Why haven't homebrew devs done a Beat 'em up yet?

2D_mastur

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No I don't mean a fighting game. I mean a beat 'em up ala Final Fight.

Is there not a market for beat 'em ups anymore? Are they too hard to develop?

We get nothing but tons of shooters, run n guns and puzzle games. Is this where the money is at?

The Neo library is lacking anything stellar in this genre and this would be a prime project to pursue.

Discuss.
 
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RAZO

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Yea, I don't understand why beat'em ups are almost always avoided. A cool platformer like Ninja Gaiden would be cool too. I know that steam has a bunch of cool platformers but would be nice if we had some more cool one's on the Neo.
 

kingcuckmelon1

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Id say its a combination of the Neo's library being flooded with them and the difficulty in developing them. Probably particularly the latter. You dont really see many indie beat em ups. I'd love it to happen but youd get people complaining, "not another fighter" etc etc
 

2D_mastur

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Id say its a combination of the Neo's library being flooded with them and the difficulty in developing them. Probably particularly the latter. You dont really see many indie beat em ups. I'd love it to happen but youd get people complaining, "not another fighter" etc etc

Not talking about vs fighting games. I know that in the UK and other places in Europe they call Street Fighter a "beat 'em up".

I meant things like Streets of Rage or Final Fight.
 

Burning Fight!!

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It's probably very tough to draw art for it (giant sprites with tons of animation frames), adjust movesets, collision boxes, invincibility frames, enemy AI, etc. etc. in a way that results in a satisfactory game that comes close of Final Fight and Streets of Rage's quality, instead of Ashita no Joe and Burning Fight.

Even Kraut Buster wasn't probably as labor intensive as a belt scroller project would be. Just look at Paprium: the guy running the show chose to spend his budget on some totally not gay party in france with bodybuilders, instead of the actual game, and now it's never gonna be finished :keke:

PS: funny you mention the meaning of beat 'em up in the UK, since in Brazil people call that genre of game "briga de rua", which would be a great descriptor for the genre in English if it didn't translate to "street fighting".
 
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RAZO

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Yea, there are like 6 beat-em ups for the Neo. The only one's I enjoyed are the Sengoku's and Mutation Nation.
 

Heinz

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Legend of Success Joe is already on the system, what more do you need?

Some people are hard to please.
 

xb74

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My immediate thought is it might be labour intensive and require a "team" such as NGDEV. Then I remembered the NGDEV guys have a Dreamcast offshoot dev team called HUCAST who would probably be perfect for a beat em up home brew.

Doesn't look like HUCAST is very active anymore and does NGDEV visit these forums anymore?
 

wyo

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No I don't mean a fighting game. I mean a beat 'em up ala Final Fight.

Is there not a market for beat 'em ups anymore? Are they too hard to develop?

We get nothing but tons of shooters, run n guns and puzzle games. Is this where the money is at?

The Neo library is lacking anything stellar in this genre and this would be a prime project to pursue.

Discuss.

Good questions. I don't really have any answers.

Maybe it's a combination of things. Shooters are popular and I imagine they are one of the easier genre of games to produce. Same goes for puzzle games.

I'd rather see an enhanced port of Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, etc than a brand new game that takes 5 years to make and will probably end up being no better than the other Neo beat-em-ups. There are quite a few good unported beat-em-ups that might be worthwhile to attempt as well. Hopefully a beat-em-up expert or homebrew developer can chime in with a more insightful response.
 

titchgamer

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Not talking about vs fighting games. I know that in the UK and other places in Europe they call Street Fighter a "beat 'em up".

I meant things like Streets of Rage or Final Fight.

Just to correct you, Here in the UK SF is a fighter not a beat em up.
Same as you we refer to SOR etc as beat em ups.

Back to topic I think its likely due to how hard they are to make.
I dont necessarily mean that people cant do it.
Just that few can do it well.

If you look at most homebrewed beat em ups, and many of the commercial ones they are shit.
BOR is utter garbage and how it become as popular as it is I really dont know.

The only good ones I have played recently Was SOR4, the SOR remake, river city girls and the take over.

Think thats about it since the Saturn days!
 

Dr. Meat

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Speaking from gamedev experience, beat-em-ups require a ton of art assets to make. It's almost all character animation, too, which is probably at the top of the pole of difficulty when it comes to animation. The talent pool for competent 2D animators who can also work in SD pixel art is pretty tiny. It's the reason that beat em ups and 1v1 fighting games have very little representation in the indie space in general.
 
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bulbousbeard

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If your target is an old piece of hardware, beat 'em ups are actually way more complicated than 2D 1 on 1 fighting games to make.

