r/BeatEmUps

TL;WR -> A nice journey through boomboxes, crazy clowns and wild farting ladies. I did enjoy what little the game had to offer, but even for 1989 it wasn’t enough to gain some roller skate traction. An (8.5) game, very good in my Arcade Book. Wouldn’t replay it though, as I’m better off taking my roller skates and proceeding to knock on the sequel’s gates! 

I’d recommend listening to this music while reading. 

GAMEPLAY (6/10) 

• Storytelling was pretty basic with Bob and Tom (if you chose CO-OP) trying to recover his boombox, yet had an awesome presentation with hip hop aesthetics and a lot of roller skates! 
• The controls themselves were basic too, with a punch, kick, jump or special attack. If you combined some air kicks with ground ones, you could do recovery attacks as well. Besides, hitting enemies with roller skates must’ve been painful. 
• Apart from the normal controls, when you were skating you could slow down, increase your speed or even kick backwards for a change! 
• Problem was, many hits didn’t connect with the enemies, which required precise timings and perfect placements. 
• By collecting cats hidden in barrels or crates, you regained some health back. Unfortunately that wasn’t nearly as enough when the enemies slam dunked you in Greco Roman style or threw explosive briefcases at you! 
• Speaking of enemy variety, they were outstanding. Each level featured unique types with normal schmucks, robots, clowns, police with whips, near naked posers, fire breathing creatures, farting ladies or even slot machines throwing your own coins back at you! 
• Traversal was seamless without any interruptions. You could complete the game in less than 20m, but that required some hard bucks! 
• Speaking of hard, the game was pretty much a coin sucker. I don’t know how many coins I threw in, but from my own feeling, way too many!

 

AUDIO (9/10) 

• Sound design had an awesome stereo output with crunchy punches and cool Wolfman Jack digitised lines. “Yeah I’d say alright, shake it baby!” 
• The soundtrack itself was very good, giving you pleasant vibes while fighting crazy roller skater clowns!

 

VISUALS (10/10) 

• Fidelity was very impressive for 1989, even though the US version was released in 1990. It combined the punk art direction with its visual effects perfectly, as well as the marvellous backgrounds with unique sceneries! 
• Character models were spectacular. Your own character had a 360 sprite rotation with different animations, as well as the enemies themselves. Finishing a level with a wild dance was super fun! 
• Performance was solid for the whole play-through, not dropping a single frame!

 

WORLD DESIGN (9/10) 

• Level design had an amazing progression with skating or “walking” sections. But the best part was going through the city streets, unfriendly neighbourhoods, train stations, underground, casino, scrapyard or even a Wild West themed area while looking at beautiful animated backgrounds and spectacular landscapes! 
• The atmosphere was perfect. Having a punk on roller skates was more than enough, but the game expanded beyond that with a Casino owner kicking you back into inserting another coin! 
• World destruction while not extensive, did provide some destructible crates or barrels. Quite sad you couldn’t destroy those coin spitting slot machines, would’ve been spicier!

 

We're so excited to be releasing our first game Box Knight. We just crossed 8,000 wishlists, so a massive thank you to everyone who has played the demo and supported the game!

It's Hades meets Castle Crashers, South Park and The Office. A roguelike with loads of weird hand animated enemies, 9 boss fights, powerful upgrades and progression, a bunch of ridiculous costumes and most importantly you can play Solo or Team up in Couch Co-Op (works great with Steam Remote Play)

First time poster, long time reader of TurnBased Lovers. Love turn-based games so much, I went ahead and started to make one!

Reypunk is my upcoming Point-And-Click / Beat'em Up game that I'm solo developing. It features a unique turn-based combat system, along with real-time playback features.

Just released the Steam page, about 20 minutes ago... if you like what you see a Wishlist would be great, thanks!

👉 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807070/Reypunk_An_Eye_For_An_Eye/

TL;WR -> A disgusting gameplay experience wrapped with beautiful visuals, awesome layouts and punchy voice lines. It was a mix bag of sweet melons and literal hot bobbly caca. A (6.5) game, mediocre in my Arcade Book. Wouldn’t replay it for the life of me, even if I liked being punched by Bruce Lee! 

I’d recommend listening to this music while reading. 

