THE WAY OF THE EXPLODING FIST
67
:
The first real Spectrum beat-'em-up and still the best. Fist's crisp, elegant graphics, istinctive control system, wide range of moves, precise collision detection and crunching sound effects make it more than a match for anything which has been released since. You really do wince when your fighter takes a punch in a sensitive area and crumples to the ground. It's this character that makes Fist stand head and roundhouse above all the competition. Inscrutably beautiful.
FIST 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES
10
:
This game isn't merely an adventure like many others because it has a big simulation aspect and the character we control is able to fight against the opponents with a very refined martial arts technique and with 17 different moves at our disposal. The game is placed at the slopes of a volcano and our task is to explore all the areas and defeat all the enemies we encounter sent toward us by the Evil Lord that inhabits those lands.
RASTAN
54
:
One of the best-looking Speccy coin-op conversions ever, with big, sharp graphics and atmospheric backdrops giving it a real feel of the epic arcade game. Rastan was the classiest of a whole load of generic muscle-fantasy orc-slashers which were popular a couple of years back and it retains all the elegance (and violence) of the original. It's not the most inovative piece of design ever, but the best of any genre is always worth having, and thats exactly what this is.
RENEGADE
48
:
Never mind your Final Fights, never mind your Way Of The Exploding Fists, never mind your International Karates, this is comfortably (if thats the right word) the most brutal beat-'em-up there's ever been. Eye-watering knees-in-the-groin, sickeningly vicious headbutts, enemies ganging up to hold a player's arms while someone else punches the living daylights out of him, and the player retaliating with flying kicks at speeding motorcycle riders. (Don't try this one at home kids.) And all without the slightest danger of ending up in Casualty - what more could you ask?