best all time beat em up

[Wizard]

Judging from the name, Bouncer sounds like a game with fairly limited movement.  Do you block the entrance to the same club for the whole game?

While The Bouncer's concept was fairly good, it was just a simple beat 'em up. I still can't see why people mistook it for an RPG.

Originally, when Noise Factory was making it(Yes, that Noise Factory) they implamented several RPG elements into the game that gave it more of an RPG feel with less beatings. Then SqaureSoft came into the picture and either removed some(rather, most) of the leet features originally planned and cut the story down to like, 10 pages.

[Daeval]

Meh, the bouncer probably would have been boring as heck with a "story" more than 10 pages long. As it is, it is an interesting twist on what is more or less a dead genre.

 

I don't know what was planned for it, but the RPG elements come in the form of character move ugprades. You can basically "buy" special moves, which vary between the three (I think?) characters, with points earned through the game. I'm pretty sure the "story" also branches depending on who you pick for different portions of the game, as it will let you switch at certain junctions.

 

It was pretty neat, but I thought the character progression was pretty static and boring. They could have made the upgrades much more interesting just by including multiple "branches" of each character's tree, and it wouldn't have detracted from the old-school beat 'em up feel.

[Chaotica]

Streets of Rage 2 or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

[ugenn]

I'm surprised Golden Axe was not mentioned. And Shadow Over Mysteria and Tower of Doom. I love these medieval type hack and slashes.