G.I. Joe Gets The Streets Of Rage Treatment In Brand New Arcade-Style Brawler

Action Force in the UK, lol. Reminds me very much of Data East's Captain America and the Avengers.

I will never turn down an invite to play a beat ‘em up with buddy’s!

We have the Nam 1975-style scaler scroller from Konami at our local arcade. It's pretty fun!

Highly unlikely but it would rule if they threw in a couple shooter levels to spice things up. GIJoe is all about dem badass guns and vehicles, after all.

Also, where in the heck is Sargeant Slaughter??

Sorry guys but that gameplay looks atrocious.

If the game itself isn’t awful, I may have to get this.

Ah yes, the toys and cartoon of my youth. But an experience developed by Maple Powered Games? Noooooo Joe!

Why are they using their fits? They have guns. A Contra style game would make more sense.

GI Joe?
Beat 'em up?!
Sign me up!

But hopefully that song doesn't play the whole game. 🤢
I'll take my 80's Joe, but leave the crappy 80's music back there.

Well, I love me some G.I. Joe, so I'll keep an eye on this. If it can be as good as Shredder's Revenge, that will be great. I dig the new song, but I hope they have some remakes of the classic theme too.

The gameplay much like the opening animation here, is lacking in ambition and budget.

Sorry, but this looks like another cheap licensed shovelware product much like from the good old days of crappy games in the past.

Comparing this to Streets of Rage 4 and the new TMNT beat 'em up is kind of laughable.

I just want this to be better than Double Dragon Gaiden.

When you have Scott Pilgrim, SOR4, Shredder’s Revenge and it’s newly released DLC.

For a beloved IP like GI Joe, this looks like the early stages of a classroom project. I’m sorry but the bar has been raised, the developers are going to have step up.

@TheBoilerman it's a new song made for this game, lol.

@LikelySatan
I get that. I was referring to the style.

@TheBoilerman that's what we call "Butt Rock." See also everything from Crush 40.

I never expected this to be a thing. GI Joe was my jam as a kid in the 90s.
Sign me up!

I so glad that everyone is so sure this game is terrible based on 20 seconds of gameplay footage. I'm not saying it will be great either, but let's at least wait and see. It says it's early footage in the trailer - give 'em a chance!

I KNEW that singer sounded familiar!

@BrianJL You’re right, but the gameplay does look kind of slow for a beat em up. It was the first thing that stood out to me.

Gameplay looks bland (though not much to go on), but the song is cool, at least.

Now give us a hybrid turn-based SRPG in the vein of Valkyria Chronicles complete with animation like that in this trailer, a fantastic, meaty storyline, and fan service like VC's exhaustive character bios and vehicle specs, and you'd have a G.I. JOE (or Transformers) game I would be ALL OVER. Any developers out there listening???

If this is still the 90s then I would be all over this but in this time and age it just doesn't had that wow factor in it. The gameplay also feels a bit slow and sluggish at times.

@BrianJL This is footage they wanted us to judge the game on. If you’ve played videogames for the past 30 years, you can recognise a good game from a bad game from ten seconds gameplay without playing it yourself. TMNT looked like a good game and was a good game. Even with the intentional retro style, it still looks like a cheap cash-in.

Gameplay didn’t look all that great to be honest. Hopefully that can get polished up.

@GrailUK My first thought too, Action Force! Also reminded me that Action Force was a joint Marvel UK comic in the late 80s with Transformers, for a while at least.

This looks very slow for a beat 'em up.

@Bass_X0 So you've never seen a trailer for a gam that looked kinda lame but it turned out to be good, or even a trailer for a game that looked amazing and turned out to be junk? It happens all the time. I'm just saying it's early and the concept at least is interesting, so it's worth a wait and see.

It’s so weird seeing stuff from the 80’s/90’s come back. Granted I won’t say no to a captain planet reboot.

@Ristar24 Agreed about it looking a bit stiff.

I’m excited for this. As soon as a physical is confirmed like G.I. Joe I’ll be there!

@NeonPizza There's a considerable difference in the gameplay quality of Toxic Crusaders and this from what has been shown on trailers. As for capitalizing on the success of TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, then they are capitalizing in the success of River City Girls, Streets of Rage 4, Fight N' Rage and Scott Pilgrim so what's
the problem? There's room for way more than one beat'em up and the pixel aesthetic wasn't invented by them. I love Shredder's Revenge and have been playing the DLC since it was released today, but I'd whish that people would stop being so obnoxious with developers. This game looks clumsy and I have no interest in the IP of Toxic Crusaders so I'll probably skip them, but I don't see the point in having this attitude with new games.

