10 Best Beat'Em Ups, Ranked (2024)

When we think of beat'em ups, we normally think of side-scrollers filled with numerous enemies. Each level ends in a big boss fight, and with the aid of our friends, we overcame them all. Beat'em ups have always held a special place in the foundation of gaming. They've helped curate new friendships and helped further solidify old ones.

For this list, we are going to be ranking the best beat'em ups. It doesn't matter if they were only available in the arcade, home console, or both — if they were a great beat'em up, they're going to be on our list. The only rule is one entry per franchise.

Updated by Chad Thesen on January 1, 2024: This article has been updated to bring it up to a higher level of quality. This will serve to enhance the reader's experience and make the article more engaging thanks to the inclusion of additional formatting like a game description, bullet point facts about each entry, and special tags under each entry that readers can make use of.

10 Altered Beast

Beastly Sidescrolling Beat'em Up Action & Platforming

• The player character transforms into different beasts.
• Climactic fight as a golden beast hypes up the fight.

A video game where you play as a Centurion resurrected by Zeus and sent out to save his daughter Athena has to be on our list. Altered Beast allowed you to collect orbs to transform into beings such as a werewolf, weredragon, werebear, and more as you take on ancient creatures and bosses throughout ancient Greece.

The fight against Neff is intense as you get the ability to turn into the all-powerful golden werewolf and fight to the death against the sorcerer who has transformed into a wererhinoceros. Nothing like earning the respect of Zeus by throwing fireballs at an all-powerful sorcerer.

9 The Simpsons Arcade Game

Humorous & Fun Gameplay In Simpson Themed Levels

• Play as iconic characters from The Simpsons franchise.
• Minigames are a great pallet cleanse between advancing levels.

If you walked into any local arcade in the 90s, odds are you'd see all four characters being used at the same time as people lined their quarters up on The Simpsons arcade cabinet. The game allowed you to play as Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa, and each came equipped with their own style of fighting. Marge used a vacuum cleaner, Lisa used her jump rope, Bart used his skateboard — which he rode around on — and Homer used his two fists to fight the bad guys.

What made playing the game extra memorable was the mini-games in-between levels — one involving players button mashing to blow up a balloon shaped like your character which you used to get to the next stage. It was also the first-ever game based on the franchise.

8 Battletoads (1991)

Stay Alert & Mobile To Stay Alive

• Plenty of minigames to break up brawls.
• Short reaction windows makes for intense gameplay.

If there was ever a beat'em up that forced us to rage quit numerous times, it was the original 1991 version of Battletoads. From its insane level of difficulty to its famous speeder bike level, the original is by far the most memorable and best in the series. As you make your way through the game's 13 stages, you and your buddy have to play with the utmost precision and care. If one person died on a checkpoint-filled stage, both players would have to restart from the last checkpoint.

The game also offered some Super Mario Bros. style advancement by way of warps that allowed you to skip certain levels. There were also cheats in the game — one of them gives you six lives instead of the standard four by pressing the A and B buttons while holding the start button at the title screen.

7 Golden Axe

An Epic Adventure To Hack Your Way Through

• The fantasy setting works really well with the beat'em up genre.
• Each character feels unique in both gameplay and aesthetic feel.

Using Conan the Barbarian as inspiration, Golden Axe brought beat'em ups to a totally different world. Playing as Tyris Flare, Ax Battler, and/or Gilius Thunderhead, you gathered potions to build up your magic gauge to unleash powerful attacks on Death Adder's henchmen and other types of medieval-style warriors.

What made each fighter great is that each used different types of magical attacks on enemies. Tyris used fire magic, Ax used Earth spells, and Gilius could unleash lightning attacks. None of the characters played the same way, and each of them having different abilities made you want to try them all out on your quest.

6 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time

Tried And True Turtle Power Action

• The Re-shelled remake is available to enjoy the same story with a different feel.
• Each character feels unique and is worth trying out before settling on your favorite.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time is one of the best beat'em ups of all-time. The sequel to the 1989 arcade game took the simple gameplay its predecessor was known for and built on the levels by introducing time travel and having the turtles fight in stages across various periods of time.

In one level, you're fighting among dinosaurs, and later on in the game, you're on a train in the wild west. It really showed the range of the developers who designed the levels. It also included Tokka and Rahzar, from the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret Of The Ooze, as bosses.

5 Final Fight

Brute Force Your Way Through Opponents In Your Way

• First appearance of Mayor Haggar.
• Set the bar for many beat'em ups to come.

Six levels of shirtless ass-kicking through slums and subways, taking control of Mike Haggar to clean up Metro City, and getting rid of the Mad Gear Gang puts Final Fight at number 5 on our list. Haggar is just too iconic of a character to leave off a list of beat'em ups. He's a freaking jacked shirtless mayor who is so dedicated to ending crime in his city that he takes matters into his own two hands.

The game's SNES port did get rid of its multiplayer mode, making it a one-player game, and it removed Guy as a playable character, but the arcade version of Final Fight offered you the ability to choose between Haggar, Cody, and Guy, each with their own fighting style and attributes. Plus it debuted Poison of Street Fighter fame.

4 X-Men The Arcade Game

Make Use Of Super Powers To Dominate The Game

• Two arcade screens made for a very unique arcade beat'em up experience.
• A decent sized roster of different iconic X-men characters to choose from.

The X-Men arcade game utilized dual screens, making four-player combat easier. You were able to control either Wolverine, Cyclops, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, Storm, and/or Colossus, each equipped with their own special move. The only drawback of using your mutant power was it took some of your health each time, and if your health dropped below four health points, you could no longer use your mutant power.

This introduced a bit of strategy into the game. The game included a variety of bosses and enemies who served Magneto, and you could even attack enemies when they were downed. The controls were very simple, involving only a few buttons, but the game controlled wonderfully.

3 Double Dragon

Teamwork Makes The Dream Work

• One of the most well-known beat'em up of all time.
• Having to turn on your fellow player was a very unexpected element.

Double Dragon makes the top three on our list for a multitude of reasons, but the best reason is it contains the biggest twist in beat'em up history. Just when you think the game is over and the girl is saved, you have to fight each other to the death.

This isn't just some friend you've teamed up with along the way; this is your brother we're talking about. The game only consists of four levels, and you get to use weapons like steel bats, throwing knives, and other throwable weapons.

2 River City Ransom

Keep Upgrading By Knocking The Money Out Of Your Foes

• The first entry in a franchise that thrives to this very day.
• It allowed players to upgrade their fighting styles.

High school isn't easy, and it doesn't get any easier when you're trying to save the woman you love from a villain named Slick. River City Ransom included RPG-style gameplay, allowing you to upgrade Alex and Ryan's fighting style and abilities by purchasing books from stores.

In order to make such purchases, you had to defeat enemies that drop loot. These new techniques can be pretty costly, but luckily there are many enemies you can shake down to get your funds where you need them. These incorporations expanded what a beat'em up game could be. The fact it's also part of the NES online library goes to show how iconic of a game it is.

1 Streets Of Rage 4

Always Be Aware Of All Enemies On Screen

• Old-school action with polished modern graphics.
• Enemies will telegraph their intentions — use that to your advantage.

The reason why Streets of Rage 4 is the best beat-em up over the other great games on this list is that it simply offers the best gameplay. You can extend combos by bouncing multiple enemies against each other, plus the game introduced a new special attack system that allows your character to gain health after using one.

The game also includes star moves to deal high amounts of damage to enemies, and it offers 4-player local and online co-op. Streets of Rage 4 is everything great about the previous games — and beat'em ups in general — and it improves upon every square detail of its predecessors.