Game:

Anett Futatabi (1993)

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00:00 Beginning (Theme Song by James!)
06:10 Motörhead (Amiga; 1992; Virgin Games)
53:25 Executioners (DOS; 1992; Bloodlust Software)
1:12:45 Edge (PC-98; 1993; Technical Group Laboratory, Inc.)
1:30:55 Anett Futatabi (Sega CD; 1993; Wolf Team)

It's time for a detour! In a fit of inspiration, I got emulation working for the 1992 home computer beat 'em ups that we'd missed at the time, so we start by going back and cleaning those up. Meanwhile, I also got PC-98 and Sega CD emulation working, so we check out the titles we have on our list for those platforms! (I also got Game Boy link cable emulation and TurboGrafx 16-CD emulation working, so this detour continues past this episode!)

We start by finally checking out Virgin Games' Motörhead for the Amiga. This game shares a control scheme with the other home computer beat 'em ups we played: armed only with a single-button joystick, the developers settled on "move with joystick; hold Fire button and use joystick directions to do moves"! It doesn't work much better here than it did in the others, and optimal fighting strategy seems to just be "stand in place, punching continuously and waiting for the enemies to walk into your fists."

The game has other charms, though: a pretty good soundtrack, colourful graphics, and the sheer "why?" factor of a home computer beat 'em up where you play as Lemmy fighting his way through music genre-themed worlds. Solely on the strength of the effort put into the production, we bump this one up past what its gameplay warrants. *VERDICT*: MID Tier!

Executioners, from the amateur two-person development team at Bloodlust Software, hits the hallmarks of beat 'em up gameplay better than Motörhead does. It doesn't manage to achieve fun*, per se, but it makes an effort. The soundtrack is grating, the graphics are hideous, and the humour and general aesthetic are exactly what you'd expect from edgy '90s teenagers. We applaud the effort, but... we're not applauding *that much. *VERDICT*: GOON Tier!

Then, it's time to find out what beat 'em up developers did once they had the storage capacity of a CD-ROM to work with! We fire up Edge on the PC-98 and aren't terribly surprised that it has CD-quality music, anime graphics, long cutscenes, and some smuttiness. What it doesn't have is beat 'em up gameplay: this is just a side-scrolling action game, and it's kind of a boring one at that! *VERDICT*: Not a beat 'em up!

Then, it's on to the Sega CD, where Anett Futatabi also brings anime art, cutscenes, and CD-quality music to the table. This is definitely a beat 'em up, but the developers didn't spend too much time worrying over the quality of the underlying game here. We're in single-player only territory, with really annoying scrolling/enemy pathfinding issues and absurdly poor balancing, as the stages themselves are a tedious breeze and the bosses are massively overpowered. It seems pretty typical in this game to slog through the stages taking absolutely no damage and then get cheesed by the boss in a few hits. Then you get to restart from the beginning of the tedious level! We aren't tempted to restart too many times. *VERDICT*: GOON Tier!

Next time around, we finish up with the Game Boy beat 'em ups we started back when we couldn't emulate the link cable and then see if developers for the TurboGrafx 16-CD can combine multimedia capabilities with worthwhile gameplay!

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Greg and James Beat 'Em Up is our ongoing exploration of the beat 'em up genre! Broadcast on any Tuesday evening where schedules and Greg's health allow at https://twitch.tv/58DreamStreet

In Phase One, we played 40 "notable or notable-adjacent" beat 'em ups released through the year 1993!

Now, in Phase Two, we're playing the NINETY-EIGHT other beat 'em ups released through the year 1993!

Theme Song composed by James, using Famitracker!