Help with the name of an old game.

Hello all, was wondering if you could help me name/find an 80s game I used to play in the arcade. Here's what I remember, I'm afraid it's not much.

Top/down beat em up. As you progressed through levels you could power up similar to Altered Beast. No monster form, but the character would grow more muscular. IIRC this was done by punching certain areas of the walls throughout the level. You could also flip/somersault for movement.

Any help with this would be much much appreciated, thank you :)

The top/down thing narrows it considerably, with the only things I can think of being Avengers (not marvel related), Vandyke, Gate of Doom/Darkseal and Prince of Evil. Of those, only Avengers was from the 80s and a few are closer to isometric than top/down.

Also, maybe the original Gauntlet? That’s not really a beat ‘em up per se, but it was definitely top/down, from the 80s and involved hitting walls.

@tartyron: Avengers is very very close. When I looked it up I thought for a second that was it, but upon watching the playthrough I realized it's not. Any other games similar to that you can think of? That is almost exactly how I remember it but with power ups that make you muscular.

I may be able to help here Damien, but first I have to say, whoever thought to make this website you all deserve a 1up! Heh me and my friends have been going back and forth about these games we played years ago we couldn't remember and we just couldn't remember then either. Me and one of my friends had Sega Channel when it first came out, so we played a ton of them, found out that the game I was looking for and couldn't remember was Blades of Vengeance.

However, to answer your question. Now I could be wrong but from your description of the game, it sounds like Ikari Warriors, or one of the clones of it anyways, there was a few like it, Commando? Was one of them I believe, but you couldn't flip on it, but you could on Ikari, there was a later one that came out with Wolf or something in the title, all I remember about it is the first boss was a helicopter. Hope this helps ye find yours!