GAMEPLAY (3/10) 

• While storytelling was simplistic with a bomb threat, I loved its introduction, the cool bonus stages and the ability to choose your own Arcade machines with 2/3 or even 4 player CO-OP! 
• The controls were straightforward, yet had a lot of inconsistencies in between. You could attack, jump kick, grab and throw enemies in unique ways depending on the character, run or simply pick up knives or grenades and create mayhem on screen! 
• Also, could pick up enemies or bosses and workout your deltoids for a couple of reps, which made me laugh out loud! 
• Speaking of enemy variety, they were heavily reused to the point where I thought I was going crazy. Plus, their spongy health bars and insane hit boxes were the most horseshit I’ve seen on an Arcade game so far! 
• The boss battles on the other hand were awesome and provided a perfect balance between getting your ass kicked and throwing them around. You could meet Bruce Lee twice, and both times he was clearly better than you! 
• There were a couple of health items of course, even One Ups after defeating 100 enemies. What?! I swear to God, I was ready to drop the review mid gameplay, because the coin sucking techniques were way too sophisticated. I think I dropped 50+ coins here, maybe more! 
• While platforming wasn’t present, there was a cool stage within the factory where you didn’t even need to fight enemies, you simply watched them fall to their doom! 
• Traversal was insanely pleasing, mostly because the whole game was streamed as a continuous journey without a single stop screen in between! 
• Now, to the hot bobbly CACA part, the difficulty. I’m not gonna sugar coat what’s already a stinking pile of literal shit, so here you go. Absolute hot fucking garbage of a gameplay. Terrible hit boxes, too many spongy enemies and little to no health items in between. Sorry, -5 points straight up, fuck off!

 

AUDIO (7/10) 

• Sound design had a good mono output where it combined the music quite well with the background sounds, great punches and awesome screams! 
• The digitised voice lines were fantastic for 1991 too, with each boss teasing you into a fight. I also loved how each hero had his own unique screams and grunts, made the experience unique! 
• The soundtrack on the other hand was a mix of good and simply disrupting. I didn’t enjoy most of the songs, yet a couple hit me straight in the gut!

 

VISUALS (10/10) 

• Fidelity was incredible for 1991, with most visual effects having crazy details, awesome shadows and perfect reflections! 
• The character models were so realistic in their animations. You could see fantastic air kicks, overhead throws, spinning mayhem or the idle enemies showcasing their biceps. One detail that I disliked though, were the normal enemies that carried machine guns without even firing them once! 
• Performance was stellar from start to end, without a single frame drop in between. 
• The art direction was simply outstanding. You went from fighting a boss on a moving carousel to kicking Bruce Lee in the face while on a moving tram. The backgrounds on the other hand while having sweet melons on the side, did present breathtaking landscapes as a bonus!

 

WORLD DESIGN (6/10) 

• Level design had the best layout transitions I’ve seen on an Arcade game so far, and each level helped with that accomplishment. You started from the Attraction Park area, then went onto the Tram with the beautiful city landscapes, Construction Site, Rooftop, Cheeky Neighbourhood with the bonus Gym area, Military Base and finally reached the Zero Corp headquarters on a Helicopter! 
• All that was delivered in a seamless journey like a true movie, which was so crazy for 1991! 
• Unfortunately the atmosphere was ruined by the game’s terrible progression and disruptive songs! 
• While the environmental world destruction wasn’t present, the scripted one helped you through with some cardboard boxes while you literally fell out of the sky!

 

Try the free demo on Steam and see if you can break his guard
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4332880/Blades__Battles_Demo/

We combined beat 'em up and roguelike with the most beloved thing in our country: FOOTBALL! ⚽

In the teaser, you'll meet the champions and see how they play. What do you think?

Check out our Steam page and wishlist us here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4706420/Ball_Champ/

our little team’s aiming for a stylish, story-driven 2d "smash-fest"packed with gorgeous anime-inspired visuals, quality animation, explosive combat, disturbing sci-fi weirdness, and slick fighting-game mechanics... blah blah.

think of Pizza Kidd like a Saturday morning cartoon that got hit over the head with a filthy arcade cabinet. haha

enjoy the little video edit

TL;WR -> A genuinely disappointing experience. While I expected to see a continuation of the original, all it gave me was some good visuals with a great gameplay input, lacklustre story, broken audio and monotonous progression. A (4.8) game, bad in my Arcade Book. Wouldn’t replay it, as I see no point in learning gameplay tricks while surrounded by crazy chicks! 

I’d recommend listening to this music while reading. 

STORY (2/10) 

• Storytelling was nonexistent, and the whole game felt like a weird “sequel” compared to the original Denjin Makai. Starting off with the lack of the main protagonist, Makai. Why would you even add a dip switch title change with Denjin Makai II if there was no such character present?! Even the official Flyers didn’t mention the prequel’s character connections! 
• In any case, I expected to see a continuation of the original, instead, I got nothing but confusion. Playing as the prequels antagonist Girulian, having similar characters in gameplay with different models, like Skullbyule being a literal copy pasta of the original Reptile with its spike attacks, or Zeldia (what?! once again) having only 2 wings instead of 4 with some Wolverine claws on the side! 
• Besides the lack of a story and confusing details, the game lacked its presentation entirely. No scrolling text, no explanations, just simple brawling! 
• Here, you had a roster of 8 characters, and let me tell you, way too many for my taste. The original already had 6, but at least it gave you some replay value with different endings. Unfortunately this one didn’t bother and the ending was exactly the same! 
• Pacing was fast with the whole game taking no more than 30m. Good thing was that it had branching paths that were actually diverse in comparison with the original, so a small win! 
• In essence, it had no right being passed around as Denjin Makai II, even Guardians felt cheap as the game let you play as the prequel’s antagonist Girulian, without even giving you an explanations as to why. From hating the AI to becoming its ally?!

