Beat-em-ups didn't die with the arcade, but they did enter a recession after the heyday of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Final Fight. After the rush in arcades, with classics pouring in from Konami and Capcom, they slowed to a trickle as interest in walking right and punching faded. But they didn't die. On Steam, the beat-em-up lives on. There are still gang-laden streets that need to be cleared by the fists of heroes.

With Streets of Rage 4 coming, we decided to dig into the surprisingly vibrant selection of indie beat-em-ups on PC that have kept the genre’s stylistic violence going. The best of them manage to channel the pure bliss of the arcade days, or add something novel to a genre famous for its 90s simplicity.

Sega Genesis Classics

Link: Steam

It’s a small cheat to open this list, but among the 59 games included in this compilation sit both the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe trilogies. Each entry in the Streets of Rage series is worth owning (they can be purchased separately as well), beginning with the dour original, into the brightly saturated sequel, and the oddball third game. In terms of the Genesis, these three represent the best of the genre on that hardware, and then by default, some of the best on PC too.

Don’t rule out Golden Axe either. The mystical, swords & sorcery aesthetic presents a morbid clash of weapons. The first two games follow similar paths, hacking away at the minions of Death Adder. The third game—a Japanese exclusive for decades—is worth a look, refining the mechanics, plus adding new characters and tighter action.

Streets of Fury EX

Link: Steam

Before taking the Streets of Rage 4 gig, developer Guard Crush Games worked on this kooky and irreverent brawler. In an alternate timeline where Mortal Kombat’s digitized sprites never went out of style, Streets of Fury EX is the standard. With technological progress, the dev team uses expanded animation possibilities, goofing around with the sprites. Characters acknowledge the screen, perform nunchuck skits, and slowly roll over and die. It’s nonsense.

Comedy aside, there’s a competent game underneath. Combos lift enemies up, up, up into the air and the range of attacks (oddball as they often look) keeps repetition at bay. Plus, there’s a bevy of characters to unlock and choose from, including YouTubers like Nostalgia Critic. They all set off to clear London of gang activity—even if not a single one of these people make a convincing street thug.

Fight'N Rage

Link: Steam

The best at capturing the true spirit of the arcade era, this beat-em-up is a furious and sprite-based game that just came out in 2017. It’s full of sleaze, and done in the form of an animal world. The foes? Rats, pigs, wolves, and others, reminscent of some of the enemies in the arcade Battletoads or TMNT brawlers. That set-up is done with a gorgeous, glossy glaze that emphasizes shadows and highlights. And you can bet there are CRT filters.

In action, it’s superlative. While the movesets don’t aim for depth, impact feels sold from every hit. The weight of the combat—and even better the speed—push Fight’N Rage to the top of Steam’s beat-em-up roster.

Mother Russia Bleeds

Link: Steam

Embracing the adult part of the M rating, Mother Russia Bleeds revels in exploitation-level violence. Weapons include syringes and knives and hits connect with plenty of blood. Punches hit like rapid fire tanks, mauling enemies as they slowly lose teeth and clothes the longer they hold on, like the after-effect of too many street drugs.

It all fits a cynical setting, set during a time of high post-Soviet Russia drug use. Fights happen in dreary alleys and prisons, but break out later inside a sex club where people “engage” each other in bondage gear, while others just watch. Mother Russia Bleeds has no morals. This genre is a suitable one.

River City Ransom Underground

Link: Steam

A reboot of an iconic NES game (and extension of the winding Kunio series that started it), River City Ransom Underground uses an open world where Japanese gangs run the streets. The heart of the series remains: It’s still about pummeling rivals, taking their cash, and upgrading your character. The Scott Pilgrim beat-em-up took great inspiration from River City Ransom with RPG-like experience and unlockable movesets, and those features are back here.

Underground fuels itself with a deluge of animation, extending combat and forcing strategy. Each punch counts, and slew of playable characters offer unique ways to execute even base combos. Better still, this all connects to the original game (or at least the American adaptation) where the original River City stars return, now aged and grizzled. It’s a smart reset, both different and advanced enough to feel new. And yes, *Barf still remains.

