It’s tricky building a from the ground up side scrolling beat-em-up in 2026.

The concept dates back to the early arcades, so is rooted in old school and so doesn’t lend itself to deep, flesched out mechanics. And replayability has often relied on players creating their own fun with no damage runs or time attacks.

Games like Absolum have really thought outside the box on how to keep iterating and keeping things fresh. Same with titles like River City Girls. And I’m pleased to say, Scott Pilgrim EX has absolutely tried to do things a little bit differently to a lot of success.

Sure, we’ve had magnificent attempts to reinvigorate the genre as intended with games such as Streets of Rage IV and Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, but where Scott Pilgrim EX has gone straight in with that hard-hitting, vibrantly animated, smash-mouth style, Tribute Games have somehow made this into a bit of an adventure game.

Ironcially, it’s Tribute that have been paying a lot of dividends to the genre, behind brilliant games like Panzer Paladin, Marvel Cosmic Invasion and the aforementioned Shredder’s Revenge. But this time they’ve brought back the beloved world of Scott Pilgrim – heavily drawn on from the comics – and restored this cast of characters with a mission structure, set scenes, and puzzles to solve. As well as enemies to hit over the head with a guitar and mallet.

There’s quite an extensive map to work through, starting you out in an Underground Lab, then gradually taking you out onto the streets of Toronto and beyond. There, you’ll find rival gangs and their turfs, each putting you under pressure with immense numbers and demands. As such, you’ll often stumble upon random events to get money – like knocking out a bunch of vegan bros out with a basketball.

But there’s also set quests to find and complete, such as heading to the Beach or going to the Hidden Castle to find Scott’s hidden band mates and clues to their whereabouts. Eventually as you move through the quest you’ll take down bosses, learn new chords and be able to open up new areas via portals, expanding the map even further.

All peppered throughout are also small shops that sell health bonuses, as well as upgrades to improve your abilities and ways to improve HP or block attacks automatically. You can even pick assist characters to help you out in a pinch if the odds get a bit overwhelming.

Because the thing is, Scott Pilgrim EX IS best played with a friend. This one is tough as a solo act – doable, for sure – but the experience has been hard-coded as a multiplayer title. Both with the moves you can pull off together, the bosses you face, and the volume of enemies that pop on screen. Don’t get me wrong, it’s par for the course with these games, they’ve always been best played co-operatively, but more than ever this one feels like it needs you to have a tag partner.

You can, of course, interchange your characters throughout, bringing in other iconic additions such as Ramona Flowers, and each character has their own quirks, with Matthew able to cast spells of a sort and Lucas being a hardcore wrestler type.

It’s a great selection, honestly, and the abilities really keep the game feeling fresh, but you can also essentially pick up anything you come into contact with from stones to shells to vegetables and toss them at enemies or smash them upside the head. It’s genuinely satisfying for most of the way through the game and it just adds to its charm.

It’s the art-style that really brings this one home, though. It’s extremely comic-book illustrated, anime-styled with glorious pixel art that feels like it pays homage to great 16 Bit Adventures, but really is much more enhanced and rejuvinated for a modern audience. Facial expressions are lively and buoyant, each character is uniquely animated and styled, and the backgrounds are just full of activity and fun easter eggs. You’ll constantly be spotting things and taking to stop and check them out.

That’s what Scott Pilgrim EX is really brought alive for, is to make you feel part of the experience and that there’s always something to discover. And as you progress so the difficulty gets tougher and the challenge rises, meaning you’ve got to keep eyes in the back of your head and focus on all sides.

Just like the source material though, this is also a game that just loves other video games, from the retro-leaning 8 bit style synth music from the original melodic rock band, Anamanaguchi, to enemies that feel ripped right out of your favourite titles such as Mortal Kombat, everything about this game just sings about its love for video games. And really burrows into the heart of the gamer playing it.

There is a lot of backtracking in the game due to its puzzly style and that could grate some players. You’ll often find you need to remember a place you saw an hour back to push forward with the next phase of the game, but it at least tries to keep things feeling a little bit fresh and different.

The game’s great combat, variety, sound and look, as well as the charm and desire to iterate just generally kept me coming back and wanting to see this one through. It’s hard to say if I prefered this to the original Scott Pilgrim game, they’re both quite different in many ways, but this was just a good fun time that I appreciated and admired. It’s a truly stunning piece of art through and through and its beautiful visuals really shone through both on my 4K TV and in handheld playing on Nintendo Switch 2.

Scott Pilgrim EX is a vibe. A little pricey, but a great time for series fans, those look for some good old fashioned multiplayer, beat-em-up fun, but with a modern, interesting twist. Tribute have done it again and are keeping this genre alive in their own unique way.

Verdict

Scott Pilgrim EX is a vibe, plain and simple. The game beautifully captures the retro nature of the genre, wonderfully understands the source material, offers a distinct, entertaining hook with a diverse cast of characters and puts a modern twist on things to really liven up the action. The game does have some backtracking which can get a bit frustrating and balance wise, it’s both tough to beat solo and a bit too easy to breeze through in co-op. But I had a great time with Scott Pilgrim EX, loving everything it has to offer and would recomend this to anyone looking for a new multiplayer fix.