They're more computationally expensive. Beat 'em ups like Final Fight are basically 3D games with 2D graphics. You have to handle X, Y, Z positioning, there are a lot more collisions/physics calculations involved if you want to allow for objects standing on top of each other, and there are more entities to handle than a 1 on 1 fighter. Fighting games have two real objects to handle at any given time. You can have 10-12 entities to handle in a beat 'em up, and the computer controlled ones will be wasting cycles on their AI.

In 1 on 1 fighting games, you don't even need a real collision or physics system for "levels." You can just cheat because there's a single "floor" without any varying height.

And on top of all of that, beat 'em ups tend to get less mileage out of them because they don't have as much replay value as a competitive game, so it's 1) more difficult to program 2) requires at least as many art assets as any other type of 2D game, and 3) you get less mileage out of what you make because what you end up with is something that can be completely beaten in under an hour.

There's a reason that people don't make a lot of them. They're probably the most complicated type of 2D game to make because they have all the development challenges of both platforming games (the level and collision challenges) and graphics showcase games (many large detailed graphics).
 

pixeljunkie

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also, with the artists I've seen attempting homebrews on the Neo lately this is what we'd get:

 

Dr. Meat

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If your target is an old piece of hardware, beat 'em ups are actually way more complicated than 2D 1 on 1 fighting games to make.

They're more computationally expensive. Beat 'em ups like Final Fight are basically 3D games with 2D graphics. You have to handle X, Y, Z positioning, there are a lot more collisions/physics calculations involved if you want to allow for objects standing on top of each other, and there are more entities to handle than a 1 on 1 fighter. Fighting games have two real objects to handle at any given time. You can have 10-12 entities to handle in a beat 'em up, and the computer controlled ones will be wasting cycles on their AI.

In 1 on 1 fighting games, you don't even need a real collision or physics system for "levels." You can just cheat because there's a single "floor" without any varying height.

And on top of all of that, beat 'em ups tend to get less mileage out of them because they don't have as much replay value as a competitive game, so it's 1) more difficult to program 2) requires at least as many art assets as any other type of 2D game, and 3) you get less mileage out of what you make because what you end up with is something that can be completely beaten in under an hour.

There's a reason that people don't make a lot of them. They're probably the most complicated type of 2D game to make because they have all the development challenges of both platforming games (the level and collision challenges) and graphics showcase games (many large detailed graphics).

It's really just the art requirements. It's really not hard to program a Z axis with sorting in a 2D game. But, yeah, in terms of what you can get out of it gameplay-wise, they're more niche than a Vs. fighter and really don't have a whole lot of replay value while requiring nearly as much character animation.
 

RAZO

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The more I think of it the more I don't want it. So many cool 2d indie games on steam for dirt cheap. You know if they release some shit on the Neo they are going to charge mad money for it and not release the rom to play on a flash cart. So why even bother. Plus although the Neo is a pretty powerful 2d console it still has its limits. I'm all for devs selling the rom like Xeno crisis for the Genny and DC but if your going to charge me $250+ for a cart of a game that could be on steam for under $10, go fuck yourself.
 

XxHennersXx

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also, with the artists I've seen attempting homebrews on the Neo lately this is what we'd get:


Hahaha, I was expecting this video before I clicked the link. Glad to not be disappointed.

Mega Cat made Coffee Crisis on Genesis and PC. Maybe they’d do a port to the Neo, or a different game with the same engine.
 

bulbousbeard

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It's really just the art requirements. It's really not hard to program a Z axis with sorting in a 2D game. But, yeah, in terms of what you can get out of it gameplay-wise, they're more niche than a Vs. fighter and really don't have a whole lot of replay value while requiring nearly as much character animation.

It's not just the art requirements. They're way more computationally expensive, too. There's a reason that virtually every classic beat 'em up has massive slowdown and almost none of the classic 1 on 1 fighters do. They simply don't have to do as much work, and most 80s and 90s beat 'em ups were really lazy on the collisions (most of them didn't even let you stand on objects or have stages with varying floor heights like Final Fight).
 

Dr. Meat

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It's not just the art requirements. They're way more computationally expensive, too. There's a reason that virtually every classic beat 'em up has massive slowdown and almost none of the classic 1 on 1 fighters do. They simply don't have to do as much work, and most 80s and 90s beat 'em ups were really lazy on the collisions (most of them didn't even let you stand on objects or have stages with varying floor heights like Final Fight).

Performance budgeting is something absolutely any game will have to deal with. It's not unique to beat em ups.
 

bulbousbeard

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Performance budgeting is something absolutely any game will have to deal with. It's not unique to beat em ups.

A bad programmer could cobble together a 1 on 1 fighter on the Neo Geo that wouldn't have performance problems. A bad programmer would run into a lot of trouble making a beat 'em up for a 16bit system, so it's yet another area where the skill requirements are higher to make a game like this. It's simply harder to make beat 'em ups than most games for all the reasons raised in this thread.
 
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