Good 'Beat Em Up' / Fight Games for the Genesis

I'm familiar with a few of the great (or at least popular) ones. 'Streets of Rage 2', 'Street Fighter Tournament', 'TMNT Hyperstone Heist'. I picked up Streets of Rage 2 and TMNT and know they are good. Plus I have two others on the way... 'Samurai Shodown' and 'Maximum Carnage'. Are they good? I'm a long time Bushido Blade fan, so I picked up Samurai Shodown based on a review that compared it to Street Fighter meets Bushido Blade.

What are some of the better ones, and which ones need to be avoided at all cost? Also, which of the Street Fighter series are really good, or at least worth picking up?

Beat 'em ups:

Alien Storm
Comix Zone
Golden Axe 1-3
Mystical Fighter
The Punisher
Splatterhouse 2, 3
Streets of Rage 1, 3 (Bare Knuckle 3 is by far the preferred version of the latter)
Water Margin

Those are the only ones I've ever really bothered to play more than a couple of times. There are two Spider-Man/Venom games (Maximum Carnage and Separation Anxiety), but I don't recall which one is supposed to be better.

As for fighting games, Samurai Shodown is a well-loved series and the Genesis port is solid despite the many cuts made to cram it onto a 3 MB cart. The two Street Fighter games are decent ports and it's worth picking up either or both (Special Champion Edition is a better port but I consider Super SF2 to be the better game).

Two awessome games and my favorites in Mega Drive.

Fatal Fury 2, have a diferent controls of arcade and snes, good graphics and sound, new combos, precise playability, one the best port for Genesis.
This game like a Fatal Fury 2 1/2. ( no Special )

And my Beat Up is the amazing Mazing Saga, greaty animation, like a Neo Geo game, boss fighting Street Fighter style, some 2d plataform stage. Very Cool game.

I would add to whats already been mentioned.

Beat Em Ups
Two Crude Dudes (Great music, big sprites and a cool atmosphere. Slightly stiff/clunky game play) 2 player co-op
Captain America (Has some serious flaws but still fun) 2 player co-op
Battletoads and Double Dragon (Solid game all around. I prefer the gameplay slightly over the Snes version)
Power Rangers The Movie (If you enjoy the series and don't mind any meaningful challenge to beat the game) 2 player co-op
The Death and Return of Superman (A perfectly serviceable beat em up with solid graphics and music) 1 Player only

Fighting Games
Eternal Champions (Really hard to pick up and play against the CPU. I really love the graphics and characters in this game. I also think it's mechanics are solid once you learn them)
Weaponlord (Another game that you will need to put some time into learning the mechanics. Great graphics and style and depth to the gameplay)
Mortal Kombat 3 (Pretty solid port overall and retains a lot more of the arcade content then MK1 and MK2 on Genesis. No Matt Furniss soundtrack though :(

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Originally Posted by ITViking

I'm familiar with a few of the great (or at least popular) ones. 'Streets of Rage 2', 'Street Fighter Tournament', 'TMNT Hyperstone Heist'. I picked up Streets of Rage 2 and TMNT and know they are good. Plus I have two others on the way... 'Samurai Shodown' and 'Maximum Carnage'. Are they good? I'm a long time Bushido Blade fan, so I picked up Samurai Shodown based on a review that compared it to Street Fighter meets Bushido Blade.

What are some of the better ones, and which ones need to be avoided at all cost? Also, which of the Street Fighter series are really good, or at least worth picking up?

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Both Street Fighter II games on the Mega Drive are excellent. As well as the SFII games other Mega Drive beat-'em-ups I would highly recommend are:

Streets of Rage 1-3
Golden Axe
Golden Axe II
TMNT Hyperstone Heist
Mortal Kombat 1-3 & Ultimate MK3 (I highly recommend getting the Mega CD version of MK1, but the cart version is excellent too)
Comix Zone
WWF Royal Rumble & WWF Raw (if you're a big fan of old school WWF wrestling like me you'll love these games, if not you might still enjoy them)

I really enjoyed Maximum Carnage back in the day and if you're a Spidey fan too, you'll also get a kick out of it.

