when I first played TMNT: Shredder's Revenge upon it's release last year as someone who's experience with the beat 'em up genre was an oft-forgotten memory of playing Streets of Rage 2 for 15 minutes on the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on the PS3. When I played River City Ransom, I glanced into an adjacent genre (to say, I think River City Ransom is less of a beat 'em up and more of a brawler, which one can easily relate to the Yakuza series) and imagined a world where every Final Fight had RPG elements. I thought to myself "A series with such interesting character designs and a fun world deserves something more than a quick and easy beat 'em up, it deserves something deeper". A few months later (Last week!) I played Final Fight, and decided that Final Fight deserved nothing. I looked deep into the design elements of both Final Fight and Captain Commando, two games I played on back to back days. I decided the separating factor between an all timer beat 'em up and Final Fight is X-Factor. I prophesised that any good beat 'em up had at least one pertinent element worth discussing with any friend about why they should play THAT beat 'em up, as opposed to any other one.

I'll tell you now, I was wrong.

The Ninja Saviors is the best beat 'em up not because of any design trick, or cool spectacle moment. It's because, simply, The Ninja Saviors is designed by developers so adept in their own craft that even the strongest of armour would be cut by it's sharp edges.

Every movement in The Ninja Saviors is deliberate, every hit and every block is crucial. Every enemy slowly builds a library of tactics in your mind, and there's never a confusion of what to do once an enemy hits the screen. When five enemies appear on screen at the same time, there is no immediate confusion on what the solution is. This consistency shines brightly in a world of similar titles designed with your quarters in mind.

The Ninja Saviors is slow. It's slow on purpose. Closing distance is not always easy, getting away from an enemies attack even harder, yet it all comes together in a perfect mosaic of action design. Jumping and attacking feels purposeful, and the slow get up animation requires the player to plan out what they want to do in advance. It's heavy in all the right ways, leaving a real weight to every attack.

To put it simply, The Ninja Saviors is a sanctuary of action. It doesn't require any tricks, it requires no spectacle, because it's design is so innately intuitive and exemplary. It's the best beat 'em up of all time, no question about it.