Rival Turf

Overview

Rival Turf (stylized in some box art as Rival Turf!, and known in Japan as Rushing Beat) is a belt-scrolling beat-'em-up developed and published by Jaleco for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in March 27, 1992 for Japan, in April 23, 1992 for North America, and in 1993 for Europe.

A standard beat-'em-up in the vein of Capcom's Final Fight, Rival Turf follows two brawlers (one adept at street fighting techniques and one adept at professional wrestling techniques) as they beat-up numerous hooligans and thugs in a western U.S. city before hunting down their leader in South America.

The game's overall story differs between the English and Japanese versions of the game:

• The English version follows street brawler Jack Flak and his police officer friend Oswald "Oozie" Nelson as they work to bring down the "Street Kings" street gang and its leader "Big Al". The game manual builds on this by having Jack's girlfriend Heather kidnapped.

• The Japanese version follows detective Rick Norton and sergeant Douglas Bild, both of the Neo-Cisco police force, as they work to rescue Rick's journalist sister Maria from a mysterious criminal syndicate (which is also spreading a new type of mysterious drug she was investigating). This version includes additional cutscenes detailing the game's plot.

Along with its two-player multiplayer, which was notable for the time as the SNES version of Final Fight only included single-player, Rival Turf is known for its unique scoring system (which accumulates based on enemies defeated and depletes based on Special Attacks used) and its signature "Angry Mode": a temporary buff given to the player after they receive a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

The game later received two sequels: Brawl Brothers and The Peace Keepers. It also received a digital re-release as a Virtual Console title, first for the Wii in 2010-2011, then for the Wii U in 2015. It was later included in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online service on May 27, 2022.

Gameplay

The game plays similarly to other belt-scrolling beat-'em-ups of the time, including Final Fight and Streets of Rage. Along with moving their character, players have access to a Jump button (defaulted to B), a Normal Attack button (defaulted to Y), a Special Attack button (defaulted to A), and a Run button (defaulted to L and R).

The Normal Attack button is used for standard attack chains, jumping attacks, dashing attacks, and throwing attacks. Each of the two characters also has a limited-use Special Attack ("Sweep Hurricane" for Flak/Norton and "Storm Bomber" for Nelson/Bild) that is activated by the dedicated Special Attack button. Rather than depleting the character's health or a unique meter like in similar games, Special Attacks deplete part of the player's Score (which accumulate 1 point for each enemy defeated and deplete 5 points for each Special Attack used). The game also make use of a dedicated Run button for faster movement and dashing attacks.

One of the key gameplay features of this game, compared to others at the time, is "Angry Mode". Enabled by default, this feature allows players to be put into a temporary enraged state when taking a lot of damage at once. While in this state, their attacks deal more damage and they become invincible.

Along with standard co-operative multiplayer, players can play one-on-one matches in Versus Mode.

Enemies

Standard

• Bullet (Kamikaze) / Case (Ride)
• Skinny (Slick) / Reggie (Bob)
• Warrior (Sho) / Dingo (Ryu)
• Butch (Butchy) / Louie (Big El)
• Goro (Kato) / Kato (Poe)
• Arnold / Gigante

Bosses

• Genie (Singh)
• Sledge (Honky)
• Slasher (T. Omari)
• Captain
• Ice Man (Karn)
• Big Al (Kintark)

Stages

1. Police Station
2. City Stadium
3. Skyscraper
4. Southern Mountain
5. Southern Port
6. The Hideout (EN) / Joecal's Lab (JP)