Classic beat-em-ups emerged around 1989 with Final Fight and made an incredible splash on the arcade scene, especially in North America. At this time Arcades were changing from the pinball and classic video games with a wider variety of genres like shoot 'em-ups, fighters and beat 'em-ups. The behemoth Street Fighter II came out in March 1991, and was a smash hit. Fighting style games became big in the arcade and beat'em-ups were popular as well with sucessful ports to home consoles like the SNES version of Final Fight and the Genesis versions of Golden Axe to name a few.
