Beat 'em up in the context of "Golden Axe"

The fighting game genre involves combat between characters, often (but not necessarily limited to) one-on-one battles. The mechanics of combat in fighting games often features blocking, grappling, counter-attacking, and the ability to chain attacks together into "combos". Characters generally engage in hand-to-hand combat, often incorporating martial arts, but some may include weaponry. Battles are usually set in a fixed-size arena along a two-dimensional plane, where characters navigate horizontally by walking or dashing, and vertically by jumping. Some games allow limited movement in 3D space, such as Tekken and Soul Edge while some are set in fully three-dimensional environments without restricting characters' movement, such as Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi, Jump Force, Kill la Kill: If, My Hero: One's Justice, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, One Piece: Burning Blood and Power Stone; these are sometimes referred to as "3D arena" fighting games.

The fighting game genre is distinctly related to the beat 'em up genre, which pits many computer-controlled enemies against one or more player characters. The first video game to feature fist fighting is Heavyweight Champ (1976), but Karate Champ (1984) actually features the one-on-one fighting game genre instead of a sports game in arcades. Yie Ar Kung-Fu was released later that year with various fighting styles and introduced health meters, and The Way of the Exploding Fist (1985) further popularized the genre on home systems. In 1987, Capcom's Street Fighter introduced special attacks, and in 1991, its highly successful sequel Street Fighter II refined and popularized many genre conventions, including combos. Fighting games subsequently became the preeminent genre for video gaming in the early to mid-1990s, particularly in arcades. This period spawned dozens of other popular fighting games, including franchises like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Bros., and Tekken.

Kung-Fu Master, known as Spartan X in Japan, is a 1984 beat 'em up game developed and published by Irem for arcades. It was distributed by Data East in North America. Designed by Takashi Nishiyama, the game was based on Hong Kong martial arts films. It is a loose adaptation of the Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao film Wheels on Meals (1984), called Spartan X in Japan. The protagonist Thomas is named after Jackie Chan's character in the film. It is also heavily inspired by the Bruce Lee film Game of Death (1972), which was the basis for the game's concept. Nishiyama, who had previously designed the side-scrolling shooter Moon Patrol (1982), combined fighting elements with a shoot 'em up gameplay rhythm. Irem and Data East exported the game to the West without the Spartan X license.

The game was a major commercial success, topping the Japanese arcade charts and becoming America's second highest-grossing arcade game of 1985, while receiving critical acclaim for its fast-paced, side-scrolling gameplay and detailed, colorful graphics. A port for the Nintendo Entertainment System (known as the Famicom in Japan) was developed by Nintendo under the direction of Shigeru Miyamoto, released as Spartan X in Japan and Kung Fu in the West, selling 3.5 million copies worldwide. It was also one of the top five best-selling Commodore 64 games of 1986. It spawned the sequel Spartan X 2 (1991) and the spiritual successors Trojan (1986) and Vigilante (1988).

An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, rhythm games and platform games. Multiplayer online battle arena and some real-time strategy games are also considered action games.

In an action game, the player typically controls a character often in the form of a protagonist or avatar. This player character must navigate a level, collecting objects, avoiding obstacles, and battling enemies with their natural skills as well as weapons and other tools at their disposal. At the end of a level or group of levels, the player must often defeat a boss enemy that is more challenging and often a major antagonist in the game's story. Enemy attacks and obstacles deplete the player character's health and lives, and the player receives a game over when they run out of lives.

Street Fighter is a 1987 fighting game developed and published by Capcom for arcades. It is the first competitive fighting game produced by the company and the first installment in the Street Fighter series. It was a commercial success in arcades and introduced special attacks and some of the conventions made standard in later fighting games, such as the six-button controls and the use of command-based special moves.

Street Fighter was directed by Takashi Nishiyama, who conceived it by adapting the boss battles of his earlier beat 'em up game Kung-Fu Master (1984), for a one-on-one fighting game, and by drawing influence from popular Japanese shōnen manga. A port for the TurboGrafx-CD was released as Fighting Street in 1988, and was re-released via emulation for the Wii's Virtual Console in 2009.

Final Fight is a 1989 beat 'em up game developed and published by Capcom for arcades. It is the seventh title released for the CP System hardware. Set in the fictional Metro City, the player controls one of three street fighters: former pro wrestler and city mayor Mike Haggar, expert brawler Cody Travers, and modern-day ninja Guy. The trio set out to rescue Jessica (Haggar's daughter and Cody's girlfriend) when she is kidnapped by the Mad Gear Gang.

The game began development as a sequel to the original Street Fighter released in 1987, under the working title Street Fighter '89. However, its genre was switched from a fighting game to a beat 'em up, and the title was changed to Final Fight following the success of Technōs Japan's Double Dragon. Final Fight was ported to various home computers and consoles, including the ZX Spectrum, Super NES and Sega CD.

In video games, first-person (also spelled first person) is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character, or from the inside of a device or vehicle controlled by the player character. It is one of two perspectives used in the vast majority of video games, with the other being third-person, the graphical perspective from outside of any character (but possibly focused on a character); some games such as interactive fiction do not belong to either format.

First-person can be used as sole perspective in games belonging of almost any genre; first-person party-based RPGs and first-person maze games helped define the format throughout the 1980s, while first-person shooters (FPS) are a popular genre emerging in the 1990s in which the graphical perspective is an integral component of the gameplay. Although, like third-person shooters (TPS), the term has come to define a specific subgenre of shooter games rather than any using the perspective, with several shooter games, while belonging to other subgenres, using a first person perspective, such as, traditionally, light gun shooters, rail shooters, and shooting gallery games. Other genres that typically feature a first person perspective include amateur flight simulations, combat flight simulators, dating sims, driving simulators, visual novels, immersive sims, and walking sims, although it has virtually been used in all genres, including survival horror and stealth games, either as main perspective or for specific actions or sections.