You'll slice through these guy's at least 100 times, but damned if they won't make it fun every single time.

You’ve seen them countless times, but you probably haven’t given them much thought.  As you storm through your game throwing your punches and your kicks, they are nothing more than a nameless bunch of pixels that you knock to the ground only to watch blink a few times and vanish.  You laugh at how easy they are to defeat, even when they come in numbers.  You have no shred of respect for them, but maybe you should.  If not for their sheer determination to reappear time and time again in the hopes of kicking your ass, your beat ‘em up game would consist of you walking through an empty stage until you meet the boss.  Hell, they probably know they are going to get punched, kicked, and hit by your special (at the cost of a small bit of your energy), but they just want to extend the game so you feel satisfied by the end.  They want to make you happy, they know you have feelings…and maybe deep down, so do they.

On this day, we recognize the stand-outs for all they have offered us.

• Too Many Damn Members Award:

While the Black Warrior gang probably has the least-strict entry requirements, they try to make up for it by packing in more green vest wearing bastards than you can count.  I mean, who isn’t in the Black Warrior gang?  The guy down the street from me is, my uncle had a brief stint until he found God, and well…I’m typing this from Black Warrior Headquarters.  Seriously, I applaud the effort in putting together the largest gang of similar looking guys in history, but none of that matters when Billy and Jimmy are side-kicking the shit out of all of them with ease.  Shown above getting ready to slop a fist right into that woman’s gut, these men are ruthless and will do whatever it takes to appease their semi-more powerful and towards the end of the game infuriatingly cheap bosses.  I hear their Christmas get-togethers are a mess.

• Don’t You Know Your Place?  You Aren’t Supposed To Be This Goddamn Hard Award:

Gangs send out their bottom of the barrel dopplegangers throughout the game to pretty much get their ass kicked and maybe possibly wear you down a little in the process.  This is a tried and true formula for years and years.  Buncha guys that look the same, you hit them 3 or 4 times and they die, rinse and repeat for 3-4 hours.  These sons of bitches didn’t get the memo.  The generic guys in GodHand are just like all the other enemies in GodHand, they exist to fucking torture you.  Yeah you can handle them usually, but all too often one of these minions will decide he’s done with following the logical and just laws of beat ‘em ups and takes a little chunk of your energy.  His buddies see this guy throwing caution to the wind, and they join in.  Soon you are running around looking for health and it sinks in…these men are the lowest of the low level thugs who probably clean the shit off of the big bosses shoes with their tongues…and you are going to die in this extremely bland environment by their hand.

• Honorable Mention Due to Hilarity:

Barf on my friend, Barf on.

• Human Punching Bags That Just Happened To Be In The Best Beat ‘Em Up EVER Award:

When brothers Royd, Stan, Clovis, and Victor (Royd was not available the day of photography) decided to become endlessly respawning bad guys in order to pay their mothers hospital bills, little did they know they were going to land in the greatest side-scrolling button masher ever made.  These fellas didn’t do anything exceptional, but I just wanted a moment to acknowledge this as the superior game of the genre.  Come on XBLA!

• Lifetime Achievement Award For Sucking The Worst The Best:

Even though he shares a game with a guy named Bred, the lovable thousand-times over whipping boy Simons has set the standard for what it means to be a shitty enemy.  The victim of countless piledrivers, punches, kicks, dropkicks, pipe beatings, and stabbings…Simons just keeps coming back.  Rumor has it his birthname is Simon, but he got so into his gimmick of appearing so much that it seemed like there was more than one of him, that he added the “S” to the end.  If it wasn’t for Simons (and of course some of his friends) then Final Fight would last roughly 2 minutes and would somehow be even more shallow.  The Mad Gear really knocked it out of the park when they picked up this guy.

In all honesty the midget from Kung Fu was going to get this award.  However, I have my suspicions that it may be a child instead of a midget, and I just can’t condone that.

I have only named a few, but there are many more out there.  Millions upon millions more out there, doing their best to keep popping up and getting that ass beat a little bit, all in the hopes of getting in just one hit.  So next time you are playing a Beat ‘Em Up, and you see that more than likely loudly dressed generic guy that you’ve beat the shit out of 70 or so times, take the time to acknowledge him as a crucial part of the gaming experience.  Maybe you might even let him get a hit in, just maybe.