07-27-2012, 03:47 PM
I made the mistake to post some stuff from Shaq Fu in here, since it's a fighting game like Darkstalkers. Yawa explained that wonderfully:
(06-24-2012, 12:05 PM)Yawackhary Wrote: Yeah, it gets confusing since some people call beat em ups as fighting games and vice versa, it doesn't help that in some countries use different terms for games (e.g. a platformer in Germany is jump and run). A beat em up is usually scrolling (or flick screen on some consoles) moving from left to right defeating as many enemies as possible with a boss at the end of each stage, some do occasionally go up and down as well and even top down ones like the arcade Avengers (no reason to the comic book). E.g. Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, TMNT. A fighting game is a one on one contest set in an arena where you have to defeat the enemy to get to the next stage. E.g. Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, Blaz-Blue. Stuff like Renegade is a oddity as in that it is in an arena like fighting games but has the mechanics of a beat em up. The difference between a beat em up and a fighter is that a fighting game often has lots of animation per character while a beat em up has much less and includes palette swaps. Also fighting games often have lots of special moves but requires knowing how to perform it, beat em ups do have special moves but mainly the later ones and they are easier to perform. It also doesn't help that some games like Yie-Ar Kung Fu 2 on the MSX is both a beat em up and a fighting game.
It's sort of the same thing to a shooter now whether people mean a shoot em up like Gradius/R-Type or a FPS like Call of Duty/Halo.
Oh and I already fixed the link.