#2 Guilty Gear XX
One of the prettiest beat’em up games there ever was, Guilty Gear XX is the ultimate in reducing your opponent to a living (well, virtual) pingpong ball, pummeling him across the level and then triggering some uber epic finishing move that can’t be dodged to really hammer it home that you have secretly trained all those finger twisting specials.
The Guilty Gear series, as well as its spiritual successor Blaz Blue have been outliers of modern beat’em up design, since their developers simply refused to take the shift towards 3d graphics, remaining true to the 2D hand drawn glory that makes these games shine so very brightly.