Castle Crashers

Link: Steam

The modern tentpole of the genre is this wacky four-player weapons-based beat-em-up. Doused with an eclectic sense of humor and coupled with a catchy leveling system, this is, like River City, the rare beat-em-up worth losing a dozen or more hours to.

Castle Crashers uses a delightfully cheery color palette and wild bosses (including a memorable river cat) to keep itself interesting, and if you obsess over leveling and unlocking characters there are multiple difficulty levels to progress through. The chaos of multiplayer with up to four people is a joy, and there's enough depth here to really sink your teeth into. Catching low-level foes in a combo trap only adds to the sense of melee. And the scenery is drizzled with low-brow humor, which really brings out the laughs when among friends.

Double Dragon: Neon

Link: Steam

WayForward revitalized the Double Dragon brand with a remarkable do-over. It’s part parody, playing to an audience of nostalgia-rich 30 year-olds who grew up on hair bands and Saturday mornings. The level of detail (including individual songs playing for every power-up) goes beyond expectations. Not only colorful, the dialog is pure glee, and holds up on multiple playthroughs as the screechy villain Skullmageddon realizes his failing plot.

And really, this is no straightforward update. Neon demands mastery of an accessible counter system and timing, rare in an often brainless genre. It works. Heroes Billy and Jimmy Lee sport all of their classic moves, and the enemy roster? That’s an update of the classics too. Note the original Double Dragon Trilogy is available for download too (along with a recently released fourth entry), but Neon is that rare reboot better than the original.

Big Action Mega Fight!

Link: Steam

With the tempo and simplicity of a mobile game and the look of something from the modern Cartoon Network, there’s little special about Big Action Mega Fight! Not even the exclamation point counts.

However, it’s snappy, and the restrained combat system opens up as levels get cleared. Each stage only lasts a minute or two, breaking up the small time action to make everything digestible. Each punch connects with a tight pop, and a small assist by the way of auto targeting adds the right amount of aggression in the fight. Seeing what Big Action Mega Fight! has to offer down the line makes dealing with the routine early levels a worthy endeavor.

Raging Justice

Link: Steam

Published by Worms developer Team17, Raging Justice brings back pre-rendered sprites at high resolution to embody a cruel, pro-police spectacle. There’s a choice though: Either punch enemies into submission to play bad cop or make an arrest for good cop. Both earn points, and stages offer awards no matter which route you choose. In the middle of a fight, playing good cop is a challenge, so a perfect run is something to strive for.

Raging Justice isn’t pouring out depth. It’s routine. Punch, kick, and grab, and that's about it. It’s even a little stubby in terms of strike impact. However, that unique look, so rarely employed as traditional pixel art or low count polygons dominate the indie scene, gives Raging Justice a memorable quality.

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara

Link: Steam

This list is intentionally light on classic ports, but Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons beat-em-ups arrived on PC in rare form: two games in one, with modern updates including online play and leaderboards. An achievement-style system with fun goals, modifiers and new modes give you a lot of new ways to play, but you could also ignore it all and simply play two of Capcom's best, and certainly deepest, 90s beat-em-ups.

These D&D games combined Capcom's penchant for great-feeling walk-right-and-punch action with weapons, items, magic, and classes. If you crave depth in a classic beat-em-up, look no further.

Bonus: Streets of Rage Remake

If you know where to look, this fan remake (once eight years in the making) is a celebration of everything Streets of Rage. Sadly, Sega’s cease-and-desist rendered this unavailable on any fan-official channels, but it’s out there and worth tracking down.

Each Streets of Rage offered a unique combat system and this remake used and combined them all. From the outset, it’s possible to choose between your favorite, and every character is playable, including their alternate costumes. Locations, enemies, and weapons come together in a massive beat-em-up. Although hardly using any new assets (nearly everything is pulled from the original Genesis games, with some from the Master System/Game Gear editions), this is—or was, rather—a gloriously all-inclusive celebration of a 16-bit icon.

