Side-scrolling beat-em-ups had their day a long time ago.  They were the staple of the MegaDrive and the SNES, but over the last five years or so, players' thirst for the genre seems to have returned anew with Castle Crashers, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai and Alien Hominid making their homes on plenty of hard drives around the world; these games took the genre and made something slightly different of them, took them away from their martial art roots and made the genre feel all pine fresh again.  But what of the original state of the art?  Well, you can return to a revamped, 720p side-scrolling beat-em-up that is as accomplished as it is true to its roots.  Revenge of the Wounded Dragons is a PSN title that will set you back £6.29 and will take up very little precious space on your HDD.  But the good news doesn't end there.  Its 2.5D interface and bright, clear and cleanly-executed graphics are a joy to behold, while the controls feel natural and easy. 

Playing to its 1970s kung-fu movie heritage, there's enough wah-wah guitar and horn sections to pack a palladium, combine that with graphic novel-style cutscenes for exposition and such tongue-in-cheek clichés as finishing moves called 'rice sack', 'exploding fist' and 'grasshopper kick', each with arcade-style voice-over announcements, you can almost forget you're in front of your own TV; the game transports you back to a long-lost era of cabinet games in the arcade, before all the alcoholics, hookers and gambling addicts settled in.  Revenge of the Wounded Dragons is marvellous as a single player game, but really comes to life when you play the two-player co-op, which really does have a heavy leaning on actual co-operation.  Weapons, power-ups, hidden collectibles, progressively tougher drone-style enemies litter the game and at the end of each level, you're thrown into a boss battle.  Quick learners will discover the right tactics to defeat them, probably incorporating the 'dragon rage' ability where a meter fills and, once activated, provides you with a boost to speed and damage, and the less adept among us will lose a life or two, only to regain them in the next level as pick-ups.

As if this isn't enough for your money, there are mini-games you can unlock along the way, electing to replay them from the main menu.  These break the tension and add a new slant to the game's feel, as if varying from fists and feet, to throwing knife, to baseball bat, to gun, to dynamite, to barrel of water and back to fists and feet would even remotely require a new slant to it.  Revenge of the Wounded Dragons is every bit the kitsch and fun kung-fu romp it deserves to be, freshening the genre from ground up to make for a real blast of an arcade experience in the musty, coppery coin smell-free environment of your own home.