TL;DR: Scott Pilgrim EX is a must-play modern beat ’em up with deeper combat, light RPG mechanics, and a living Toronto hub. Not perfect, but absolutely worth your time. 4/5.

I booted up Scott Pilgrim EX expecting comfort food. What I got instead was a surprisingly thoughtful, mechanically rich modern beat ’em up that understands something most retro revivals don’t: you can’t actually go back. Not really.

Scott Pilgrim EX is, on paper, pure nostalgia bait. It’s a revival of the 2010 tie-in game inspired by the original graphic novel series, all of it now old enough to legally rent a car without judgment. The franchise has always been about youth, arrested development, and clinging to the past like it’s a limited-edition vinyl pressing. So it feels almost poetic that this new entry leans into time travel while existing as a product of its own retro resurrection.

But here’s the thing. Scott Pilgrim EX isn’t just reheated leftovers. It’s a remix. And in 2026, that matters.

A Modern Beat ’Em Up That Actually Feels Modern

I’ve played a lot of beat ’em ups in the last few years. The genre is alive again, thanks in no small part to games like Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. Those games didn’t just copy the arcade classics; they refined them. They asked what happens when you take quarter-munching design and give it breathing room.

Scott Pilgrim EX clearly learned from that school.

From the first few fights in Toronto, 20XX, I could feel the difference. Combat is snappy. Movement is fast. Getting punched in the face doesn’t feel like a brief existential crisis where I stand there regretting my life choices. There’s blocking. There’s quick-stepping. There are wakeup options. You can burn meter to escape pressure. It feels less like a museum piece and more like a conversation with modern fighting games.

And yes, it still delivers on that chaotic couch co-op energy. The moment my co-op partner turned to me and asked, completely deadpan, “Do you want to fight the Vegans?” I knew we were in the right headspace. The answer is always yes. Not because we’re cruel, but because this is Scott Pilgrim and absurdity is the air it breathes.

Each character feels distinct in a way that surprised me. Scott is the dependable all-rounder. Ramona controls space with that hammer like she’s zoning in a 2D fighter. Lucas is a walking brick wall. Gideon is all pressure and ego. Matthew plays like a bizarre puppet character that somehow works inside a beat ’em up framework. Robot-01 lets you zone with grenades like you’re playing keep-away in a completely different genre. Roxie is all speed and precision.

Switching between them isn’t just cosmetic. It genuinely changes how I approach encounters. When I got bored or hit a difficulty spike, I didn’t feel stuck. I felt curious. That’s a big difference.

Is it as mechanically deep as Streets of Rage 4? Not quite. But it’s close enough that I stopped comparing and just started enjoying. And that, for me, is the sign of a beat ’em up that understands the assignment.

The RPG Hooks That Kept Me Grinding

One of the smartest choices in Scott Pilgrim EX is its light RPG layer. Enemies drop coins. Shops sell stat-boosting food, equipment, and weird little badges that tweak your playstyle. It’s not Diablo. It’s not even River City Girls levels of systems-heavy. But it’s enough.

I became embarrassingly obsessed with optimizing my coin intake. One badge increased the money I picked up. Another fed me meter when I landed hits. Before long, I was building my character around the sacred art of summoning Young Neil to stampede across the screen like a chaotic support unit from another dimension.

And here’s where co-op gets spicy. Equipment unlocks for both players. Permanent stat boosts do not. I learned this the hard way while watching my partner quietly become a statistical god while I remained an underfunded Toronto street brawler. There’s something deeply funny about negotiating in the middle of a boss fight because someone spent all the cash on VHS tapes that only benefit them.

It adds friction. But it’s the good kind. The kind that makes co-op feel alive instead of politely symmetrical.

Toronto As A Living, Breathing Playground

Alt text: Scott Pilgrim EX Toronto hub world, Casa Vania level, Cold Topic shop, and side missions.

The biggest structural shift in Scott Pilgrim EX is the world itself. This isn’t a static stage-select screen. Toronto is interconnected. You walk between districts. You stumble into side missions. You hop through portals to bizarre timelines. It feels cohesive.

I loved learning the city’s layout. The Distillery District, the beach, the shopping streets. There’s always a marker nudging you forward if you just want the critical path. But if you wander, you’ll find barrel-smashing challenges, coin hunts, weird little diversions that reward exploration without turning the game into a checklist simulator.

And the references. Oh, the references.

Checkpoints that look like they escaped from a 16-bit platformer. Demon-infested mansions named Casa Vania. Stores that are legally distinct parodies of mall staples. Movie rentals with taglines that wink at horror classics. It’s a layered nostalgia cake. The difference now is that Scott Pilgrim itself is part of that nostalgia ecosystem.

When the original comics debuted in 2004, they were riffing on games that were maybe a decade or two old. Now, Scott Pilgrim is the thing being riffed on. That shift is weird. And the game seems aware of it, even if it never stops to make a speech about it.

Former villains fight alongside you. Characters chase old dreams in different timelines. There’s this subtle hum beneath the jokes that says, “Time has passed.” Not in a sad way. Just in a real way.

Retro Revival With Something To Say

Developer Tribute Games has built a reputation on loving the past. They helped bring back that arcade energy with Shredder’s Revenge. With Scott Pilgrim EX, they’re not just polishing a relic. They’re evolving it.

What struck me most is how comfortable the game is with its identity. It doesn’t pretend to be cutting-edge in a AAA sense. It doesn’t drown itself in irony. It simply takes the core of a beloved beat ’em up and asks how it would feel if designed with 2026 sensibilities.

The answer is: faster. More flexible. Slightly deeper. More generous. And more reflective, even when it’s being ridiculous.

I found myself thinking about how arcades used to be social spaces. How beat ’em ups were built to extract quarters, not to respect your time. Now we’re in a world where we revisit those mechanics with hindsight. We add systems. We smooth edges. We keep the spirit but ditch the punishment.

Scott Pilgrim EX embodies that evolution. It doesn’t try to recreate 2010. It builds on it.

Scott Pilgrim EX is one of the most satisfying modern beat ’em ups I’ve played this year. It refines the original game’s formula with deeper combat, meaningful RPG systems, and an interconnected Toronto that feels alive. It may not quite reach the genre-defining heights of Streets of Rage 4, but it comes impressively close while carving out its own identity. More importantly, it understands the bittersweet nature of nostalgia without getting lost in it.

Verdict

Scott Pilgrim EX is a smart, fast, and surprisingly thoughtful revival that proves retro doesn’t have to mean regressive. It honors the past, improves on it, and delivers genuinely fun co-op chaos. Time moves on. Thankfully, so does this series.