While local multiplayer was once mostly limited to consoles or LAN parties, PC gamers looking for a dose of that old-school same-screen nostalgia now have more options than ever, and by streaming games to the TV you can play on the couch even while your PC is in another room.

Some local multiplayer PC games focus on fierce competition, parroting the arena brawling of games like Super Smash Bros. Others can be every bit as frantic, but pit you and your friends against the game instead of each other.

However it is you like to play, these are the best local multiplayer games on PC.

Cooperative games

Overcooked

If Iron Chef has taught me anything, it's that there is no truer arena than the kitchen. This is a sentiment Overcooked takes to heart, simulating the chaos and commotion of a multi-station restaurant kitchen. Two to four players zip frantically around increasingly complex kitchen arenas to prep and deliver orders as they come in. Some are simple: for tomato soup, for example, drop three chopped tomatoes in a pot, let it cook for a moment, plate the dish and send it on its way. But most are much more complex, requiring a delicate dance of chopping ingredients, cooking others, and assembling dishes according to the various incoming orders.

Success requires a combination of coordination, communication, delegation of duties, and fine-motor skills in order to meet the demands of the dinner rush. It's chaotic fun—just try not to burn the kitchen down.

Rocket League

This brilliant game of car soccer has captured us completely. At first glance this may appear to be a purely slapstick game about rocket-powered cars bumping giant floaty balls into goals, apparently at random, but go deeper and you’ll find a fiercely competitive game of carball that almost drove editor Samuel Roberts mad.

Rocket League is an excellent couch game because it suits quick pick-up-and play sessions and is easily played when fully reclined—we tested. Once you start to get a feel for the controls a world of trickshots and bold upside-down car-kicks reveals itself, and a moreish stream of cosmetic unlocks gives the game even more colourful personality. It’s worth experimenting with 1v1 and 2v2 if the default six-player matches seem too chaotic.

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Divinity: Original Sin 2 was our 2017 Game of the Year and is one of the finest RPGs of all time. It's also excellent for local co-op play with adaptive splitscreen and full controller support. You and your buddy can create characters together, but if they're a little late to the party they can just jump in and begin controlling one of the existing NPC companions.

Death Squared

Death Squared is the type of puzzle game that can single-handedly tear friendships apart. For either two or four players, you control colorful cube robots trying to make it to specific spots on each map, but as each player moves the level shifts around them—usually with highly lethal results for your teammates. It’s a phenomenally clever and challenging puzzle game, but one of the most successful parts of it is just how much coordination it takes. It’s difficult for one player to “quarterback” the solutions to every level, which makes it more fun for everyone.

Another great two-player puzzle game to look at is Kalimba. It’s much faster-paced than Death Squared, but it similarly rewards cooperation. 

Castle Crashers

There’s a special joy in getting together with three friends and beating the crap out of everything. Castle Crashers revels in that joy—it practically bathes in it. Each player controls their own knight in a seriously warped fantasy kingdom, running to the right and slaughtering countless enemies through forests, towns, castles, dungeons, and more. Each kill gets you experience for stronger sword swings or better magical attacks. There are tons of weapons, animal companions, and secret heroes to find and fight over, too. Sure, you can play it solo (or online), but we love playing with friends right on the couch—coordinating the “cat-fish” fight is way more insane when your companions are right beside you.

Local co-op is really the bread and butter of developer The Behemoth, and they have more games worth checking out. Battleblock Theater is a great two-player platformer with full Steam Workshop support for custom levels, and the more recent Pit People is a more casual, controller-driven take on a turn-based strategy game.

Streets of Rogue

A roguelike mashed up with an immersive sim, Streets of Rogue is both procedurally generated and heavily systems-driven. You and up to three friends can take on random missions that can be solved any way you like, similar to other games like Dishonored or Deux Ex but top-down and pixelated. The game provides a shocking amount of variety and freedom for how simple it looks, making it an easy one to pass up. While it’s not strictly a co-op game, I think it’s fair to say nearly any systems-driven game can become a lot more fun (read: absolutely chaotic) when a group of people are tackling it at the same time. 

