Side-scrolling in the context of "Beat 'em up"

Super Mario Bros. is a 1985 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Directed and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, it is the successor to the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. and the first game in the Super Mario series. Players control Mario, or his brother Luigi in the multiplayer mode, to traverse the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from King Koopa (later named Bowser). They traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding hazards such as enemies and pits and collecting power-ups such as the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower and Starman.

Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka designed Super Mario Bros. as a culmination of the team's experience working on Devil World and the side-scrollers Excitebike and Kung Fu. Miyamoto wanted to create a more colorful platform game with a scrolling screen and larger characters. The team designed the first level, World 1-1, as a tutorial for platform gameplay. Koji Kondo's soundtrack is one of the earliest in video games, making music a centerpiece of the design.

Golden Axe (ゴールデンアックス, Gōruden Akkusu) is a series of side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade video games developed by Sega. The series takes place in a medieval fantasy world where several heroes have the task of recovering the legendary Golden Axe, the mainstay element of the series.

Excitebike is a 1984 racing video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was ported to arcades for the Nintendo VS. System later that year and Famicom Disk System in 1988. In North America, it became one of the best-selling games on the console. It is the first game in the Excite series.

Designed and directed by Shigeru Miyamoto, the smooth side-scrolling game engine his team developed for Excitebike was later used to develop Super Mario Bros. (1985), which had the effect of Mario smoothly accelerating from a walk to a run, rather than move at a constant speed.

Donkey Kong (DK) is a character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. A flagship character of the Japanese video game company Nintendo, he is the star of the Donkey Kong franchise and also appears in the Mario franchise. Donkey Kong is a large, powerful gorilla who leads the Kong family of simians. He is stubborn and buffoonish, and attacks using barrels. He wears a red necktie bearing his initials and is accompanied by supporting characters such as his sidekick Diddy Kong, rival Mario, and archenemy King K. Rool.

Donkey Kong debuted as the antagonist of Donkey Kong, a 1981 platform game. He has appeared in many video games, including the original Donkey Kong arcade games, the Donkey Kong Country series of side-scrolling platform games, Mario games such as Mario Kart and Mario Party, and the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games. The original game characterized Donkey Kong as Mario's rebellious pet; games since Country feature him as a player character protecting his stash of bananas. Some games include Cranky Kong, an alternate, elderly incarnation who breaks the fourth wall. Donkey Kong has appeared in animation, comics, children's books, Super Nintendo World theme park attractions, and merchandise such as Lego construction toys.

Commander Keen is a series of side-scrolling platform video games developed primarily by id Software. The series consists of six main episodes, a "lost" episode, and a final game; all but the final game were released for MS-DOS in 1990 and 1991, while the 2001 Commander Keen was released for the Game Boy Color. The series follows the eponymous Commander Keen, the secret identity of the eight-year-old genius Billy Blaze, as he defends the Earth and the galaxy from alien threats with his homemade spaceship, rayguns, and pogo stick.

The first three episodes were developed by Ideas from the Deep, the precursor to id, and published by Apogee Software as the shareware title Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons; the "lost" episode 3.5 Commander Keen in Keen Dreams was developed by id and published as a retail title by Softdisk; episodes four and five were released by Apogee as the shareware Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy; and the simultaneously developed episode six was published in retail by FormGen as Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter. Ten years later, an homage and sequel to the series was developed by David A. Palmer Productions and published by Activision as Commander Keen. Another game was announced in 2019 as under development by ZeniMax Online Studios, but was not released.