 

GAMEPLAY (8/10) 

• Starting with controls, which were similar to the prequel, but with an additional button for more special moves. You could do air grabs or ground ones, throws, normal or side weapon attacks, combos, screen-clearing specials and many more attack patterns which differed from the original.  
• Problem was, the game gave you those screen-clearing specials without any risk. You simply mashed 2 buttons simultaneously and performed them at the cost of some HP. In the original, you could only do them when at low health, making them much more rewarding! 
• Plus, I do believe that the OG had more combat moves, although here you could grab 2 enemies at once and perform shocking attacks or even juggle them around. In essence, while the OG had more combo moves, this one had more special ones! 
• Game mechanics while not overly extensive, did present cool environmental traps with enemies cutting down trees or shooting missiles or ballistics from the animated backgrounds! 
• You could collect health items and bonus points too, earning access to bonus stages with cool third person aiming. 
• Enemy variety was a tad more extensive than the original, which I was grateful for. Unfortunately some bosses were literally copy pasted, as well as had the same reskinned ones during stage swaps! 
• Traversal was followed by continuous interruptions, although the different stages added a bit of variety to the second play-through! 
• Difficulty was good, mostly because I played on Normal. Who knows what difficulty setting the Arcade owners chose, very hard?! Nah..

 

AUDIO (3/10) 

• Sound design was yet again in mono, even though released in 1995. Besides the lacklustre output, the game felt completely backwards in comparison with the original. While the OG had blasting sound effects and suppressed music, here, you got blasting music and barely any sound effects. 
• On top of that, there were no enemy screams besides the howling dogs or stray cats seeking some food. 
• The soundtrack wasn’t my cup of tea, and to be honest, I threw the cup out the fucking window right away. Blasting bass heavy songs while you’re trying to concentrate on how to perform specials and have fun?! Madness. The core flow was somewhat good, but the background remixes and blasting drums really ruined the experience!   
• The sound effects themselves while lacklustre, didn’t even have a bit of variety, all generic and bland!

 

VISUALS (7/10) 

• Fidelity was worse than the prequel, with character sprites being quite muddy! 
• The same couldn’t be said about the backgrounds and visual effects, which had outstanding colours, animations, art direction, flashy explosions and beautiful landscapes! 
• The character animations were very good, although not as good as the original in my opinion. Belva didn’t even have a propeller behind him, let alone his Jetpack while double jumping. The devil lies in the details folks, and these devs forgot about the details and simply let the devil loose! 
• The performance for 1995 was stellar once again, with no frame drops in between!

 

WORLD DESIGN (4/10) 

• Level design had basic layouts with a lot of interruptions, even though presented with strange worlds and a nonsensical progression. I did enjoy the different levels and their outstanding backgrounds, yet couldn’t feel but monotony in their stale scale! 
• The atmosphere was ruined by the blasting music, lack of enemy screams and overall use of special attacks.
• World destruction wasn’t on par with the original, not even close enough!

 

Side Note

• I saw many old reviews praising the game for its gameplay and variety. Yet, I found it lacklustre when played just after the original Denjin Makai. Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay was more than fine apart the copy pasted bosses and character designs, BUT, I don’t judge a game by its gameplay alone, I combine everything together. And the Japanese title Guardians (Denjin Makai II my ass!), was a mix of good, bad and simply awful. I suspect they rushed things out, and as I said before, the devil lies in the details, details that the “Guardians” clearly missed!

 

Check out our Steam page and wishlist Ball Champ here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4706420/Ball_Champ/

This is the first game I've ever tried porting. It's a delisted Beat 'em Up with RPG elements from 2017. It's always been a favorite of mine. I've always been a Kunio/Technos fan ever since I played RCR on NES as a kid. I've always wanted to play it on a handheld so finally the day has come.

The Windows release for this game doesn't even work in Gamehub or Winlator.

This port uses the Linux release from Steam but unfortunately has been delisted since Dec. 30th, 2025.

Currently there's no other legal way to purchase the game so I'm debating even releasing the port.

Currently in beta.

Running in muOS on the rg34xxsp.

Trailer:

https://youtu.be/h-btR6W6jqk

Steam Link:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/422810/River\_City\_Ransom\_Underground/

TMNT (gba), RG40XXV