Nah. That trailer looked pretty bland and the gameplay, when they finally got around to showing it, looked so stiff and slow that this game is a hard pass.

Should have hired Dotemu...

Yikes, that looks janky and slow and the art style sucks. If this is actually going to be improved before launch, they should have waited to show it.

@NeonPizza I understood what you said, hence why I mentioned that your comparison of this game to Toxic Crusaders is unfair. While I don't care for the franchise, it has shown much more than this game to be expected as a competent beat'em up while this one does look like a cash grab based on this first trailer.

@BrianJL 20 seconds of a 3 second gameplay loop.
But anyway no one is saying this is definitely going to be awful, just that all signs point to that being a strong possibility.

It's needs 3x the playable characters for me to be interested.

Awesome IP... check!
Awesome Idea.... check!
Execution.... uuuuuuuhhh...?

@DogDetective you obviously didn't play double dragon gaiden, or didnt give it a chance... that game is incredible. Game play is excellent, swapping mechanic is great, roster of playable characters is so diverse, and the changing levels based on when you select them is perfection.

I am down for this, but it looks....slow.... I hope the final game plays much faster.

never much cared for G.I. Joe, so this is the only comment I can make

Boy I hope this beat-em-up revival lasts long enough to justify a new Spider-Man or Avengers game in the genre. All the characters they have to work with, either option could lead to an awesome game.

If they throw in a Community character pack, I am in.

Took a few views of the trailer to really put my finger on it, but I got it now. The art direction isn't close enough for me to the 80s animated series. It just lacks some personality. The TMNT game from Dotemu was able to capture it in the sprites, but this is missing the mark. And, my 80s brain just couldn't grasp the trailer not having the icon opening music - but, I assume licensing wasn't going to let that happen. I guess the game isn't necessarily based on the series either.

But, we really need to talk about the gameplay. It's so stiff looking. The moves don't look inspired either. I don't think I saw much in the way of a combo system. It looked like hit boxes weren't where you'd think they should be either. There were other things I saw, but other posts have already echoed about the gameplay just doesn't look appealing.

Do I want a GI Joe game? Yes! But, this might not be the game I'm looking for. Although, it totally, completely makes me wish they would do a polished OVA either in movie form or short series. Renegades didn't quite scratch the itch for me.

As much as I love this and will play it unironically, I wish Hasbro would've made it a Power Rangers game instead.

I would prefer a G.I. Joe game to more in the style of Contra or Gunstar Heroes. A beat 'em up seems like a stretch. Where are the guns?

A beat 'em up like this works much better for the likes of TMNT than G.I. JOE, largely because the cast size of the former lends itself perfectly to 4-player co-op but also because the latter is a military-themed IP famous not just for its (dozens of) characters but also so many iconic vehicles across land, sea, and air. The ugly truth behind why most G.I. JOE (and Transformers) games don't find success is that they're not tailored for a "mainstream" genre like beat 'em ups or third-person shooters; the casts are far too large and their scope simply exceeds what a game featuring a relative handful of the "most popular" characters can satisfactorily portray.

So what would the "perfect" fit for G.I. JOE and Transformers look like? Consider Sega's Valkyria Chronicles and its hybrid turn-based/real-time SRPG engine, gorgeous cel-shaded animation and destructible environments, excellent storyline, and dozens of characters where even the secondary ones have ample opportunity to shine. VC's fan service even includes a full, exhaustive reference in "book" form that includes character bios, weapon and vehicle specs, and zoomable/rotatable 3D models for all.

Imagine such a game with the G.I. JOE or Transformers license, where players could board a M.O.B.A.T., H.A.V.O.C., Skystriker, or Dragonfly copter to support the rest of their team on the battlefield, or send the Dinobots to try and destroy Devastator. Perhaps there could even be a multiplayer mode where players could choose either JOE or Cobra (or Autobots or Decepticons) and test their strategic mettle. Such a game could revolutionize SRPGs and expand their appeal far beyond the "medieval fantasy" tropes like Fire Emblem.

Of course it sounds awesome, and if implemented correctly with genuine passion fir the source material, it would be. But the real question is whether any developer would take such a chance in an industry that's become so risk-averse and "safe".

Cool idea, but the game play looks horrendous. I so want to be wrong, but I wasn't wrong about Double Dragon.

