Favourite Beat'em'up

[Falcon Critical]

The Street Fighter series has to be my favourite. I've played most of what you're mentioning but I have to say that Street Fighter is the only one I'd go to the arcade to play.

The Street Fighter 3 series was far and away the best of the lot - insanely fast gameplay and some bizarre characters. The gameplay is pretty much what sold this game to me however, its halfway between the alpha series where moves are very defined, and the EX series where you can start a new move from the middle of a current one. With Ibuki ( the best! ) you can use hard hits and still be fast doing good damage, but switch to light hits and you can get three or four moves off within a couple of seconds, her speed ( and the game itself ) is just crazy.

There were some secret characters in the series too, Akuma was hidden and unlockable if you...

Beat the game without dropping a round, win every time
Win at least 5 rounds with a supercombo
Win at least 5 rounds with a perfect finish

Then after you fight Gil ( OMG cheap boss >_< ) Shin Akuma attacks you and he's not holding back. Twin air fireballs and the raging demon are truly nasty.

DOWNSIDES

Okay I have to say it, the supercombos are starting to get ridiculous. Back in the day supercombos were 6-9 hits, then Akuma came with his 15 hit raging demon. This started a flow of hit increases and now even Chun Li's kikosho is 23 hits. They need to tone this back down.

But anyway - graphically the sprites are about as fluid and pretty as you can get, and the crazy fast gameplay is what sold me to the series.

Okay i'm starting to rant aren't I, running around in circles and skipping my keypoints. I'll sum it up...

Street Fighter 3 for the win!
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[Tony Stark]

Though I love a lot of Fighting Games that don't really good into the genre of "beat 'em up" out of the ones in the poll my favorite was Marvel vs. Capcom, mainly because I love the Marvel Universe so much. Seeing all the combo and special attacks was really fun! Also, beating Onslaught was t-u-f-f, hard enough to spell the word like a 12 year old girl on the AOL Instant Messenger Client.
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[the violent one]

Tekken cause I rox boxxors at it.
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