A New Era of Subspace
For over a decade, fans of the Scott Pilgrim franchise had to treat the original Ubisoft beat-’em-up as lost media, praying for digital storefront listings to miraculously reappear. Now, in 2026, we don’t just have a port—we have a brand-new, fully realized sequel.
Scott Pilgrim EX, developed and published by modern retro-masters Tribute Games (TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge), hit Steam yesterday. Featuring a brand-new story penned by series creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, the game drops players into a fractured timeline of Toronto, 20XX. With Sex Bob-Omb’s bandmates abducted by shadowy forces, the city has been carved up by three rival gangs: the VEGANS, the ROBOTS, and the DEMONS.
Currently sitting at a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, it is clear that Tribute Games understood the assignment. But in an era where the beat-’em-up genre has seen a massive, highly polished resurgence, does Scott Pilgrim EX do enough to stand out, or is it relying entirely on the nostalgic power of an Anamanaguchi chiptune track?
The Brawling: Fists, Flair, and Zero Grinding
The biggest criticism of the original 2010 Scott Pilgrim game was its progression system. You started off incredibly weak, lacking basic combo strings, throws, or dodges until you tediously grinded low-level enemies to level up.
Tribute Games has wisely abandoned that philosophy. Scott Pilgrim EX hands you a robust, highly capable fighter right out of the gate. The combat is heavily driven by instinct and improvisation. You are immediately able to string together stylish air juggles, experiment with wacky environmental weapons, and unleash devastating, screen-clearing special attacks.
The game launches with seven fan-favorite playable characters, including Scott, Ramona Flowers, Roxie Richter, and the surprisingly fun ROBOT-01. Each fighter possesses a distinctly different combat style. Roxie, in particular, currently feels incredibly overpowered, allowing you to melt through enemy health bars with rapid-fire, high-mobility strikes.
While the core movelists are unlocked from the start, there is still plenty of RPG meta-progression. You collect coins from defeated enemies to purchase stat upgrades, food, and special badges that grant unique passive bonuses. It allows you to tailor your specific character build for subsequent playthroughs.
Exploring Toronto: The ‘River City Girls’ Influence
Rather than locking players into a rigid, stage-by-stage arcade ladder, Scott Pilgrim EX adopts an interconnected, “open-world” map structure.
The influence of games like River City Girls is immediately apparent. You are free to backtrack, explore hidden areas, and take on side quests from familiar faces scattered throughout the snowy streets of Toronto. However, Scott Pilgrim EX handles the pacing much better than its contemporaries. It never bogs you down with overly long, unskippable visual novel cutscenes. The focus remains squarely on moving forward and punching hipsters in the face.
The pixel art is, predictably, gorgeous. Tribute Games has painstakingly animated the city, ensuring that the visual gags, the combat hit-stop, and the background environments all hum with that signature Bryan Lee O’Malley energy.
Anamanaguchi Ascends Again
It is impossible to talk about Scott Pilgrim without talking about the music. Bringing back Anamanaguchi to score this brand-new adventure was non-negotiable, and the legendary chiptune-punk band has delivered yet another masterpiece.
The explosive blend of 8-bit energy, hyper-melodic rock, and driving basslines perfectly scores the brawling chaos. It elevates standard street fights into epic cinematic showdowns. If you are a fan of video game soundtracks, you don’t even need to buy the game to appreciate the music—the OST is already up for purchase on the band’s Bandcamp page, and it is worth every penny.
Broken Saves and Brief Campaigns
Unfortunately, the launch build of Scott Pilgrim EX is not without its flaws, some of which are genuinely infuriating.
The game’s save system is currently a chaotic mess. Boss fights are intense and challenging, but defeating a boss does not trigger an autosave. You are forced to run past even more continuously spawning enemies to reach the next safe zone to manually record your progress. If you die in that interim hallway, you are sent all the way back to the start of the boss fight. It is an archaic design choice that ruins the pacing of the mid-game.
Worse still is the co-op progression bug. While it is an absolute miracle to get fully supported 4-player local and online co-op in a 2026 PC release, the online integration is severely bugged. If you join a friend’s hosted game without first initializing your own local save file, absolutely none of your character progression is retained when you log off.
After losing over an hour and a half of hard-earned stat progression to this exact bug during a co-op session last night, I ended up firing up Cheat Engine and ReClass.NET to poke around the game’s memory offsets and manually restore the missing coins and experience values for my character. It was an easy enough fix if you know how to read hex values, but you absolutely should not have to reverse-engineer an indie beat-’em-up just to prevent the game from deleting your hard work.
Finally, players should be aware of the runtime. Unless you are aiming for a 100% completionist run or grinding out max stats for all seven characters, the main campaign is incredibly short. Playing on Normal difficulty, you can easily reach the final zone and roll the credits in about 3.5 to 4 hours.
The Good, The Bad, & The Vegan
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
| The Combat: Movelists are fully unlocked from the start, allowing for deep, satisfying combos without a tedious XP grind. | Short Campaign: The main story can be completed in under 4 hours, which feels brief for the $29 price tag. | Co-Op Bug: Joining a friend’s game without starting your own save file first will completely wipe your character progression. |
| The Soundtrack: Anamanaguchi returns with a brilliant, high-energy chiptune rock album. | Save Mechanics: The lack of an autosave feature immediately following difficult boss fights is incredibly frustrating. | |
| Interconnected Map: Exploring Toronto to find quests and hidden shops adds a great layer of depth to the brawling. | Enemy Spam: Certain screens artificially inflate the difficulty by endlessly spawning enemies to hide weak boss mechanics. | |
| Multiplayer: Fully functional 4-player local and online drop-in/drop-out co-op right at launch. |
Should You Buy It?
Yes, if you loved River City Girls, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, or the original Scott Pilgrim game, and you want a fantastic couch co-op experience.
No, if you are expecting a sprawling 20-hour RPG, or if you get easily frustrated by manual save systems and minor launch bugs.
Recommended for fans of: River City Girls, Streets of Rage 4, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, Castle Crashers.
Scott Pilgrim EX: Scott Pilgrim EX is a phenomenal, bite-sized brawler that respects the legacy of its source material while actively improving upon the mechanical flaws of its predecessor. The combat is fluid, the interconnected map is a joy to explore, and the Anamanaguchi soundtrack is predictably god-tier. While the $28.99 asking price might feel a bit steep for a 4-hour campaign, the sheer replayability offered by the diverse roster of characters and the 4-player co-op makes it a worthy addition to any Steam library. Just be sure to manually save your game before jumping into an online lobby until Tribute Games deploys a patch. – Obsidian