SNES

Brawl Brothers

An outstanding beat 'em up which suffers on a few minor accounts but is still most certainly worth checking out.

While Brawl Brothers is an obvious Final Fight knock-off its a good one. If it had a greater variety of enemies, it might well have taken out the current 16-bit beat-em-up champ, Streets of Rage 2. Video vigilantes who've polished off other games should bring Brawl Brothers into their family.

All in all, Rushing Beat Ran has a nice variety of stages and enemies and it really stands out of the beat'em up crowd. I personally prefer the Japanese version, the maze-like stages from the American version really slows down the pace of the game. But the Japanese version is unlockable from the American version, so it may end up being a better choice as you actually end up with two games in one.

Two can play at once, which can be fun. The graphics are colourful and nicely designed, with some nifty backgrounds. There are attempts to break up the gameplay a bit - notably things like mines on the ground, holes in the floor and that gun you can pick up. In fact, as beat- 'em-ups go this is a pretty good one. Overall verdict: Well, it's another scrolling beat-'em-up, innit? It looks a bit smarter than most, but is just as boring as these things always are, and can only be recommended to committed fans