Instead of that game’s futuristic landscapes, Guardian Heroes takes place in a medieval fantasy universe, filled with swords, sorcery, and the occasional laser-spewing robot to mix things up a bit. The character designs were done by HAN, Treasure’s resident artist, so some of the characters look a bit like the cast of Gunstar Heroes. And all of this comes together using the impressive sprite handling capabilities of the Saturn, allowing for nearly a dozen characters on screen at once, along with screen scaling effects. Their game, dubbed Guardian Heroes, includes experience building elements with a variety of statistics that can be upgraded, a relatively large story with a number of NPCs and plenty of dialogue, a number of branching paths that lead to multiple different endings, five playable characters with their own distinct movesets, a number of magic spells, an AI controlled monster that you can command, and game mechanics that borrow closely from 2D fighters like Street Fighter II. Some of the most well noted include River City Ransom and Capcom’s Dungeons & Dragons arcade titles, both which introduce RPG elements to liven things up a bit.įamously rad developer Treasure – they of the magnificent Gunstar Heroes, still one of the best side scrolling shooters ever – looked at the landscape of beat-em-ups, and decided that they could do better. Their depth usually lies in the playable characters, variety of moves, and types of enemies, but there are a mere few games that deviate from this.

Traditionally, beat-em-ups have all been about strutting forward, punching some dudes, and then walking forward some more.

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