The History of Beat ‘em Ups

**Mike Lawrence** (0:17)
It's time to double our dragons, It's time for our final fight, We'll get those streets erasing With some Beat'em Ups tonight.

**Jake Young** (0:24)
Yeah!

**Holden McNeely** (0:29)
The Beat'em Up, a classic of the video game genres. A long time coming, too, I think this is probably your favorite genre of video games, Mike Lawrence.

**Mike Lawrence** (0:39)
It might be. I do love fighting games, I do love some side scrolling platformers.

**Jake Young** (0:46)
I have seen you eat an entire roast chicken that you found at the bottom of a trash can.

**Mike Lawrence** (0:51)
I do have a section in my notes called barrel food.
Yeah, this is just the immediate gush. I love a lot of these games, and we're going to be talking about the history, the origins, and the revival as well. A lot of people have brought these games back, new versions. I'm going to tell you which ones I think are some of the best. But the immediate gush, me and Jake went to Barcade yesterday, and we played the Capcom Holy Trinity. I'm sorry, the Konami Holy Trinity.

**Holden McNeely** (1:35)
Thank you.

**Mike Lawrence** (1:36)
The Konami Holy Trinity of Simpsons. They had the six player X-Men.

**Holden McNeely** (1:43)
Double-wide, yeah. Two screens.

**Mike Lawrence** (1:45)
Yeah. One of the screens was covered, boggled Jake's mind how that could work.

**Jake Young** (1:50)
So I thought it was like, it's kind of like a Pepper's Ghost thing. Yeah. Where like one screen is like at the bottom of the cabinet and being reflected. And then, but like the second screen is actually just facing you.
I don't even understand, like I could not figure out how they got it to work like that.

**Holden McNeely** (2:07)
Yeah, this was actually originated by the Ninja Warriors, which came out in 1987 and was three screens with the Pepper's Ghost. Oh, wow.

**Jake Young** (2:14)
Oh, it was three.

**Holden McNeely** (2:15)
It was one screen. Three screens. It was bookended, and then the Pepper's Ghost screen was like the middle screen.

**Jake Young** (2:20)
That's why the middle was on so far.

**Holden McNeely** (2:21)
And I still, I honestly, I'm with you. I kind of still don't exactly understand how that works, but you can just see that there's a screen on the floor of the, you know, cabinet.

**Mike Lawrence** (2:31)
I mean, I don't know how Axeman counts as music, but it does.

**Jake Young** (2:36)
And you were not lying on your Cyclops episode with the Cyclops and Dazzler, like, lower tier.

**Mike Lawrence** (2:43)
It was the Female Protagonist episode, the Dazzler.

**Jake Young** (2:46)
You have to be, you're standing at a complete 90 degree angle to actually see the screen. It's brutal. It's crazy.

**Mike Lawrence** (2:53)
We're basically playing table tennis. If you are Cyclops and Dazzler.

**Holden McNeely** (2:57)
And then of course, the last one being Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

**Mike Lawrence** (3:01)
Yes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Although they did not have the original, they had what is the superior version, Turtles in Time.

**Holden McNeely** (3:09)
Which is an incredible Beat-em-up. I think maybe even Peak, you could argue.
But I will say as a part of this gush, and I want to hear more about you guys' experience, but there was a time in my life where the only thing that mattered to me was playing Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and X-Men Beat-em-ups in the arcade. It was all I cared about. I just get me in to a room. Shout outs to the Pavilion at Myrtle Beach for being one of those magical realms that it had.

**Mike Lawrence** (3:39)
That's the Cloverleaf in Miami and Grand Prix Racorama in Danya Beach, Florida.

**Jake Young** (3:46)
Sport Time USA, Elmsford, New York. I can still smell the sticky floor as I'm screen begging my mom for more quarters so that I can wail on a giant Krusty the Clown balloon.

**Holden McNeely** (3:57)
So how was it, boys? I missed it, man. I wanted to come with you guys. I was on dad duty. We're about to leave town, but I was mad jelly. What was it like?

**Mike Lawrence** (4:08)
It was a blast, man. It was funny. We spent $5 each and we didn't beat any of the games, but that's all we played were those three and a little bit of Splatterhouse.

**Holden McNeely** (4:21)
Nice.

**Mike Lawrence** (4:21)
A smatterhouse of Splatterhouse.

**Holden McNeely** (4:23)
Nice, love it.

**Mike Lawrence** (4:25)
And there is such a nostalgia to it. We were playing Turtles in Time and you're in that third sewer level when you're fighting the pizza aliens.