on the return of the original voices from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and it just clicks.

Cowabunga crew

That's all the ways Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge feels authentic and honest to the legacy. What's also exciting, on top of the fun com??bat and fun four-player co-op, is how easy it is to pick up. I mentioned before how the controls are fairly straightforward, and that's a huge?? benefit to the actual game.

Shredder's Revenge feels easy enough to pick up and play for just about anyone. The buttons and inputs are straightforward. But the execution still feels good. And if you start digging into the little ways you can extend combos and brawl harder,?? it feels like there's depth to be found.? It's also easy enough to pop on with some friends, with just the right amount of challenge.

It might sound weird to say, but TMNT: Shredder's Revenge was just what I was hoping it'd be, playing it at PAX East. It meets expectations. And when those expectations are a classic-feeling animated brawler, Shredder's Revenge is clearing a good bar. Hopefully the full version?? sticks the landing.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is set to slam Ninte?ndo Sw?itch and PC sometime this year.

The post PAX: TMNT Shredder’s Revenge is the retro brawler I hoped it would be appeared first on Destructoid.

It's time for the teacher to step in

A new combatant has been revealed for the upcoming turtle beat 'em up, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. And the newest debut for the TMNT lineup is none o?ther than the master himself,?? Splinter.

The longtime teacher and paternal figure to the turtles will beat up some Foot Clan ninjas alongside the turtles. His arsenal looks to include some dive kicking, shadow-clone attacks, and a few good thwa??cks?? with his cane.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R0yCBJ5Qas

While Master Splinter and the rest of the TMNT gang are already confirmed for PC and Switch, two more platforms are getting added today too. TMNT: Shredder's Revenge will also come to Xbox One and PlayStation 4. No firm release date has been set yet for the launch, but Dotemu is aiming for sometime later this?? year.

The TMNT franchise suits Dotemu well, given how good the Saturday morning cartoon brawler vibes are from this trailer. After working on previous beat 'em ups like Streets of Rage 4, a good standard was already set.

With TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, it seems like the beat 'em up fans will have a nice, nostalgic game to bash through. The current lineup ?is straightforward—the Turtles, April, and Master Splinter—but I'?m holding out hope for a left-field surprise. I mean, Casey Jones. Come on now.

We'll see if the hockey mask-wearing vigilante ever makes it i??n. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew will take on the Foot Clan on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch sometime later this year.

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Save the rainforest in style

The hand-drawn beat 'em up Tunche is finally going live. Developer LEAP Game Studios and HypeTrain Digital have confirmed that Tunche will launch for PC, Xbox consoles, and Sw?itch on Nov. 2, 2021.

Set in the Amazon rainforest, Tunche follows a band of brawlers diving deep into the wild to restore peace. Nayra the warrior, Pancho the musician, Rumi the sorceress, and Qaru the bird boy are four playable fighters, as well Hat Kid, a guest fighter from fellow indie A Hat in Time.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Iy2DPv1h8

The indie brawler was expected to launch earlier this year, but the team announced it needed some more time. Today, the new date is locked in, and it's o??nly a few weeks away at that.

Tunche's look has impressed us in the past, and looking at the new trailer footage, it's cool to see the team's vision fully in motion. Plus, Tunche is playable either solo or with up to three other friends in a local co-op sess??ion.

It's been a good time for brawlers lately, with big-name titles like Streets of Rage 4 and River City Girls. Tunche certainly looks like one to wa?tch out for if your couch co-op brawler pals are itching for anothe??r fight.

Tunche will launch on Nov. 2 for PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. A PlayStation 4 version was planned at some point, but no date has been set for that yet.

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Every time we flash the Die Fledermaus signal, he unplugs his phone and leaves town for a week

Tim Burton’s Batman Returns is the best Christmas movie for people who don’t want to commit to the whole cheer thing. A lot of people say Die Hard, and I love Die Hard, but ??i??t doesn’t have Batman in it. It also doesn’t have Danny DeVito eating fish, so I think I rest my case.

Batman Returns would be mashed into game form on a stupid number of platforms and some of them were actually good! Almost all of them were entirely different games, however. You got a completely different experience depending on what console you played it on. Potentially the best Batman Returns version, however, for the SNES.

Superhero beat-’em-ups were?? a dime a dozen on the SNES and Genesis. Take a spin on the wheel, you’re either going to get a passible one or a title that’s just plain awful. They’re going to sell based on who’s on the cover, so why put any effort into them.

Some were decent, though. Batman Returns on the SNES comes to us from Konami while they were still in their prime. To give you an idea of the talent on hand, Etsunobu Ebisu �Ebisumaru himself �is credited for planning and programming. ??It’s interesting to see such names on a license??d game based on an American movie.

It’s also nice to see the score is based on Danny Elfman’s themes. While 1990’s Batman on the NES was pretty convincing in telling us they weren’t needed, I’m steadfast in my belief that Batman’s real theme is the one that Danny Elfman composed. Pr??obably because I grew up with the Animated Series, but I’m too old to change ??my opinion.

