Extra Life Project - Playing all major brawlers from '89-'94

So I've really gottin bit by the arcade bug this year, and I decided I wanted to do my Extra Life project with nothing but old school arcade games, playing on my candy cab. I decided I needed some focus and a theme to my playlist so I decided I would play through as many brawlers as I could. Brawlers have always been special to me, I was born in ’82, and I remember playing a ton of Capcom and Konami brawlers, and somehow never got sick of punching bad guys in the face. I'd pump quarter after quarter into whatever beat 'em up I could find.

I decided I would play through a list of brawlers in chronological order, through what I consider the golden age of brawlers, specifically 1989-1994. I know there are some great forerunners like Renegade and Double Dragon, and some awesome late arrivals like Battle Circuit and D&D: Shadows Over Mystara. But ’89-’94 is the real bell curve of brawler releases, so I thought that would be the area of my focus. So far, this is my list:

I have estimated that I can play through these games in 25 hours. If you feel I should add a game to this list, please also include what game I should take out, because additions must also mean subtractions. Thanks for any input!

Did I miss anything major? Any game on that list your favorite?

For reference, these are games I cut:

That's a heck of a list. Whenever I visit the local arcade I wind up beating one or two of those.

CTRL + F => Streets of Rage

NO RESULTS?! What are you doing? I don't think there was an arcade release, but still...

Yeah, there was no arcade release. SOR is fantastic, but my focus is on original arcade release brawlers. Technically there was a SOR release, but it was for the Genesis equivalent of Playchoice, arcade hardware to play the mega drive rom. Maybe someone else can do a console brawler marathon for their project. I'm going to be on the Giant Bomb Extra Life team, I just have to wait for support to fix my registration, so it would be cool if someone else on the GB team wanted to do that.

Sounds like a great project. Look forward to seeing it. Personally, I'm quite partial to X-Men and The Simpsons.

@renegadesaint: Thanks! Yeah, I grew up on those licensed Konami bmups, I love em. I will be live streaming the whole thing on my twitch channel

@capaneus:

You seem to be missing entries from Samurai Shodown and King of Fighters.

I'd lose the original Golden Axe and TMNT games as their sequels are such superior games with essentially the same gameplay.

@ravenlight: Those are fighting games dude D:

Yeah no fighters, just beat 'em ups where you have to beat wave after wave of baddies. Golden Axe and TMNT are very important entries in my opinion, so I'd be very reluctant to lose them.

My brain is broken. Please disregard.

I remember being severely disappointed by the lack of Batman in Ninja Baseball Batman.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I finalized the list, you can find the full list here

Thank you for any donations!

Lots of great stuff on that list.

@csl316: Thanks! I tried to basically do it as a survey of brawlers. There are big releases that everyone remembers like X-Men, Turtles, and Simpsons, but also some not-so-popular weird and stupid titles like B.Rap Boys and Ninja Baseball Batman.

I wish Last Battle could have made the list, but I'm looking forward to seeing this. I think it's pretty awesome that the community can raise funds/awareness for good causes by beatin' up some bad guys.

@zombiepenguin9: Thanks man, yeah the reason Last Battle isn't on there, is I'm strictly doing coin-op releases, not console brawlers, but I'd love to see someone do console brawlers from the same time!