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

The brilliantly named Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes simulates that action movie scene where the plucky hero has to disarm a bomb by describing what it looks like to a bomb defusal expert over the phone. In the game, only one player can see or interact with the ticking time bomb and its myriad switches, wires, and buttons, while the rest of the players have access to a bomb defusal manual. The game was built for (and plays best in) VR, but even without an expensive headset it aptly simulates the tense conversation of trying to solve a puzzle where you can't see the pieces. Just remember: keep talking and nobody explodes.

Enter the Gungeon

Another game that’s not strictly co-op, but Enter the Gungeon is a lot more fun with a friend sitting next to you. It’s a bullet-hell roguelike where you shoot bullets at bullets who are shooting other bullets at you. Do keep in mind, Enter the Gungeon is hard, and you will likely die a lot, ally at your side or not. But its co-op is integrated extremely well, and the punishing difficulty doesn’t feel as harsh with a friend to help. It’s a great combination of genres in a lovely pixel art wrapper, and one of the few games on this list that likely won’t make you extremely angry at your ally.

Broforce

This 2D shooter is a pastiche of both ‘80s movies and side-scrolling arcade games—it’s a very fun combination. You and up to three friends play as ‘parody’ versions of characters like Rambo (here called ‘Rambro’), the Terminator (‘Brominator’) and even more contemporary choices like Will Smith from Men In Black, or Neo from The Matrix. The fun comes in how these characters’ weapons all differ, as well as Broforce’s physics-driven level design, where every single block of the environment can pretty much be destroyed. While there’s not a lot to it, the variation in enemy types and environments mean this is a perfect couch game for a 30-minute burst of fun.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a bit like if FTL was multiplayer and everything happened in real time. You and up to three friends each control an avatar on a lovely colorful spaceship careening through space. There are various stations to man, such as weapons systems, engine, shield, and map, and players have to run their little avatar from one to another as threats present themselves. It’s a hard game because you almost always need to be in more places than you can manage, constantly running from station to station while bumping into your shipmates. But a well-oiled crew can make piloting the clumsy ship incredibly satisfying, especially during Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime’s huge boss fights.

Hive Jump

Hive Jump is a procedurally generated ode to Super Metroid for up to four players. The levels are randomized each time you play, but with hand-designed rooms and challenges scattered throughout. You get new guns and upgrade your troops as your team descends further into the alien hive, and Hive Jump features a pretty cool respawn system that’s sort of like permadeath-lite. You can respawn on death, but only if you manage to keep a transponder on your back safe from enemies, which incentivizes players sticking together and helping each other out.

If you want another retro roguelike co-op option, 20XX takes the jump-n-shooting of Mega Man and puts it into procedurally generated maps for up to two players. 

On the next page: competitive games and arena brawlers like Nidhogg, Towerfall Ascension, and Videoball.

Competitive games

Jackbox Party Packs

There are now four Jackbox Party Packs, each jammed with great party games (and their sequels) like You Don't Know Jack, Fibbage, Drawful, Quiplash, and others (plus a few not-great ones like Word Spud and Lie Swatter). You don't need to worry if you've got a crowd and are short a few controllers: you can connect to the game server on a browser with your smartphones. If you're looking for fun trivia challenges, quiz shows, drawing games, bluffing games, and other assorted party games, pretty much any pack you pick will give you something great. While the series has been tilting more toward streaming games for an audience, they're still great to play at home.

Oh My Godheads

There are five different modes you can play in Oh My Godheads, each with their own unique twists. ‘Capture the Head’ is like capture the flag—if the flag was a head that occasionally fights back while you're carrying it. King of the Head challenges you to hold onto a struggling, angry Godhead longer than anyone else. Meanwhile, you battle other players using swords and exploding pies, plus collectible power-ups that allow you to freeze players or squash them with a giant foot. It's a fast-paced and fun twist on capture the flag, because the flag doesn't want to be captured.

