Sometimes the best way to make a difference is to wrap your knuckles, step out onto a mob-filled street, and punch the enemy squarely in the snot box. With beat 'em ups, the gameplay goal is simple: Destroy the enemy waves before they destroy you. Although that description applies to many video game genres—including action, strategy, and shmup—beat 'em ups have their own flavor.
Thanks to pioneering titles like The Warriors-inspired Renegade and the post-apocalyptic Double Dragon, beat 'em ups typically feature street-level heroes who must rescue a girlfriend, save a president, exact cold revenge, or engage in some other B-movie trope. The games usually feature simple side-scrolling movement, which is why beat 'em ups are known as "belt scrollers" in Japan and some Western gaming circles. "Brawlers' is another term for the genre.
Though beat 'em ups aren't as buzzworthy as, say, battle royale games, they have a dedicated, hardcore following that loves the urban chaos. Fortunately, the PC is a platform that has a growing library of high-quality belt scrollers. These are the best we've reviewed.
Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle
Developer Capcom was a key player in the beat 'em up genre's popularity, thanks to several memorable arcade releases that gave players the opportunity to team up with a friend to pound enemy forces into pulp.
Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle collects seven of those games, including Final Fight and Knights of the Round, in a package that also includes online play for each game. If you fancy thumb-numbing, button-mashing action in either solo or multiplayer sessions, Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle is a recommended package. That said, it understandably lacks Capcom's licensed gems, such as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs or The Punisher.
River City Girls
You can't mention beat 'em ups without the Kunio-kun series, a Japanese franchise featuring hot-blooded school kids rumbling in the streets. With River City Girls, developer WayForward took the Kunio reins and created the best series entry in some time.
WayForward's love for the series drips from every roundhouse punch and baseball bat swing, as two high school students—Kyoko and Misako—crack skulls as they try to rescue their kidnapped boyfriends. River City Girls has terrific beat 'em up action, swinging synthpop music, and the ability to purchase new moves, accessories, and power ups, but a few glaring negatives keep the brawler from being a genre great.
River City Melee Mach!!
The second Kunio-kun game in this roundup isn't the traditional beat 'em up on which the River City franchise built its fame. Instead, River City Melee Mach!! takes the series' combat fundamentals—punches, kicks, throws, and weapons—and adds power ups, special moves, stage gimmicks, and team-based, last-man-standing contests.
Featuring charming, retro-style graphics, fast-paced action, and nearly 200 characters, Arc System Works' River City Melee Mach!! gives the series high school rivalries a fresh shot of life. Like River City Girls, it suffers a few issues that keep it from being a beat 'em up A-lister.
Streets of Rage 4
It's been nearly three decades since SEGA released Streets of Rage 3, the previous entry in the beloved beat 'em up series, so the reveal of Streets of Rage 4 was shocking. The fact that it turned out to be quite good was even more surprising.
This brawler by developers LizardCube, Guard Crush Games, and Dotemu is Streets of Rage through and through. Featuring a diverse cast of new and returning martial artists looking to clean up a fictional city's mean streets from a criminal syndicate, Streets of Rage 4 offers the hard-hitting combat, dreary urban environments, and sheer fun that's defined the series since 1991. Streets of Rage 4's wall splats, supers, and combo system give it fighting game elements that create extra gameplay depth.
Treachery In Beatdown City
On the surface, Treachery In Beatdown City appears to be a strict homage to classic beat ‘em up games from the 1980s and 1990s. However, the brawler's menu-driven, tactical combo system, and biting urban satire reveals a game that's radically different than what's come before it.
Developed by Nuchallenger, Treachery In Beatdown City is a fun game that requires you to use your brain to battle the way through the gentrification elements that plagues a fictional city's streets, but its pace may prove too slow for traditional beat 'em up fans. Tactics fans, on the other hand, may really dig it.
Yakuza 0
SEGA's Yakuza is the rare polygonal series that adheres to the beat 'em up ethos. In Yakuza 0—the prequel story that shows how series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu rose through the ranks to become the big boss of a Japanese crime syndicate— you brawl through small, semi-open world regions with knuckles, guns, swords, and other weapons.
At the heart of the gangsterism is empathy and honor, be it between bro and bro, an orphan and his surrogate father, or well-dressed hoodlums and the desperate strangers they meet. It's also a tale involving a pelvis-thrusting man, referred to as both Walking Erection and Mr. Libido, wearing nothing but shoes and tighty-whities. Yakuza 0's ability to dance between the dramatic and the absurd, all of it punctuated with thrilling combat, makes this brawler one of the best on the PC.