Scrolling Fighting Games #16

Rival Turf a.k.a. Rushing Beat (1992)
By: Jaleco Genre: Fighting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Nintendo SNES Also Available For: Nothing
Download For: Nintendo Virtual Console

There are many reasons old games may be remembered today - being great, being crap, doing something new, costing a bomb to buy now, etc. In the case of Rival Turf, is was (and is) for having hilariously bad cover artwork (the US version, of course, the Japanese one is pretty decent). Actually, 'artwork' is the wrong word as it's actually just a photo of two normal guys who are presumably meant to be badass gang members or something, but they just look like two typical 90s youths. Nonetheless, the backstory is the usual rival gang/kidnapped girlfriend business, and there are two characters you can choose from - Jack Flak who seems to be just some regular dude who can't protect his girlfriend, and his cop buddy Oozie Nelson who apparently has no qualms about putting his career/pension on the line to help Jack. Pick either one of them (or both in a two-player game) and proceed to kick the crap out of all the hoodlums that stand between them and the creatively-named Big Al who is currently enjoying Heather's no-doubt radiant company. And boobs too. Possibly.

In typical genre fashion, one of the characters (Jack) is faster but has average strength, the other (Ozzie) is slower but stronger. Both move four ways and can attack, jump, run and do a special move. This allows them to perform a variety of punches, kicks and throws over six side-scrolling stages which is each split into several sections. These include the usuals such as city streets, factories, bad guy's base, etc, as well as more interesting areas such as a moving bus (or possibly tram - you only see it from inside), a sports field, woods and a coastal area. The enemies consist of your usual street thugs including punks, fatties, baldies, and more formidable looking examples, each of whom has their own energy meter alongside that of your chosen character. Occasionally, you'll find a pile of boxes or oil drums or something that might give you more energy, or even a weapon such as a knife, but that's all the help you get.

I apologise if this is all sounding a bit familiar but it feels that to write as well. Suffice to say, Rival Turf is not an especially original game! About the only original feature I've noticed here is something called 'angry mode' which can be turned on from the options screen. This makes your chosen character flash with invincibility for a short period when his energy is running low. It's not a bad idea but pretty much everything else is lifted straight from the likes of Final Fight and Streets of Rage. I guess the latter was itself a bit of a Final Fight rip-off but at least it was a good one. A very good one, in fact. Rival Turf, sadly, is not. There are many things that make contributions toward that - the audio is poor, both music and effects, the graphics are very average besides a couple of nice backdrops, and lacking in charm or character, but it was the actual fight-mechanics that caused me the most aggravation.

No, that isn't just me trying to say 'controls' in a fancy way either. I mean, the controls are quite poor. I, at least, found them rather sticky and inconsistent which makes them unreliable. This is a pretty major flaw in a game like this, but the physics is off too, and the collision-detection is also pretty ropey. Even if it had flashy audio/visuals, this would still make Rival Turf a rather irritating, frustrating game to play. Combined with the average-at-best audio/visuals and almost complete lack of originality, however, not to mention the plethora of superior examples of the genre on the SNES, there really is very little reason to play this game. Since it was a SNES exclusive, I assume Jaleco's intention was to capitalise on the absence of a two-player mode in the SNES version of Final Fight but that was the only reason to play their game over Capcom's at the time. Now, there is no reason that I can fathom.

RKS Score: 3/10

Gameplay Video: here's a video of the whole game being played by one of the talented fellows at World of Longplays (check out their great channel here). Oh, and don't watch if you want to avoid spoilers!