Batman Returns is pretty standard for conveyer belt beat-’em-ups. The controls are rather close to Streets of Rage. You technically have one attack button but can pair it with jumps and grabs. The great thing about the grabs is that they’re absolutely brutal. By default, Batman ju??st slams the enemy into the ground, but if you move towards pieces of the set, you can bash them against windows and railings. You can also grab two enemies and slam them into each other, which is pretty ambitious for an SNES game.

It certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel. The only wrinkle it really puts in the ta??pestry is some side-scrolling levels and a driving stage. There’s even a special move that attacks in all directions but damages your health, and screen-clearing bombs. It’s more or less just following the recipe.

The combat is just so powerful and impactful. It reminds me slightly of The Death and Return of Superman, but a littl??e tighter and more reliable. ??You’re just bashing dudes.

Streets of Rage but with Batman is a pretty easy sell for me, but Batman Returns does have its deficiencies, many of which it shares with its contemporaries. Your opponents, for example, are lacking in variety. They’re all clowns. All of them. Different types of clowns, sure, but clowns. That’s pretty true to the movie, but I feel like a street tough or two could be thrown in. Of course, then I remember that my beloved Streets of Rage has you fight palette swaps of thugs for the entirety of the game, and th?ings begin to make more sense.

There’s also no co-op, which is also true to the movie because this is before things were ruined by Robin. Still, I ??feel co-op is an important feature when it comes to trashing clowns. Maybe Catwoman could have stood in? She was sort of grey. Or better yet, just throw in Alfred. It would be amazing.

The bosses are also cheap, which is true to t??he �0s beat-’em-up. You’ll probably drop the most lives on them, rather than all the children’s entertainers you’re savaging on the street.

Another complaint, there’s no fight against Christo??pher Walken. Sure, I don’t think Christopher Walken deserves to get beaten up by Batman, I just feel like it’s somethin??g I want to experience.

The game’s also rather brief �again, typical of the genre at the time �however, Konami’s love of limited continues gets in the way. It may take a few attempts before you reach the end, but it’s at least doable, unlike the port of Final Fight on the SNES.

That means it doesn’t overstay its welcome, which was a problem encountered by a certain other superhero game of its genre. And really, if they were just planning on showing off ??the same dingy streets and the same make-up wearing fre??aks for the entire runtime, best wrap it up early.

Yet, what’s there is incredibly solid. The combat has a good sense of physicality, the aesthetic is true to the movie, and it’s the chance to experience what it’s like to be Michael Keaton. I may be a bit biased because I absolutely love Batman Returns for SNES and Konami’s early wo?rk, b??ut�that’s it. That’s my whole point. I might be a bit biased. Do with that what you will.

For othe?r retro titles you may have missed, ?click right here!

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BARF!

I simply cannot stop walking down the street these days, without kicking the shit out of everybody I come across... I am, of course, referring to the recent spate of beat-'em-ups that have been finding their way into the modern gam?ing sphere... yes... that'll do.

And it looks like the party is set to continue into 2022 and beyond, as one of the oldest fist-throwing franchises on the block, Kunio-kun, (Renegade/River City Ransom), is getting prepped to cele?brate its 35th ann??iversary this very weekend.

Arc System Works �current holders of the Kunio-kun IP �has launched a brand new website, counting down to the cutesy brawler's birthday, set for September 4. While this doesn't necessarily mean that we'll be seeing a brand new game announcement, but with several projects already teased, (including the ace River City Girls Zero and River City Girls 2, cur??rently in development at WayForwad), one expects that ArcSys will not let the anniversary pass without some form of exciting new announcements. I hope we get a new dodgeball game, at the very least.

Tape those fists and keep that dial tuned to Destructoid. We'll be sure to let you know of any exciting news or reveal??s once the site finally goes live.

The post Kunio-kun 35th anniversary site counts down to September 4 re?veal appeared first on Destructoid.

Plus some Space Jam-themed Xbox controllers

Space Jam: A New Legacy premieres in a few short weeks on July 16,  and not only is the real-life/animation mash-up returning, but it's also arriving with a tie-in game: Space Jam: A New Legacy - The Game.

Last December, Microsoft partnered with the film to accept fan-submitted video game ideas to create an "original arca??de-style video game inspired by the new m??ovie." The two winners—Ricky from the U.S. and Narayan from India—had their ideas blended into one retro-style beat 'em up featuring the Tune Squad and LeBron James.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wjE8aflus

Space Jam: A New Legacy - The Game will have LeBron, Bugs, and Lola Bunny working together to stop members of the Goon Squad and a rogue A.I. named Al G. Rhythm. It's certainly got the throwback style right, as it was developed by Digital Eclipse. There are?? also some tie-in Xbox controllers for the game on the way as well.

The controllers hit stores on July 8, while the Space Jam: A New Legacy tie-in game launches first as an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate perk on Ju?ly 1. It will later be made free-to-play through the Microsoft Store on Xbox on July 15.

The post The Space Jam sequel is getting a tie-in beat ’em up game appeared first on Destructoid.