Maximum Carnage is allright >w>
To be fair, I haven't played Battlemaniacs in years, but I have very fond memories of it...
Haven't played Pirates of Darkwater, never even heard of it actually, but I'm a bit of a fan of beat'em ups, I enjoy most of the ones I play, I just really, REALLY didn't like Golden Axe for some reason >w>
I forgot to mention the Ninja Warriors Again, but I was probably blocking it off my memory because it's a side-scrolling one, it plays pretty different from all the other ones mentioned, but that aside, it's like, one of my favourites! The graphics are simply perfect, the music is even more perfect and the gameplay is surprisingly deep! I love it, I can't have enough of it!
The only one I can think of that I enjoy more than it is Final Fight 3, yeah I know it's shallow, easy and short, but it's got branching paths! I LOVE Branching Paths, I think a game that's short but has lots of branching paths is the best kind of game because you can play it multiple times and see something different every time you play it!
And it's a LOT better than procedurally-generated crap because branching paths give you both the ability to see different things in different playthroughs AND proper hand-crafted level design that you can memorise! I think it's the ideal game design choice and I'm gonna put branching paths in a LOT of my games! Heck, branching paths is the core idea behind my very first game, the one for the MD that I've mentioned a couple of times...
Anyway, Final Fight 3, the graphics are just as perfect as Ninja Warriors Again, the music gives me chills of joy, the composition in that soundtrack is otherworldly! They've got multiple melodies playing at once and somehow still in harmony, and they often even have the bass playing its own melody on top of that! And unlike the SoR soundtracks the Final Fight 3 soundtrack ISN'T REPETITIVE!
I can only dream of ever making a soundtrack that good...
And the gameplay, while shallow, has a great variety of moves and it just 'feels' better than most other beat'em ups I've played...