The PK 27 -- Game No. 21

The beat'em-up genre has been mentioned before in the PK27, so it stands to reason that gritty tales of urban decay and revenge appealed to a dumb, cornfed punk from Iowa, and indeed they did, though having said that, there was plenty of room -in my mind!- for developers to expand upon the notion of what characterized a beat'em-up without sacrificing the core theme: justice (or, for those willing to get picky, vengeance) in a messy world.

Game No. 20 is but one example of how the genre augmented itself in an effort to stay hip, while other titles such as Streets of Rage 2 demonstrated that even dilapidated cityscapes could still appeal to jaded thirteen-year-old gamers, if they were produced with enough flair,* though flair itself is scarcely capable of carrying a game all on its own (take Sega's rendition of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, for example).

Contrary to popular opinion, though, the fact is that assaulting nearly-limitless volleys of palette-swapped baddies does become tiresome, no matter how many drumsticks* there are to consume, pipes to wield, and scantily-clad femme fatales to slap around.***

How do you improve upon what's been done a thousand times over? I mean, one can polish a penny all they want, but at the end of the day, it's still a goddamn penny, and it's not as if Honest Abe will miraculously begin sportin' a fedora just because you want him to be as cool as your father, correct?

Well, some developers opted to venture into (pseudo) 3D territory, and that proved to be a nearly-total bust. Others, such as a team of enterprising ex-Konami employees known collectively as Treasure, spent less time pushing the envelope graphically, and more on incorporating aspects of another burgeoning genre, the RPG -experience points, fantasy setting, zany characters, convoluted story, multiple endings, magic spells, semi-autonomous companion, whimsically Japanese soundtrack- and applying them to the tried-and-true beat'em-up formula.

The result? Guardian Heroes (Sega Saturn, 1996), which may very well be the greatest beat'em-up ever made, even though some purists will, perhaps rightfully, protest on the grounds that a true beat'em-up belongs in the filthy streets of some nightmarish metropolis. So be it. They're probably the same people who label Chrono Trigger as the best RPG of all time, and those folks can suck my throbbing yet nonexistent dick.




* And believe you me, or at least, believe you someone else; I know about flair. I'm Flair Guy!

** Insert random food here: apples, ice cream, pork chops, turkey dinners, baby food, PCP, etc.

*** Relax, ladies! You know I'm joking, right? Women constitute roughly 82 (81.532) percent of Psychedelic Kimchi's readership, and I wouldn't dare bite -off- the hand that feeds.