Been thinking about what "fighting game influences" mean in beat em ups cuz its tossed around a lot but not explained. The obvious thing would be lengthy combos and I think at some point in the past (think AvP arcade times) this would have been true. But now combos are ubiquitous in both genres, and bringing them up doesn't highlight any interesting distinctions between the 2 genres.
So I wanna talk about my personal criteria for what makes a bmup more fighting game-like. But first itd be useful to go over some basic history.
Bmups and fg both come from roughly the same cluster of games. Spartan X/Kung Fu Master is the origin, a proto bmup/fg. Its a game where you fight a lot of dudes running at you in a sequence. This sequence based combat characterizes this style of bmups because it isolates enemy encounters. This game introduced the high low distinction to make sequence based combat interesting, which the main game designer dude would build on in Trojan (with more elaborate footsies + blocking) and later Street Fighter 1. Theres a direct continuity there. Meanwhile 2D bmups like the first Kunio Kun took the basic idea, simplified or outright removed high low distinctions and added the Z axis while removing almost all notions of an enemy sequence aside from hard coded aggro limits. This is the big split that happened in the genre, and its what IMO distinguishes bmups in spirit. These pre-Kunio Kun bmups share a lot more in common with fg because fg came from them.
Alright so with that I think it becomes clearer what fg influences/elements look like. To me they are :
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High (mid) low distinctions in attacks. This gives fg A LOT of depth and is very important cuz they are 1v1 games, the depth comes from 1v1 interactions themselves. Belt scrolling bmups get most if not all their depth from general spacing & multiple enemy manipulation, they would not break if you had a single height and 1 attack that hit all heights. Sidesteps are like an extension of this idea so they can count too if attacks are more explicitly balanced around them as responses, instead of sidestwps just being a naturally good thing to do as they tend to be in 3D
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Emphasis on footsies. Not spacing in a broad sense, footsies specifically. So whiff punishing, poking and generally doing back & forth micro movement with your opponent in order to bait them. Bmups have elements of this, but the more FG inspired ones tend to emphasize this element, such as Spikeout. Less strictly, mechanics which let you move while always facing your opponent make bmups more fg-like almost by default.
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Emphasis on move framedata vs a single enemy. Bmups will often have like 3 frame startup punches with relatively little recovery and make it pretty easy to hit enemies - they tend to be balances with the idea that if youre near an enemy then youre pretty much always gonna win. The main threat is enemies surrounding you because youre helpless from.the back, not a single enemy blocking and then taking advantage of your recovery frames. God Hand is probably THE most fg inspired beat em up when it comes to this - you actually have to clean up which moves you use when down to frames. Spikeout has hints of this too. If your frame data concerns are JUST "if flush this enemy down the toilet I might be stuck in recovery for too long so another enemy hits me" then its not what Im talking about - its specifically interplay between the player and 1 enemy.
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Enemy sequences. If you have to fight enemies in preset sequences (even if theyre randomized) then it will most likely be more fg like as the games will have to flesh out their 1v1 combat mechanics.
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Abstractly speaking, emphasizing single enemy fights over crowd control (or gating cc behind 1 enemy fights). This is the crux of it. Fighting games are 1v1, their challenge has to be built from that as a foundation. Bmups are 1 vs many, all their challenge comes from managing a lot of independently moving targets. A lot of these fg influences are the result of this - they are things which make dealing with a single target harder and more dynamic. In bmups you winning that exchange is assumed so enemies try to create challenges BEFORE you get in their range and work around you. Similarly rewards arent just beating or hitting an enemy, its how well you can convert that into beating other enemies
Admittedly not the cleanest definition (certainly wouldnt use it for contest criteria) but I do think its the most interesting and has the most utility from a design perspective. I think this highlights both the compatibilities and tensions that the 2 genres have as well as clearing up what fg inspired means. And it shows how great of a hybrid God Hand actually is