I do like a good, classic beat ’em up. The golden era of the early to mid ’90s had some of the finest of the fine brawlers around. Whether they be in the arcade or on the home machines, the beat ’em up fans were well catered for back then. QUByte Interactive offer up seven beat ’em ups in this retro collection that is cleverly titled, Beat ’em up Collection (QuByte Classics).

“Beat ‘Em Up Collection brings together seven intense side-scrolling action games in a retro-fueled compilation. From ancient legends to dystopian futures, punch, kick, and slash your way through waves of enemies in pure 16-bit style!”

As I have seven games to get through here, I’m not doing detailed reviews, just some brief highlights and thoughts, then I’ll look at the overall package. I’m going through the games in order, as they are presented in the collection. First up is First Samurai.

I have to admit to being surprised that First Samurai is in a beat ’em up collection because, it’s not really a beat ’em up. It’s more of an action-platformer. Yes, there’s some hack ‘n slashing action, but First Samurai plays more like Strider than something Final Fight. Regardless, I played a hell of a lot of this game on the Amiga back in the day, it’s brilliant. This isn’t the original Amiga version, I believe it is the SNES port. Still a solid game today though and it plays very well and all. However, the SNES version always was inferior to the original.

Then we get the sequel, Second Samurai. You know something? Second Samurai on the Amiga is one of the greatest game sequels ever made. It is sublime and surpasses the first title in every possible way. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Second Samurai in this collection is not the Amiga game… it’s the Mega Drive version. Oh dear, it’s not very good. Where as the SNES port of the first game is still pretty much the same game (different level layouts, different enemies and such, but still the same basic game) the Mega Drive version of Second Samurai is a totally different title. The gameplay is flat and redundant when compared to how great the original Amiga one was, a definite disappointment.

Gourmet Warriors is the next game in the collection and honestly, I’d never heard of it before. I believe that it was only ever released on the Super Famicom in Japan, back in 1995 and called Gourmet Sentai Barayarō. It did eventually see a Western release in 2019 under the Gourmet Warriors title. With this one being Japanese, it is very Japanese. While it is standard beat ’em up fare, it can get a bit bizarre at times. There’s a button that makes your character do a pose, for no reason whatsoever. When you defeat enemies, they drop ingredients. In a “normal” beat ’em up, these would give you extra health, not here. Instead, you save up all those ingredients and when you beat a boss, you pick several of those ingredients to make a meal (“Dinner time!”). The playable characters are called Bonjour and Tres Bien. I don’t know if that is just bad translation or typical Japanese nonsense. It’s a pretty decent brawler though.

Iron Commando is another Japanese only game that was released in 1995 for the Super Famicom. Unlike the previous title, I have played this previously. Iron Commando is what I’d call a “chunky” beat ’em up. The characters are big and chunky, and they have a lot of weight to them, they feel quite hefty. It’s not a speedy game, its slow and quite plodding. There are also a ton of weapons here, knives, baseball bats, pistols, shotguns, machine guns. I know that the beat ’em up genre tends to have weapons… but not this many. Pretty much every enemy has a gun, you take them out and use the gun. There are so many guns here that it stops being a beat ’em up pretty quickly and turns into a shoot ’em up. There’s some variation with vehicle-based levels (where you do even more shooting). Iron Commando is alright and all. I think it’s chunkiness and slower pace may pout some people off though.

From the same devs as Iron Commando comes Legend. Once more, and as it comes from the same devs, it has that “chunky” feel to it. Yep, I did play this back in the SNES days. Legend is a bit like a slower version of Golden Axe. It has a Golden Axe-like setting, enemies, some of the stages wouldn’t feel out of place in a Golden Axe game, and there’s even a Golden Axe magic system. But overall, Legend is no Golden Axe. It’s a bit too slow, there’s no variation to the combat or levels, and the gameplay is very shallow, even for a beat ’em up.

Water Margin: The Tale of Clouds and Winds is the sixth game in this collection and a title that I had never heard of before. A quick bit of research later, and apparently, this was an unlicenced game that was released for the Mega Drive in ’95 (or ’96) and sold in Taiwan. I have read that it used a lot of stolen assets from other games including sprites from several beat ’em ups and music from Final Fantasy... probably why it was sold in Taiwan. However, it did get picked up for an official release back in 2015. I believe that the stolen assets have been replaced too. Water Margin put me in mind of Capcom’s Knights of the Round… but not as smooth. It’ okay, with a very Mega Drive feel – if you know what I mean. I said before that I believe the stolen assets have been replaced, I don’t know of they got all of them. When I used the fire magic in this game, the enemies turned into the fire sprite that is in several Capcom games. You know the one, right? It’s in Final Fight, Street Fighter II, etc. I don’t know if it is a Capcom exclusive sprite/animation, but I think I’ve only ever seen it in Capcom games. anyway, it’s also in this.

The last game in this collection is one that I do have a little history with. I mentioned before about my playing games on the Amiga back in the day, Sword of Sodan was one of those games. I remember this one getting a lot of praise… but not for the gameplay. Sword of Sodan was praised for its massive graphics and impressive audio at the time. As for the gameplay? It was pretty shallow, even for 1988. It was a visual treat, not a gameplay one. Even so, it was one of those titles that sold the Amiga’s capabilities back then. Much like Second Samurai in this collection, you don’t get the Amiga version, you get the Mega Drive port… and it is atrocious. Now, the Amiga original was never a great game, but it was playable. This Mega Drive port is really, really, really bad. Very slow, very clunky, very awkward. I’d never praise Sword of Sodan for being a good Amiga game, it really wasn’t, but it was still playable. The Mega Drive version is horrendous. It has cut content, fewer levels, fewer enemies. It is just awful from start to finish. The worst game in this collection by miles.

So then, now I have covered the seven games, is Beat ’em up Collection worth your time and money? Well, along with the seven games, you do get all the usual refinements. Various screen settings so you can recrate that CRT look and scanlines. Full button/controller remapping. There’s a save/load option and a rewind for the times you mess up. You get various cheats that can be flicked on and off in the options. There are some nice extras like box art and original manual scans, and updated digital instruction manuals. You can even listen to the in-game music via a jukebox. Each game does have a little history blurb and some titles have a few bits of trivia to read too. It’s a pretty decent package.

The games themselves are a very mixed bag. I adore First Samurai (action-platformer, not a beat ’em up)… but it is the slightly lesser SNES port and not the superior Amiga original. Second Samurai being the Mega Drive version is a bitter pill. It’s not a good game and it’s so much lesser than the Amiga one. Gourmet Warriors is a bit strange, but a nice surprise. Iron Commando and Legend are quite similar (same devs), but I’d have to say that Iron Commando is the better game, overall. Water Margin: The Tale of Clouds and Winds is quite the curio, an unlicenced title released in Taiwan, a bit rough around the edges but okay. Then there’s Sword of Sodan, not a great game on the Amiga, but a really funking awful one on the Mega Drive.

Beat ’em up Collection (QuByte Classics) is an “interesting” little bundle. Some obscure titles that even I had never heard of before and some lesser know games that would struggle to fall into the “classics” category. This is probably one for the very, very hardcore beat ’em up fans and those looking for something a little “out of the box”. Of the seven games here, I can only see myself coming back to play First Samurai… maybe a little Gourmet Warriors. The others? Nah, I’m more than happy to forget that they ever existed… especially Sword of Sodan. Still, if you really want to check it out, Beat ’em up Collection is available now for Steam and all the consoles.