One of the great pleasures of recent years has been the revival of the side-scrolling beat ’em up – a genre whose prime was in the 90s, and one that’s since been entangled and obscured by the crushing vines of nostalgia. I’ve always loved the swagger and style of Streets of Rage, only to go back to the original trilogy and be somewhat disappointed by the simplicity of it all.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s RevengePublisher: DotemuDeveloper: Tribute GamesPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out in 2022 on PC, Switch, PlayStation 4/5 and Xbox
It took Dotemu’s unlikely revival of Sega’s series with 2020’s Streets of Rage 4, developed alongside Guard Crush Games and Lizardcube, for me to fall back in love with the genre. Here was the scrolling beat ’em up modernised not just in terms of how it looked – though it did look sublime – but also in how it played, with a variety and depth that makes it a pleasure to return to on each and every one of the many platforms it’s found its way onto now.
Dotemu’s next revival, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, already had my attention, and having played through a couple of levels it’s got me thinking this could well be the measure of Streets of Rage 4. Taking the much-loved multiplayer 1987 outing as an inspiration – and thus drawing upon Konami’s arcade golden age – while also steering closer to the original animated series, this is another side-scrolling beat ’em-up that feels remarkably fresh.
“I think [the genre] has a reputation of being very repetitive,” says Jonathan Lavigne, someone who certainly knows what he’s talking about; before co-founding Tribute Games, the studio heading up development for Shredder’s Revenge, he worked on Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World as well as an earlier, well-received TMNT game for the Game Boy Advance.
“It’s a fair reputation, honestly, because it’s a challenge to make a beat ‘em-up that doesn’t feel repetitive. Given the nature of these games you don’t have options to do unique stuff with platforming and stuff like that – it’s often just mashing the same button and the enemies don’t have really distinct patterns. That’s an issue with a lot of beat ‘em-ups. That’s something that you have to alleviate, and find different ways to make it fun. It’s a huge challenge to make a beat ‘em-up that doesn’t feel repetitive and keeps being entertaining all the way through.”