There was a time, back around the turn of the millennium, when seemingly all games were going 3D. 2D fighting games likeMortal KombatandStreet Fighterwere trying to embrace Tekken-style polygons and 3D movement,Castlevania was going 3D on us with mixed results, and evenSouth Park was somehow transmogrified into a first-person shooter.
Some of those experiments were less successful than others, but one of the more intriguing sub-genres that came and went in the early 2000s was the 3D beat-em-up—essentially games in the style ofStreets of Rageor Final Fight, but transformed into a full 3D perspective. There was Fighting Force, Spikeout: Battle Street, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Rockstar’s The Warriors, and Final Fight Streetwise, among others. Fewer of these games made it into the beat-em-up pantheon than their 90s 2D counterparts from 90s arcades, but they still offered some great co-op fun-and-games at a time when the genre was going out of fashion.
With the rise of indie gaming, and reinvigorated appreciation for pixel-art graphics, old-school 16-bit-style beat-em-ups had a bit of a resurgence.
Excess Dimension
Games like TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge,River City GirlsandStreets of Rage 4showed that the classic 2.5D lane-based format had plenty of life in it yet, and room to flourish in modern gaming despite its inherently retro parameters.
With the 2.5D format clearly being a good and reliable thing, I was surprised when I watched Sega’s Power Surge trailer (thanks to Wyatt’s feature) to see that the two classic beat-em-ups in there set to be getting a revival—Golden Axe and Streets of Rage—are going to be fully 3D games; Golden Axe seemingly as a third-person slasher with a player-trailing camera, while the new Streets of Rage game is going for more of a semi-fixed 3D view, very much like those beat-em-ups from the early 2000s.
Now, at a time when 16-bit-style pixel art graphics have pretty much been settled on as an excellent way to do beat-em-ups (as evidenced by Sega’s very own Streets of Rage 4), it’s interesting for Sega to redirect these two historically 2.5D beat-em-up series towards full 3D graphics, as if they’re trying to tap into nostalgia for an era that didn’t have nearly the same pull as the one that preceded it. It’s like someone at Sega HQ went,‘hey, remember when beat-em-ups went through this awkward 3D phase just because 2D graphics became unfashionable, but actually the play experience was kind of inferior? Yep, let’s recreate the magic of those halcyon days.’
Ok, Ok, I’m being sassy, and I’m in fact genuinely intrigued by this shift in direction when none was really needed (the upcoming Shinobi game, also revealed in the trailer, sticks to its original 2D side-scrolling view, just with a lovely painterly aesthetic plastered over the top of it).
I actually have a soft spot for those 3D beat-em-ups of yore. They were clunky and a tad awkward, but there’s no reason to think that their smoothness and mechanics wouldn’t be vastly improved with the devs having an extra 20 years of evolution in gaming tech and design to draw upon. Yes, modern takes on the 2.5D beat-em-up work great, but now we know that, why the hell not take a pop at the less storied era of beat-em-ups?
A Bold Move
I’m a little bit wary, and I’m still nagged by the feeling that Golden Axe in particular might have been better off with a new version that jazzed up the 2.5D template rather than its current third-person hack-and-slash that gives me unpleasant flashbacks to that Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance game. Aesthetically, these 3D makeovers don’t speak to me as much as the 2.5D originals did, but there’s something to be said for Sega shaking things up and tackling these classic games in a totally different style to the way we’re used to seeing them. I for one will be watching these new iterations of Streets of Rage and Golden Axe with great intrigue. Who knows? Maybe we’re due for an early 2000s 3D beat-em-up revival.
10 Best Fighting Games Ever Made Ranked
