Rival Turf! Game Sample - SNES/SFC
0Ugh... the first game in what is known in Japan as the "Rushing Beat Trilogy" (with "Rushing Beat", "Rushing Beat Ran: Fukusei Toshi", and "Rushing Beat Shura"), developed and published by Jaleco in 1992. It's recieved quite the reputation for being a terrible beat-em-up and clone of Final Fight... some people have defended the game, but I'm not going to be one of those people. Sorry, I like Jaleco, but this game is little more than a modest first try by Jaleco to make a beat-em-up on Nintendo's (at the time) new 16-bit platform, but it is a sloppy beat-em-up, though the sequels (greatly) improve on the overall look and playability. I could go into all kinds of detail as to why this game isn't so hot, but you can probably figure out some things just by watching this video, and a few more things by scouring the web for box scans and manual pages.
The game stars the 26-year-old detective in the Los Angeles Police Department, Jack Fla(c)k, and the 44-year-old director of the LAPD, Oozie Norton, who are out to personally clean the streets of its crime problems (and its extra personal for Jack as the leader of the gangs kidnapped his girlfriend). Graphically, the game isn't bad at all for an early SNES beat-em-up. It's colorful, and there are a several large and/or detailed enemies and backdrops. The animations are pretty standard for the time, but the game suffers quite a bit of slowdown (like several early SNES games). The music isn't really all that great and the sound effects will get a little annoying after a while, but they're tolerable overall. Gameplay-wise, the game is like Final Fight almost down to a tee, especially when compared with the SNES/SFC Final Fight. You have one average "Cody" fighter and one powerful grappler character who is like "Haggar". There are various items you can find and weapons you can use, and you have to make the best of what you find. About the only things that seperate this from the (SNES/SFC) Final Fight is that you have an "Angry Mode" where you're invincible briefly and moves have more force, it features a "Versus Mode", and that it supports two-player co-op, something glaringly omitted from Capcom's first FF port.
If the game was just a fun knock-off, it would be great, but the gameplay is awful, and not because it's repetitive (since almost all brawlers are). The problem is that your health gets deceptively drained (particularly with knock-down hits, as the health loss isn't calculated until after you get downed), the hit priority is off, and the game is buggy as heck. In spite of this, the game is not difficult. Enemies can be smacked off the floor or slammed almost indefinitely in single player and it looks absolutely hilarious when you get a friend to do it with you in co-op play. Even worse, characters don't run in this game, they "power walk". What this means is that not only can slow characters like Oozie move every bit as quickly as Jack and make him appear useless by comparison, but this allows you to just wrap around foes and grab them with ease as your movement is not restricted like with running animations in many 16-bit beat-em-ups, which is actually pretty useful when you're being cheated or surrounded trying to hit enemies with impractical combos. Also considering throws have quite a few invincibility frames and are stronger than weak combos, you can slam a guy, run over to where he lands and slam him again, or just move out of harms way if there's a crowd and drain an enemy's otherwise large vitality bar. While it makes this game more tolerable, it's also nonsense.
You can probably pick this up for a few bucks these days, but it's not particularly good. If you must have it, get the Japanese game... the U.S. game was modified with almost no story and no credits.