Crawl

A competitive dungeon crawler with a top notch retro styling. Crawl is a four player asymmetrical hack-n-slash where one player is a hero fighting through a dungeon, while the others inhabit the monsters and traps scattered throughout. Whoever gets the last hit on the hero takes their place, and the game ends when either the hero manages to defeat the dungeon’s boss (also player controlled) or the party loses to the boss for a third time. You get new items and improve your hero while also leveling up and improving the monsters you can control, so you’re growing stronger no matter which side of the struggle you are on.

Another great (and free!) little co-op game from developer Powerhoof is Regular Human Basketball, which is exactly what the name implies. 

Worms W.M.D.

The Worms series has always been a gem of competitive local multiplayer, but I was less than thrilled with many of the recent 2.5D entries. Worms W.M.D. gets back to good ol’ fashioned 2D animation, and it’s absolutely lovely. It’s one of the best Worms games in a very long time, with all the physics-based skillshots and tricky ninja ropes you may remember alongside some cool new tricks. The series has also struck a great balance between randomization and skill, making it great to either just have some fun with or settle hard-bitten scores. 

Brawlhalla

Wish you could play Super Smash Bros. on PC? Well so do I, but I’ve learned to live with the crushing disappointment that that's literally never going to happen. Luckily, Brawlhalla is here to ease the pain a bit. It’s a fighting game that shares Smash Bros.’s percentage-damage system and screen-launching deaths, but it’s also based around picking up different weapons that each have a unique moveset. It doesn’t have the recognizable characters of Smash Bros., but it’s still got some nice character design that does a good job of letting Brawlhalla stand on its own two feet. Brawlhalla is also free-to-play, making it easy to hop into with some friends if you want to give it a shot.

Another good Super Smash Bros. stand-in is Rivals of Aether, which has been in Early Access for less time, but has more of a focus on unique characters with special abilities than weapons. 

TowerFall Ascension

A lot of single-screen deathmatch games are content to offer a single way to play, offering a lean, lightweight experience by doing one thing very well. TowerFall Ascension is a much more comprehensive offering than most. In its basic form, up to four players jump around 2D levels pinging lethal arrows at one another. A finite quantity of ammo makes it important to snatch arrows from the bodies of fallen foes—or grab them out of the air, if you're quick enough—and powerups, environmental hazards and shifting maps keep this process interesting. But there's much more to the game than that. In two-player co-op you take on a series of survival challenges against increasingly varied and interesting enemies. A page full of special rules and mutators allows you to create new game modes on the fly, from giving everybody bouncing arrows to creating a single invisible super-player who the others have to hunt.

Often mentioned in the same conversation as TowerFall is Samurai Gunn, which keeps the one-hit-kills but trades bows-and-arrows for, you guessed it, samurai swords and guns. Matches are a bit quicker and more frantic, but every bit as fun.  

Duck Game

In the future—1984, in this case—pixelated ducks compete in a violent, ever-changing bloodsport. Join your friends in team deathmatch and blast each other with shotguns, lasers, grenades, and tons of other weapons. The matches are quick, with a single shot taking you out, and the map changes after each round which never lets you get comfortable or bored. Plus, there are mini-games that serve as intermission from the carnage, and a button dedicated solely to quacking. It's a fun, silly, and frenetic game that's hard to stop playing.

Gang Beasts

It's still—still—in Early Access, but Gang Beasts is already a hoot of a party game, featuring a series of deadly arenas in which to awkwardly punch, kick, drag, pick up, and throw your friends around. Struggle to control unwieldy balloon characters as you and your friends fight to the death in levels containing meat grinders, moving trucks, Ferris wheels, and speeding subway trains. The difficulty of steering your character is part of the appeal, and making things harder is the fact that you'll be laughing uncontrollably as you fight to climb back up the side of the ledge you've been thrown off, or struggle to free yourself from the clingy grip of another player.

