The Asskickers = Punching Frenchmen
The PC: home of shooting men, stabbing men and making men build things, but very rarely about punching men. The early-90s flood of side-scrolling man-thumpers pretty much passed the PC by, probably because we are too busy trying to find where we'd left our Monkey Island code wheels and desperately blowing dust off broken floppy disks in the hopeless hope they'd magically start working again. The Asskickers has, I must confess, a name that makes me wince (curse my terribly British language sensibilities), but I kinda like the high-res, hand-drawn and oh-so-very-French graphics.
Rather tragically, there is no demo as yet - which is exactly the kind of thing an unheard-of indie curio really needs if it wants a fire lit under it. So all I can do for now is point you at the video of this Parisian Streets of Rage. I've played a bit of it, and bar its intro dialogue wibbling on for far too long it seems like a cheery mix of thoroughly retro punchosity with distinctively Gallic and tongue-in-cheek aesthetic values.
Watch out for the guys on scooters, by the way. Those guys are dicks. Here's the trailer, though unfortunately its choice of arcade presentation and shrunken footage doesn't really show off the look unless you go 720p and full-screen:
Includes shared-screen multiplayer too, like in the past.
Like the sound of duffing up French blokes (and ladies too)? The Asskickers is out now for download purchase from AGO Games, for the peculiar but regionally-sensitive price of £11.51/$17.42/€11.99.