I completed
Rushing Beat (AKA "Rival Turf!") on Super Famicom.
Jaleco's quirky brawler series has its fans but not many of them are willing to go to bat for the first game in the series. I'll step up to the plate. I like this game a lot! Beat 'em ups tend to be criticized for their repetitive, same-y nature. And in most ways Rushing Beat doesn't break loose of the mold. You walk to the right, beat up a series of repeating enemy types, and break barrels to free the delicious chicken thighs inside. There's a city street, a bridge, an elevator, a penthouse, etc. You take control of one of two street fightin' men, one who is balanced and another who is slow and powerful.
Rival Turfers might remember these fightin' dudes as JACK FLACK and OOZIE NELSON, but in Japan they were the comparatively more subdued Rick Norton and Douglas Bild. In both regions, one guy looks like Terry Bogard and the other guy looks like M. Bison, though our Bison-alike has a blue palette swap in Rival Turf!, for some reason.
At any rate, you get your typical beat 'em up control scheme with either fella. There's a standard mash-Y to smack, a couple of different knockdown jump attacks, an area-of-effect special attack that costs resources, and several grappling moves that activate depending on which direction you face when you grab an enemy and what buttons you press afterward. Rick tends to hurl foes over his shoulder while Doug usually power-slams them into the ground.
There are six stages with a boss fight at the end of each; a high-flying Indiana Jones-like map sequence between each; and maybe around a dozen enemy types (biker dude, tall punk, fat guy, short karate man, tall karate man, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc., although curiously missing from the mix is Whip Girl).
Now with same-y-ness established, let's talk about
rhythms and
iterations.
Iterations
Genre trappings alone don't make or break a game. Games like Double Dragon and Final Fight set the foundations for an iterative genre, one which frequently presents the same or very similar elements, but with small iterations on the concepts that are fun to discover. Sometimes these are mechanical, sometimes they're aesthetic. In Rushing Beat's case, we have a few mechanical iterations.
First is the dash. By holding a shoulder button, Rick and Doug can zip around the screen much faster than most other enemy types. While dashing, either fighter has an attack that knocks an enemy down (dealing very little damage). Plenty of brawlers have dashing, but I've played few that iterate it in the way this game does.
The special attack, activated with the A button, also has a minor iteration on the concept. Rushing Beat has an unusual scoring system - instead of accruing points, the game tracks number of enemy KOs, represented by a row of little faces above the life meter. Every time you use your A-special, the game docks you five KO points. I love this - even by 1992, scoring systems were mostly vestigial, so appropriating it as currency feels a little ahead of its time. You still enter your name into a leaderboard upon game over, though.
Finally there's the game's biggest iteration, the
Ikari Mode (accurately localized as ANGRY MODE in Rival Turf!.). This is a special player state that activates when you take a certain amount of damage. The character stops, raises a fist, and beings to flash white. The life meter transforms into a timer. Until it runs down, Rick or Doug are invincible, and two of their attacks transform:
- The dash move now sends Rick or Doug flying across the screen at incredible speed.
- The forward throw becomes overclocked: Rick vaults an enemy ahead, sending them tumbling head-over-toe like a sandbag; Doug does a midair suplex that shakes the screen and knocks enemies down around him.
My favorite thing about Ikari Mode is how the character's portrait icon next to their life meter changes to animate like they're yelling. It's cute.
Of note is the Ikari Mode can be switched off in the options mode, and for some reason, Rival Turf! defaults to it being off. If you play that version of the game, please turn it on.
In terms of aesthetics, things are mostly where you expect them to be, but there's still plenty of fun variations that keep the stages flavorful - baddies bust out of windows or lockers or cower in the background, and there's one particular Fat Guy whose role seems to be cheering on the final boss.
Rhythms
This is where the key lies to enjoying middling beaters like Rushing Beat. Everything it brings to the table is more or less expected, but the fun of it is in figuring out how to dance with its game system. You can't take the exact same strategies you use in Streets of Rage or Final Fight and win at Rushing Beat.
The game graciously gives you five continues, but just mashing "Y" at every enemy that approaches you will earn you a quick ticket to the game over screen. Only the lowest level goons are vulnerable to simple button-tapping. The tall guys have a kick that will sometimes break out of your combo. The Fat Guys will jump on you. The short karate guys jump-kick out of your attack, and if you try to throw them, they sometimes counter with their own throw.
Learning the timing and behavior of each enemy type is the fun of Rushing Beat. My biggest A-Ha! moment in this game was when I learned that you can grapple an enemy right after they've been knocked down. The trick then became learning which enemies could be safely grappled without a knockdown (basic goons, tall guys, fat guys, tall karate guys) and which needed to be knocked down first (Arnolds, short karate guys, bosses). The dash helps you get to an enemy quickly after you've knocked them down, creating a puzzle when multiple enemy types are on the screen at once: Who do I grapple first? Who can I safely attack? Who can I knock down and where so I can throw one enemy into several others?
I'm still uncertain if this knockdown > throw combo was intended by the developers. It feels janky in the same way the rest of the game feels a bit janky. That's why I like it, though! No other beat 'em up I've played has this exact same rhythm and it makes me want to return to it.
At any rate, once I had this dance down, I was able to outsmart every encounter the game threw at me, and it was rewarding to discover that the last couple of boss fights had moments where you couldn't just spam dash attack to knockdown. It felt right on the cusp of being intentional on the part of the devs.
Speaking of the devs, one of my very favorite parts of this game was the credits sequence. Every individual creator has their own little pixelated portrait next to their name - which is pretty rad considering the memory constraints of the time.
In conclusion, Rushing Beat is no
Streets of Rage. Heck, it ain't even a
Burning Fight. But it has its own rhythm, and I encourage you to try dancing to it. It's also easy to get to this game - it's been on the Switch SNES service for ages. Give it a go.
