| Rival Turf (snes) | |
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Company:
Jaleco Genre: Beat 'em up Released: USA: 1992 |
| Rival Turf is the U.S. version of Rushing Beat for the Super Famicom system in Japan, the first official game in the Rushing Beat series (though 64th Street: A Detective Story is considered a spiritual prequel due the fighting engine, setting and more). One of the game's claims to fame is it's two-player simultaneous beat-em-up action at a time after Capcom's Final Fight for the SNES was strictly a one-player game. Angry Mode, one of the main traits of the series feature makes it's debut here. When the player sustains too much damange in a certain amount of time, Angry Mode kicks in to make your character invulerable to enemy attacks and powers up your moves in both damage and execution and causes your sprite to flash. It's basically a life saver when the computer decided to get cheap on you, something that happens often in Rival Turf. Angry Mode happens for a limited time and it's countdown takes over your lifebar until the meter runs out. One interesting game mechanic that didn't appear in later Rushing Beat games was how the score was the number of enemies that player defeated in the current game (and was reset once the player spent a continue) and the player could use a special crowd-clearing attack move (like Final Fight's Sure-Kill Techniques) at the cost of five points (or five enemy knockouts). I know what you're thinking, but Rival Turf's twist on the Super Meter/Super Attack system debuted two years before Super Street Fighter II hit the arcades. Jaleco USA did more than just replace the Japanese text with English in this localization. Rick Norton was renamed Jack Flak, Douglas Bild was renamed Oswalt 'Oozie' Nelson after Ozzie Nelson (the entertainer who starred in "Ozzie and Harriet") and the rest of the cast got the same treatment whether they were possibly offensive (Kamikaze and Sledge's original name of... eh... just look at this screenshot) or not. Oddly enough, Rushing Beat Ran, the sequel known here as Brawl Brothers, has an endboss named Iceman, a name used by Jaleco for the next-to-the-last boss in the game here. The Options Mode screen was also altered as the ability to select the difficutly level, number of continues and number of lives per continue, 2Play hit was switched to ON by default and the game's Angry Mode (more on that in a bit) is set to the OFF position by default. The alteration of the Angry Mode feature may have been done to increase the default challenge of the game but it also meant that many players who don't read game instructions or bother with Option Mode screens didn't even know it existed. Not only did Bild get a serious suntan by way of having his palette altered to give him darker skin, Jaleco USA also added a shirt underneath his jacket and removed his ability to strike opponents "below the belt." The introduction found in the Japanese version was left out completley instead of being translated, but the crew at Jaleco USA was kind enough to write their own bugged-out version of the game's backstory for the manual. This became something of a tradition for the series as the other Rushing Beat games had similar changes and omissions. None of the games seem connected as each game gives different names even for the returning characters except for Norton being able to keep his original name in The Peace Keepers. The first stage of this game takes place on 61st Street, just a few streets away from the same 64th Street that Jaleco's earlier beat-em-up was named after. The first stage in both games are nearly identical as the heroes brawl along the street until they reach a bus (though the 64th street bus ride ends with a boss battle). | |
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Sprites - Rushing Beat series sprites Review - ScrollBoss review Custom Sprites - Rushing Beat gallery Mini Logos - Rushing Beat logo and characters in the Jaleco section Logos - Rushing Beat series logos |
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