Lace up your sneakers, grab your favorite baseball bat and make sure you’ve eaten a balanced breakfast, because it’s time to head outside, hit the streets and throw down with any roaming bands of punks who get in your way! The milestone 60th issue of Nintendo Force is here, and in this edition we’re celebrating the bare-knuckled beauty and brutality of beat-’em-ups!
The upcoming release of WayForward’s all-new River City Girls 2 has inspired this selection of direction, as it’s all about paying homage to the early glory days of the brawler genre while also working to push the design further forward into the future. We’ve got a new pre-release preview that will go into detail about what to expect from Misako and Kyoko’s second big adventure, as well as our review of River City Girls Zero in this issue’s Download section. Check it out to learn more about the origins of this pair of punch- happy protagonists!
Our central feature this time around is simply called “Go!” in honor of that exact two-letter encouragement so frequently flashing onto the screen in beat-’em-ups to motivate players to keep making progress. It’s a go-to resource for an overview of how brawlers began, how they evolved over time and where the genre stands today.
Further supporting content keeping the momentum moving includes coverage of the two newest TMNT beat-’em-up releases, reviews of a pair of new books written about beat-’em-up history, an interview with Bannon Rudis (who is leading development on River City Girls 2) and a revival of our old “It’s New to Me!” column in the Retro section, now reworked to give our writers a chance to fill in some gaps in their personal play histories. If all that sounds good, then place your order! Go ahead! Go!