Nidhogg

Nidhogg is one of the best one-on-one competitive games on PC. As a fighter, it’s a Bushido Blade-like struggle for one killing blow as two pixel fencers advance, parry, lunge, dive kick, and disarm each other with staccato bursts of button presses. It’s beautiful (you really have to see the sprites in motion), weird, and takes great skill to master. It’s also a lot of fun to watch, especially thanks to the tug-of-war competition format. Rather than a best-of-three series of short bouts, the players are competing to advance across a stage. Kill your opponent, and you get the right-of-way to dash toward your side of the level. When they respawn, they have to return the favor to gain the right-of-way and take back territory. On top of the drama of each duel—which usually ends suddenly—each match is an easy-to-read struggle for progress, with lots of opportunities for comebacks and upsets. When the winning player makes it past the final room, a crowd cheers, and the titular dragon gobbles him up. Congratulations!

A sequel, featuring multiple weapons and a grotesque claymation art style, is expected later this year. 

Ultimate Chicken Horse

Isn’t the name clear enough? It’s a platformer combination of Horse and Chicken. You take turns placing platforms, obstacles, and traps around a Super Meat Boy style level, trying to make it too hard for your opponents to complete but not so hard that you can’t complete it either. As the map fills up with ways to die, you can eventually remove blocks or rearrange them, so it sort of balances itself through the course of a game. It’s not the easiest game to just jump into with friends as platforming skill will seriously come into play here, but it’s easy enough to pick up for people unfamiliar with the genre. And frankly, it’s an awesomely unique concept that you won’t really find anywhere else.

Invisigun Heroes

A newer take on the one-hit-kill same-screen deathmatch that was pioneered by the likes of TowerFall Ascension and Samurai Gunn, Invisigun Heroes mixes things up by making everyone invisible, appearing only when they shoot. Matches are tense, as it's as much about tracking your enemies' locations as it is keeping a bead on your own. Certain terrain types help with that, showing footprints or splashes of water when you walk, and bumping into a crate lights it up in the color of whoever made contact. There's also a variety of class types, each with it's own unique abilities—an exploding recon sensor and a complex doppelganger power are two highlights alongside more standard fare like a terrain jump, bullet-reflecting sword, and boring-but-effective dash attack. Various game modes also help keep things interesting, ranging from territory-control to a somewhat weird coin-collecting scheme—but nothing beats the standard deathmatch.

Sportsfriends

A compilation of quirky competition. Sportsfriends envisions four ridiculous new sports—although one, Johann Sebastian Joust, is only compatible with Mac and Linux. That's a shame, but not disastrous, as the remaining package is still great. The best of the bunch is Super Pole Riders, created by QWOP's own Bennett Foddy. It's entertainingly chaotic, as two teams of pole vaulters attempt to move an overhead ball towards their goal. Primary tactics include performing a proper pole vault, or using the pole to guide the ball along its rope. You can also play defence, using the pole as a barricade to smack an opponent away, or jumping on their head to force a respawn.

Also included is Hokra, a four player game about filling in blocks of colour; and BaraBariBall, a Smash Bros.-like arena game but with goals to score and almost infinite jumping. As a whole collection, Sportsfriends is intense, entertaining, and varied. 

For a bit of a lewder take on Sportsfriends' minigame collection, the more recent Genital Jousting offers similar goofy gameplay but paired with silly, floppy, cartoon penises.

Videoball

Sport distilled down into its essence: this is the pure videogame version of soccer, with a ludicrous range of options. Colors, scoring rules, arenas—there's a lot here to tweak to your own liking. The joy of Videoball comes in tuning into the timing of shooting and blocking. You are an Asteroids-like triangle, and the tap of a button (the game uses only one) fires a stream of small triangles out of your ship. These are good for dribbling the ball forward. Hold the button, and you power up the shot for a slam dunk—but if an opponent hits the ball with their own slam, it reverses direction while retaining all its momentum. And if you hold the button too long, your powered up shot converts into a defensive block. The pieces are incredibly basic, but there's insane headroom room for endless competition, as in any great sport.