The Evolution of Beat ‘Em Up Videogames (Part 2)

Within five years time, beat ‘em up videogames like Double Dragon and Final Fight grew in both the number of gameplay features and also in popularity. Players on both consoles and at arcades loved kicking lots of ass and more importantly to the success of the genre, they loved doing it as a team.
By now the definition of the genre would take shape: A Player(or players) would fight waves of enemies in either unarmed or melee combat and would have to defeat them before moving on to the next section of the level. Usually at the end of a level would be a boss, or master enemy, that must be defeated before going onto the next level.
Beat ‘em ups were popular for the ability for friends to play together, but they were also simple to learn. Almost every game in the genre as the eighties transitioned into the nineties would only have two or three buttons, usually two attack buttons and a jump button. Anyone could figure out how to play them!
Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the most popular game in arcades for at least two years after it was released. Because of this, all sorts of developers and publishers cried out “me too!” and started pumping out more beat ‘em up games than ever.
So everything would be okay, right?








