Double Dragon II: The Revenge is the sequel to the arcade favorite featuring more of the same co-op beat ’em up action. In addition to new bosses and enemies, it mixes things up with a Renegade-style control scheme and a neww whirlwind kick attack.

Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone is the final chapter of the classic saga. It adds several attacks such as running, triangle kicks, and suplexes. It also features a unique shop system where you spend money on new techniques, weapons, power, health, and unlockable characters.

Down Town is an early overhead two-player arcade brawler with a standard urban setting. Like Ikari III: The Rescue, it features a special rotating joystick that allows you to move in one direction while facing another. Besides that, the combat is a simple Double Dragon-esque punch/kick setup with a small handful of weapons. It’s notable for being the only arcade brawler where the bodies of enemies remain onscreen after being defeated.

Dungeon Magic is an overhead hack n’ slash brawler from Taito. Its dungeon-crawling gameplay features branching paths, hidden treasure, and traps. It also features an experience system and weapon upgrades. Its hectic combat focuses on huge bosses and charge attacks.

Dungeons and Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara is a licensed weapons-based brawler from Capcom. It adapts the D&D format by putting a heavy emphasis on RPG elements such as classes, experience, spells, items, and weapon upgrades. It also features four-player gameplay, branching paths, and a whopping 12 playable fighters.

Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom is Capcom’s second D&D licensed brawler. It features the same RPG-heavy gameplay as its predecessor and adds new enemies, stages, and characters.

Dynamite Dux is a cutesy early brawler from Sega. It’s the only beat ’em up that completely lacks human characters, and also the only one with a stage progress bar. Its unusual combat engine is defined by charge attacks, one-hit enemies, and heavy emphasis on projectiles.

Dynasty Warriors is an atypical weapons-based brawler from Capcom that’s based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms mythos. You play as a mounted warrior that must defeat huge waves of enemies to proceed. Its combat is fairly unique because it focuses on both charge attacks and directional attack buttons like in Double Dragon II as well as having light RPG elements. Although the character sprites are tiny, the enemy waves are gigantic.

Final Fight is without a shadow of a doubt the most influential brawler ever made. It introduced concepts like unique playable characters, contact-based grabs, and health-draining "death-blow" attacks that would all become genre standards. Even its art style, featuring gigantic sprites and outlandish enemy design, defined the following decade of beat ’em up games.

Gaia Crusaders is a late-generation supernatural post-apocalyptic brawler from Noise Factory. Its innovative magic system assigns elements to characters that power up matching spells, and its freeform combat allows for dynamic combos. It also lets you play as defeated bosses.

Gaiapolis is an overhead fantasy hack ’n’ slash from Konami. It’s the only brawler with a vertical screen. Its combat includes blocking, dashing, magic attacks, and controllable pets.

Gang Wars is an early Double Dragon-esque brawler. Its combat emphasizes using weapons and special techniques against relatively small gangs of enemies. It has guns, finisher moves, and digitized cutscenes.

Golden Axe created the hack n’ slash sub-genre of brawlers. Its weapons-based combat, screen-clearing magic attacks, mountable creatures, and barbarian aesthetic made it one of Sega’s most successful early franchises. It’s also notable for its short playtime, casual difficulty, and unique scoring system.

Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is an updated sequel to the hack ’n’ slash hit from Sega. It features an all-new cast of distinct characters, impressive sprite scaling, four-player gameplay, and an expanded combat engine including team attacks. It also retains classic Golden Axe elements like screen-filling magic attacks and mountable bizarrian creatures.

Growl is an early brawler from Taito that features rangers who protect animals from poachers. It plays a lot like Double Dragon but puts an extreme emphasis on weapons including whips, swords, guns, and grenades. Occasionally animals will fight alongside you after you free them.

Guardians of the ’Hood is a strange fighter-brawler hybrid from Atari. It features five buttons, tons of attacks, has no dedicated jump button, and has vs. stages between levels. It’s also notable for its pre-rendered graphics and sprite scaling effects.

Guardians: Denjin Makai II is a late-generation brawler from Banpresto that never left Japan. It’s got it all: a whopping 8 playable and entirely unique characters, gigantic movesets with energy-based specials, team attacks, bizarre enemies, plenty of weapons, and even some shooter stages to mix up the action.

Hachoo! is a strange cartoony martial arts-themed early brawler from Jaleco. Its two-button combat is exceedingly simple, and doesn’t even have jump-attacks. Its claim to fame is that it’s the first beat ’em up that lets you throw enemies directly at the screen, which results in impressive sprite scaling and hilarious pixel art. Besides that, it’s a mediocre brawler featuring choppy gameplay and forgettable music.

Hook is a pirate-themed brawler from Irem based on the movie of the same name. It features 5 playable characters with expansive movesets. Its combat has unique combo finishers that grant invincibility as well as several aerial throws. Its art style has fluid animations and goofy caricature bosses.

Ikari III: The Rescue is the final chapter in SNK’s Ikari Warriors series, and the first game to be a brawler. Its unusual combat features an overhead perspective, punch/kick/jump buttons, and a rotating joystick like in the original Ikari games. It’s notable for its military setting, gun-based boss fights, unique input device, and brutal Ikari difficulty.

Judge Dredd is a three-player post-apocalyptic arcade brawler from Midway. Like their infamous Mortal Kombat series, this game features digitized actors in costumes for the sprites. It also has a ton of dialogue in the form of enemy taunts and one-liners from Dredd. Its combat is notable for having a crouch button as well as allowing you to attack in eight different directions. It also has both third person shooter as well as action platforming stages.

Karate Blazers is an obscure four-player arcade brawler from Video System Co., Ltd. In a lot of ways, it’s a Final Fight rip-off with a typical urban setting, simple two-button combat, contact-based grabs, and goofy enemies. However, it’s notable for its somewhat strange aerials, overpowered but difficult-to-execute dash attacks, and gigantic waves of enemies.

King of Dragons is a fantasy hack ’n’ slash from Capcom. It’s notable for its extremely simple combat engine, which consists only of a normal attack, jumping, and a death-blow. It has RPG elements such as experience and permanent weapon upgrades. It also has a whopping 16 stages although they’re relatively short.

King of the Monsters 2 is a hybrid brawler/wrestling game with a giant monster theme from SNK. Unlike its predecessor, which focused on one-on-one combat, this game features traditional brawler stages as well as more elaborate boss fights and even a competitive mode. It’s notable for its unique concept, bizarre enemy design, and huge movesets.

Knights of the Round is a hack ’n’ slash brawler from Capcom. It innovates in no less than four ways: it introduced a blocking mechanic that grants temporary invincibility, your character gains experience and changes appearance, items can be broken up and shared, and killing the same type of enemy consecutively grants a bonus. It also has a one-of-a-kind melodic medieval soundtrack.