The player

"They're great for just clicking right in and engaging in short, sharp thrills" When did the humble beat-'em-up go out of fashion, wonders JOE GRIFFIN

VIDEO GAME fans of a certain age will often cite a beat-'em-up as the first game they loved. Double Dragon, Street Fighter, Final Fightand - especially - Tekkenwere big deals for this gamer. And I still play Soul Calibur IV.

The beauty of the beat-'em-up was that they could be enjoyed as crude, button-pounding farces just as much as choreographed ballets of flying fists. There's a purity to them. They're great for just clicking right in and engaging in short, sharp thrills.

This genre was arguably the biggest game type of the 1990s. Street Fighterbegat more sequels and spin-offs than I can count, including one of the first Hollywood adaptations of a game.

A wander around the enjoyable Game On exhibition (currently in Dublin's Ambassador) confirms the steady decline of the beat-'em-up. Older arcade games and consoles often have some variation of these combat games, but the more modern the console or computer, the more likely they'd be to have a role-playing game, platform game or first-person shooter.

The only thing keeping the genre alive seems to be variations on old classics and tie-ins with popular characters from outside the gaming sphere. Yoda and Darth Vader show up in Soul Calibur IV, popular superheroes duke it out with video-game stalwarts in Marvel vs Capcom,and characters from Alien and Predatorhave thrown down in games past.

It seems the best we can hope for is a decent movie tie-in game, such as this year's marvellously retro Scott Pilgrim, or the odd downloadable gem such as Shank.

Some developers are trying to revive the genre. Rockstar gave us The Warriorsin 2007, based on Walter Hill's 1979 movie, and Konami regularly has a go. Our combat needs are also partially met by sports games such as EA Sports MMA, and the Fight Nightseries. But gamers seem unmoved by traditional beat-'em-ups, and instead tend to gravitate to games that have combat as just a fraction of gameplay (such as the Unchartedgames and the God of Warseries).

But there's something wonderfully pure about a game that requires you to do nothing more than build a skill and use it to pummel your friends (virtually). Video games have often been criticised for being mindless, but with the demise of the beat-em-up they're in danger of not being simple enough.