Well, looks like I’ll playing the Real American Hero on the Switch. The kind of game that should have been released on the Genesis/SNES back in the day. Better late than never!

Now He-Man and Thundercats please. By the Power of Grayskull, Hooooooooooooo!!!

I do see what people are saying regarding the gameplay footage. The rest of the trailer had its issues as the animation certainly wasn't up to my standards. But, in regards to the game itself, the basic graphics look good enough. When looking at attack animations, what I saw were weak key frames. For example, when Duke was kicking, it had no energy. It just looked like he was lifting his leg and not kicking. Key frames are the most important animation frames, so for a kick, it would be as dynamic as possible, perhaps exaggerated, to give it some energy, and makes it believable that there's impact to it.

I'd also like to see proper combos. I do have to agree with others that a beat-em-up might not fit G.I. Joe as much as it would other franchises, but I'm willing to see how this goes. I can see this being very early footage, which would explain some of the issues here.

The speed looks a little slow for a beat ‘em up. Pacing really is important in those to fully experience the anxiety of foes coming at you.

I'm an eighties kid, so I have to buy this or I'll lose my eighties-kids membership, ID card, and access to the treehouse. Going from the status of an eighties-related hipster/snob to a millenial/zoomer-level filthy casual that has to watch Stranger Things to imagine what that decade was like would be too embarrassing to take. What would I do with my awesome Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Neverending Story, and Goonies VHS tapes? Not that I have a VCR anymore but whatever, dude.

This game had better have an extensive storyline included, since that is what G.I. Joe was best at. The best case scenario would be for the developers to hire Larry Hama and teach him to write within the framework of a videogame script; but I know that isn't what's going to happen, and that they'll hire some rando to write the story content instead. Ah well.

On a somewhat related yet somewhat tangential note, it's always disappointing when developers make games based on eighties or nineties IP that are derived from source material which revolved around characters and stories/plots, and then the game turns out to have very little story content within it. There have been a number of games based on Aliens, and Predator, and Aliens vs. Predator, but none of them had any real story (and no games with good gameplay except for that one AVP beat em up). Same thing with Star Wars with the exception of KOTOR, and that was a Western style RPG, and in that type of RPG characters and story are tertiary whereas custom characters and randomized stats come first.

@AtlanteanMan A G.I. Joe version of Valkyria Chronicles might very well be the best idea I've ever heard to turn the G.I. Joe IP into an epic gaming franchise.

More games based on IPs in general need to take more inspiration from JRPGs; that genre knows how to do epic storytelling well, while at the same time weaving the plot into combat/gameplay events within the game.

If I could add one detail to your idea, it would be to add Uncharted-style cinematic content in the game. And there would need to be lots of areas where you could have conversations with NPCs, because that's one of my favorite aspects of JRPGs. Damn, now I want this game to exist...

Beat 'Em Up revivals seem to be all the rage now (heh). Who's next, He-Man?

Gameplay looks stiff, graphics look a little blurry for a 2D Beat Em Up. Looks like someone is trying to cash in on the TMNT Beat Em Up nostalgia and not doing a great job of it. River City Girls and TMNT Shredder's Revenge appear to be much better games than what is shown here. That said, someone who is a massive GI Joe fan may enjoy it, but that's not me.

it's weird how SOR4 set the new standard for this genre and it seems like basically no devs are even trying to meet it? This looks terrible. Double dragon looks terrible. TMNT wasn't this bad, but just nowhere even close to SOR4.

I was excited when I heard Johnny! And then it quickly evaporated when I remembered I have zero affection or memory of anything to do with GI Joe at all. It sunk further as the generic movie went on and THEN the gameplay appeared....

Can’t wait. I’ll be picking this up day one.

Considering no human character ever got hit by bullets in the cartoon's entire run, it's no surprise this is a beat-'em-up and not a shoot-'em-up.

Were they going for a retro style of gameplay though? Those sprite animations look horribly janky.

I haven't watched GI Joe in decades, but this put a smile on my face. A beat em up isn't a bad idea at all.

One day though, I'd like a Joe variety game where you can play as either the Joes or Cobras with a character select.

Like one level could be a stealth one where you hafta sneak onto an enemy base and retrieve vital information, then another level would be a contra style run n gun, then another level would be piloting a jet and shooting down enemies. Then you could do a ninja gaiden-esque platformer.

So What's Next Jem And The Holograms
Then Thundercats.