What's your favorite memory from when you were a kid. For me, among the best are those days and nights I spent with my siblings and friends playing video games until we could barely keep our eyes open. There is nothing quite like the 13-year-old memory of a belly full of pizza and soda, my eyes glued to screen, playing in a different world with other people.
Indeed there was arguably no better time to be a kid than at the dawn of multiplayer games in the early 90's. The Nintendo and Sega were fighting for player attention, creating all sorts of different genres and worlds to tickle the imagination and draw in hoards of people. As a consequence some of the finest games ever produced were developed and released during this time.
Players of a certain vintage will be very familiar two of the most famous of these: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II Arcade and Streets of Rage II.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II Arcade (Henceforth TMNT II Arcade) started it's life in, you guessed it, arcades in 1989. Up to four players could kick, punch, and slash their way through hoards of robotic foot soldiers to face off with all of their favorite villains from the TMNT show. In 1990, Nintendo released a home version of the game, awesome in nearly every way except for two: it wasn't quite as good looking on home televisions, and it could only support two players because that was the maximum number of controller ports on the NES.
But even considering that: it was still awesome. My three brothers and I would switch out when someone died, spending hours running through the levels and trying to beat the game. We each had a turtle that we favored most. I was all about Michelangelo, the party dude.
The vibrant colors and art of the game (something it has in common with Streets of Rage II), the excellent yet simple and deep control scheme, and detail of the game are really what made it something to remember. If a foot soldier got the drop on your buddy, he could grab him from behind. If that happened you could slap him off, saving him. This idea alone was decades ahead of its time, not fully maturing until games like Left 4 Dead in the 2000's.
But as much as I love TMNT II Arcade (yes, saying Arcade is necessary - there was another TMNT II, and it wasn't good), there was one game that could possibly compete and, dare I say it, even be better. Streets of Rage II.
Where do I begin with this game? It's essentially so perfect that, unlike even TMNT II, I didn't/don't mind playing it alone. Streets of Rage II was even more vibrant than TMNT II, colors popping off the screen in all of their glory. In Streets of Rage II, you play as any of four completely different characters, each with a different combination of power, technique, speed, jump, and stamina stats.
The game is a design masterpiece, enabling one or two players to feel like they were making real decisions from the beginning as they combo'd their ways through hoards of baddies on the Sega Genesis.
Where Streets of Rage also really shines is the game world. It plays like a crazed & fevered 80's buddy-cop adventure beat 'em up dream. The plot is that the bad guy from the last game has re-awoken and kidnapped Adam Hunter, one of the characters from the first game (which allowed for the introduction for one of my favorite video game characters of all time, Skate Hunter, Blake's younger brother). Now you have to beat your way through punks and thugs in bars, on the street, in parks, and in abandoned buildings in order to rescue him.
If you don't find this particularly interesting, don't worry. Later in the game things get nice and weird.
The game just does so much right, especially for the time period. For once, the all-rounder that you should default to if you're new? It's a girl, Blaze, another awesome character (who am I kidding, every character in this game is awesome - even the basic baddies outside of the bosses and mini-bosses). Moreover, the person you're rescuing isn't some dainty little damsel in distress.... it's a big ripped dude, your friend from the first game.
Look up my skirt while I high kick? Hope it was worth that snapped neck.
These gems from the golden age of video games can still be pretty easily acquired. Streets of Rage II is on Steam and in plenty of virtual stores (pretty sure it's available in the Playstation and Nintendo virtual stores - of course by now you might be better off buying Streets of Rage 4, the new game! But that's another article). TMNT II Arcade might be hard to track down, but you can always grab it for and NES emulator.
If you've played these games before, don't be afraid to go back and spend a little time playing them. If you haven't, now might be a good time to give these a gander. They're unforgivably hard, but also surprisingly deep and satisfying.