Entry the first: Streets of Rage 2
Not only is this game just as awesome as it was when it first came out, it is still probably the best “beat them up” ever created. Just as its genre implies, your goal in the game is to face off against an endless sea of thugs and beat them up. Genre notwithstanding, you’ll never find a better television game starring a vaguely ethnic brute, a handsome white man, a slut and a ’90s-vomit urban youth with inline skates and attitude to spare.
One of the most bold aspects of the game is how relentlessly the bad guys farm bosses into normal enemies shortly after you defeat them in battle. In one of the later levels, you face off against some mace-armed robot bosses and box them to the explosive death. Then, literally within the first screen or so of the next level, the robots appear as normal enemies. Pure brutality!
Just look at this cover, folks. It’s like a decade manifested itself as an artist and painted a “totally stupid” (in the good way) masterpiece. Marvel as the cleverly named black kid, Skate, kicks someone with his skates! I would love to make a completely serious and non self-referential movie called Beat ’em Up starring a roughly similar cast of fore’er-do-wells.
subhumanzoids 
You think so bro? I thought the controls felt lagged or something.
No way, dude, it plays 100% perfectly on XBLA.
Maybe it was online or something I didn’t think it played as well as the Sega Genesis version.
That’s weird. Even when I played through it on XBLA with a friend it seemed to run pretty perfectly. I think your XBOX is laggy, brotha!
maybe that explains why his gamerscore is so pathetic.
HAHA, Yeah Joe.. Well at least I’m not playing Cars. Anything to get 20K. :p
Nothing tops the soundtrack to this.
This game was way ahead of its time in terms of gender equality. I’ve never fought so many hookers in my life. Doing it with broken bottles and steel pipes really takes it up a notch.I hammered through this five or six times with John and it was absolutely amazing. It’s a fighting game you can actually get good at and not die a thousand deaths.