July 19, 2011 3:00 AM | Matthew Hawkins

Eric Ruth, responsible for the "demakes" of Left 4 Dead, DJ Hero, and most recently Halo, is currently tinkering with yet another Valve property: Team Fortress 2. The end result is Team Fortress 2 Arcade, which transforms the co-op first person shooter into a co-op side scrolling beat'em up, much in the vein of early '90s staples of the genre Streets of Rage and TMNT: Turtles In Time.

Four players will traverse nine stages and encounter enemies plus locations that should be instantly recognizable to any Team Fortress fan. Furthermore, each of the nine character types are represented: the primary fire, secondary fire, melee attack, and special attack are all dependent upon the class of whomever you're using. Unfortunately it's not available quite yet; the game was only announced this past weekend, at Artscape in Baltimore. But according to Ruth, it'll be arriving at the end of August.

There's even supposed to be a special Portal tie-in, though the specifics are under wraps for the time being. The only bad news is for those who are fans of team RED; you can only play as team BLU, at least thus far. Piki Geek was the first to break the news, and has footage of the game in action after the cut.