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Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey

Both Street Fighter II games on the Mega Drive are excellent. As well as them other Mega Drive beat-'em-ups I would highly recommend are:

Streets of Rage 1-3
Golden Axe
Golden Axe II
TMNT Hyperstone Heist
Mortal Kombat 1-3 & Ultimate MK3 (I highly recommend getting the Mega CD version of MK1, but the cart version is excellent too)
Comix Zone

I really enjoyed Maximum Carnage back in the day and if you're a Spidey fan too, you'll also get a kick out of it.

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No love for Golden Axe 3? It's the best of the trilogy

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Originally Posted by cowboyscowboys

No love for Golden Axe 3? It's the best of the trilogy

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The only time I played Golden Axe III was on that Mega Drive Classics Collection about eight years ago because it was never released outside of Japan back in the day. I was not impressed with the gameplay or the poor graphics, especially considering that it was the third game in a very respected franchise. I just don't understand why Sega decided to cheap out on it's production. It should have been treated with the same respect and given the same financial backing as the SOR franchise in my opinion. As it is I can understand why SOA and SOE decided not to release it in the west. If it had been released over here I would no doubt have added it to my collection just to complete the Golden Axe trilogy but, considering the quality of the game, I won't lose sleep over it's absence.

Beat 'm ups: (The already beem quoted)

Double Dragon (best port from arcade) Plus you can use my hack
Double Dragon II - Slow down as hell but still fun and have amazing soundtrack, also the only port that follow the arcade
TMNT HS - Its not turtles in Time but is amazing anyway, OST is top, plus you can use my hack too looks more closer to arcade


Fighting Games:

WWF WrestleMania - The Arcade Game
Art of Fighting
Samurai Shodown

Wow! Thanks for the great suggestions everyone, and I have some games to research now. I think this genre seems to be my favorite for the Genesis so far - mostly because a lot of them support two player, and it's great fun playing with someone else.

I see someone mentioned 'Power Rangers: The Movie'. How does that compare to the other Mighty Morphing Power Rangers game?

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Originally Posted by ITViking

I see someone mentioned 'Power Rangers: The Movie'. How does that compare to the other Mighty Morphing Power Rangers game?

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If you meaning of the other title to MD, the other one is a fighting game 1 vs 1, its not "good" but for fãs of the series it have a cool story mode with amazing cutscenes for the time very faithfull to the show. Now the movie game is a beat em up, very well done with nice grafics and 2 players action, the only downside is follow too closer the movie.. so the enemys is repetitive because this.

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Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey

The only time I played Golden Axe III was on that Mega Drive Classics Collection about eight years ago because it was never released outside of Japan back in the day. I was not impressed with the gameplay or the poor graphics, especially considering that it was the third game in a very respected franchise. I just don't understand why Sega decided to cheap out on it's production. It should have been treated with the same respect and given the same financial backing as the SOR franchise in my opinion. As it is I can understand why SOA and SOE decided not to release it in the west. If it had been released over here I would no doubt have added it to my collection just to complete the Golden Axe trilogy but, considering the quality of the game, I won't lose sleep over it's absence.

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You are right, Golden Axe 3 has some good ideas but it is a completely broken game. I think it has some fans just because it was just released in Japan, and it gave that game some mystique.

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Originally Posted by Manveru

You are right, Golden Axe 3 has some good ideas but it is a completely broken game. I think it has some fans just because it was just released in Japan, and it gave that game some mystique.

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Quite possibly. My problem with Golden Axe III stems from that fact that it is obviously an unfinished game. The levels, enemy sprites, animation...it all just screams unfinished to me which is such a shame. There are some good ideas in the game, you're quite right, but it was obviously rushed out the door by Sega for whatever reason and boy, does it show!

Quickly looking up, it was developed by Sega CS. When Golden Axe III came out, Sonic 3 was probably already under development and they were involved with it, and it was well known that Sonic 3 was already struggling to meet deadlines due to being overly ambitious... CS themselves were also pretty busy that year too.

I guess it's not hard to see how Golden Axe III would get rushed in that context.

GA3 is very overhated, the music is the waekest of the series..
borings stages with poor level desing
also the artwork is a trash, alot of stages the art dosent even fit the backgrounds with alot of blank space and solid colors
the game is prejudiced by small cartigde for much contant, so you have alot of things in the game.. but all them is poor and badly done
this sucks!