''Rival Turf!'', released in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
as , is a
beat'em up video game. It was released by
Jaleco
was a corporate brand name that was used by two previously connected video game developers and publishers based in Japan. The original Jaleco company was founded in 1974 as Japan Leisure Company, founded by Yoshiaki Kanazawa, before being renam ...
in
1992
File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...
for the
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Eur ...
and later on Nintendo's
Virtual Console and
Nintendo Switch Online service. The game is the first installment in the
''Rushing Beat'' trilogy, which also includes ''
Brawl Brothers
''Brawl Brothers'', known in Japan as , is a side-scrolling beat 'em up game developed and published by Jaleco for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992. It is the second game in the ''Rushing Beat'' series, after ''Rival Turf!'', and ...
'' and ''
The Peace Keepers'', although the games were localized as unrelated titles in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
.
Plot
Jack Flak's girlfriend Heather has been kidnapped by Big Al and his gang the Street Kings. He enlists the help of his friend, police officer Oswald "Oozie" Nelson to rescue his girlfriend and rid the city from the reign of the Street Kings once and for all. They start out by heading to the sports stadium to find out more information and locate Big Al's hideout.
Japanese version
One night, Rick Norton is walking down the streets of the city when he was surprised by a gun in the darkness. The mystery man behind the gun said that Norton's sister had an important video tape and was being held hostage. A new stimulant was being sold in epidemic amounts throughout the city and was only first manufactured a few years ago. Realizing that the organization's mystery was shrouded other than their sales of illegal stimulants, Norton has seen the city become slowly devastated over a period of time. He heads to the city stadium in an attempt to rescue his sister Maria with the help of his friend, Douglas Bild.
Gameplay
Jack Flak (Rick Norton in Japan) or "Oozie" Nelson (Douglas Bild in Japan) are selected in a one or two player mode, to defeat a plethora of enemies using punches, kicks and various weapons collected throughout the course of the game. Jack Flak is the hero who is out to rescue his girlfriend Heather, with the flying kick and the back drop as his specialty attacks. Oswald "Oozie" Nelson is a police officer who uses powerful
professional wrestling moves.
There is an "angry" mode where the character becomes temporarily invincible and more powerful after taking a certain amount of damage. Moving the character is done using the four-direction controller and each move (attack, jump, special attack) is done using three of the four available buttons near the movement keys.
In the two-player versus mode, the player who wins two wins out of three rounds wins the entire match.
Localization
Compared to the original Japanese game, the North American version removes the introductory story and credits, and shortens the ending. When each character is defeated, the Japanese version replaces their icon with the Japanese word for
death (死) while the North American version shows a simple "X". Another feature unique to the Japanese version is the ability to change the number of lives and continues that the player can use.
The fictional city of "Neo Cisco" used in the Japanese version became the real-life city of
Los Angeles in the North American version.
Reception
No contemporary ratings are logged for this 1992 game.
In 2010, Damien McFerran of NintendoLife reviewed the title negatively, calling it "desperately short on originality" with "truly uninspiring gameplay". He supposed that the publisher's main strategy was to capitalize on the lack of two-player functionality in
Capcom
is a Japanese video game developer and video game publisher, publisher. It has created a number of List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil' ...
's superior competing game ''
Final Fight'', while simultaneously plagiarizing it. He described the effort as "inferior ... in practically every single way imaginable" to that "infinitely more distinguished" game. He describes the characters as "painfully similar" to and "obvious replicas" of those in ''Final Fight'', though they "look like they've wandered off the set of a Vanilla Ice music video" and have completely unrealistic movements, collision detection, and physics. The only redeeming qualities he found to the entire game are the presence of two-player mode and the ability to run.
In 2011,
IGN rated ''Rival Turf!'' at 4 out of 10, calling it "an almost entirely forgettable beat-'em-up with a boring premise, bland music and partially broken gameplay". The review laments "stiff animation, a lacking storyline and characters that have no discernable personality"; and the "poor collision detection" is said to define the game as an overall failure at "the most critical component of a brawler". The review states that this game lacks even the minorly distinctive features of its numerous and similar competition, generally summarizing it as being "as vanilla as the brawler genre can be".
In 2010, ''
Nintendo Power'' also ridiculed the box cover art, saying that "The marketing people on this game actually had a pretty
outside-the-box idea, which should have really stayed off the box. After all, who is the target audience going to find more intimidating than thugs their own age?".
Super Gamer Magazine gave a review score of 51% stating "Too few combat moves, jerky graphics and not enough challenge. The only good point is the simultaneous two-player mode.
References
External links
*
''Rushing Beat''a
{{Rushing Beat series
1992 video games
Beat 'em ups
Cooperative video games
Fighting games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Nintendo Switch Online SNES games
Side-scrolling beat 'em ups
Super Nintendo Entertainment System games
Virtual Console games
Virtual Console games for Wii U
Video games about police officers
Video games set in California
Jaleco games