The third game in the series, Rushing Beat Shura, is also on Nintendo Switch Online, so I'm checking it out. Looks like Jaleco still hasn't figured out how to mention Rival Turf! on the box, so nobody would know this is the third and final game in the trilogy.
Also, "The Peace Keepers"? Judging from this box art, they're not doing very much peace-keeping! Maybe they called the game this so kids would be able to sell it to their parents more easily. "Mom, it's a game about keeping peace!" Damn right it's about keeping peace... by whooping ass.
Now with FOUR player simultaneous action! Which is actually pretty rare for the Super NES and makes this game legitimately notable.
After two iffy title screens, they finally landed a solid-looking title screen for this one. It actually feels like there's some budget here.
The four main characters are all people who were wronged in some way by the Deutschland-Moldavia Corporation, which became the dominant world power after the Economic Wars of 2011. This game takes place in 2015, with everyone dealing with the aftermath.
The main dude is Flynn here, I guess. All of the characters are kinda generic-looking, except...
...Echo, who is basically a female version of Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury and rocks tight jean shorts.
I'd love to play that series (and its successor King of Fighters) if someone would put out a collection of some sort. They're on like ten systems at this point.
With a code you can add a couple more playable characters. Norton here is actually Flak, the guy from the first two games. He's still got a jacket as the one thing that separates him from being Cody from Final Fight. Looks like the other dude didn't make it to this roster. The other secret character is a robot.
That's right, a robot. Well, it's different. This seems like a pretty serious game so it's a little odd to have a "joke character" here, unless it isn't meant to be.
Anyway none of this matters because the only character one should play as is Echo.
Echo's main motivation is avenging her grandpa, a scientist who was killed by DMC goons for whatever reason. She's in Muay Thai stance so we know what she'll be using.
Right away the game starts sprinkling land mines everywhere that knock Echo on her ass. Enough with the mines in these games!
Echo is easily the most fun character to play as. She doesn't hit as hard as the others, but she moves faster and all of her moves look great. Here's the flying knee that she does instead of a flying kick.
Her Muay Thai moveset is complete with giant saber-kicks to the neussen. For the layperson, this is the same martial art that Sagat famously uses.
Not only is she a Muay Thai master, she's also the #1 short short model in the world, at least until Aerith takes up short short modeling.
Come on, Aerith, leave short short modeling to the professionals.
Some of the bosses have weird dialogue, and most of them seem to be cyborgs. Man, 2011 is really advanced!
After throwing more haymaker-like Muay Thai kicks, I eke out a win over the first level. Have I mentioned how well-animated this game is? There are a ton of frames in every attack.
After beating the boss, he blows up and takes the whole place down. This leads to our heroine waking up hours later in...
...a sewer? Dammit, not a sewer level already!
This scientist tries to tell Echo something important about the latest DMC pharmaceutical product, only to be immediately banned by Fact Checkers! Damn you, 2021-Era Facebook!
Speaking of Zuckerberg, next Echo battles lizardmen that can electrify themselves like Blanka.
There's a taunt button (X). Why? At first I wasn't sure. Turns out that if you press this and then A in quick succession...
...your character does their screen-clearing super move, which you get two of per life. Echo has some sort of primal scream. I assume because she got tired years ago of seeing people get banned from social media for questioning Big Pharma.
The big issue with this attack is that it doesn't replenish between levels, it's just flatly two per life. Also it's pretty hard to do at first. The game tells you to press X+A together but it's actually X, then A right away. Until you realize this, you're hammering X+A and it's only working like a quarter of the time.
Echo can also do this diving knee with a fire aura, which LOOKS awesome but again, is hard to do. Even if you know how to do it it's hard to do. She can double jump, so you need to do a full double jump and then do a Hadoken quarter-circle attack while at the height of the jump. I have issues doing Hadokens when just standing, much less mid-jump, so I didn't get much use out of this.
Echo with more knees to the face! Finally, videogame fodder goons have something to celebrate...for a couple seconds before they're knocked out.
Some of these bosses carry weapons (that are easy enough to knock out of their hands).
This second boss was the first time I noticed an issue with the AI: Bosses are WAY too aggressive and follow your every move instantaneously while closing in. This means they stay right on top of your character and no amount of moving around gives you any distance on them.
Echo finally gets frustrated enough to scream, like a Dragonball Z character. Just BACK OFF!
After traversing a cave (and making sure to take the proper exits) I arrive at...
"MACLOOOOOOD!"
As Echo swings some pipe, this is a good time to mention that the game has a bunch of branching paths where you can get different levels depending on which way you go, ala Rondo of Blood or Final Fight III. There's a very specific path to get the best ending, but it's also the longest and most difficult path through the levels, requiring you to complete an entire ten (10) levels. Which is a lot with the limited continues.
The animation in this game really is top-notch, even for basic things like walking.
Next boss is this mutant, as DMC doctors look on in the background and collect notes on the battle capabilities of said beast. This is terrible. Could they just stick to making cyborgs?
At least the mutant goes back to being a normal kid afterwards. ...who I assume isn't dead since this is a Nintendo-licensed game not named Final Fantasy Legend. Well, this game gets into some dark topics.
Next weapon I get is a stabby knife. Hey, watch the gonads, lady.
After traversing a military airfield, I meet the Big Bad of the game...
...this guy, who has a bizarre speaking style and taunts the player before leaping out of a jet.
He called Echo a "shrieking harbinger". Well I never! He might have a point though.
"AYYY-YIYIYIYIYI!"
This next part is probably the second-hardest thing in the entire game. You have to destroy these two computers and it gives you basically no time to do it. Especially if you aren't expecting this and don't INSTANTLY beeline to the computers, get in the right spot, and start using the right move. Fail here and it moves you off the "A Path" to get the best ending. Luckily we now live in an era of save states, so repeating the first hour of the game isn't necessary.
If you succeed, you get this message, while a failure will have her say "I think this is the end" or something like that and you go to a different stage. If you destroy the computer after the clock strikes 00, even if the clock hasn't poofed yet and it looks like you got it, it's a fail. It took a lot of tries and reloads, but I eventually did it with 1 second left by standing right where I am in this shot, facing left, and spamming the A button to do the backflip special attack over and over.
Next stage has our hero landing out in the desert somewhere and having to fight this super-fast recurring boss who basically dribbles her like a basketball.
Get past that and we contend with more land mines. ...wait, why are Moai statues out here in the desert?
After that are some ancient ruins. Have I mentioned that Echo can scissor-grab foes and throw them, like Sonya Blade? Her moveset is fun all around.
Next is a sprint across a bridge with a helicopter shooting at you. Most beat 'em up games would have been over by this point, but not this one. It goes on and on, and managing your continues (to have enough at the end) is key. Need to avoid dying in the first several levels, which isn't too hard, and make strategic use of the screen-clearing attack.
Like here, where I have to deal with this spinning swordsman boss who is an absolute PITA to try to fight with. He almost never stops SPINNING.
Get through a few more foes in the DMC base, and we finally get the leader of the corporation:
...the weird guy, who calls Echo "what ho". I'm mostly just shocked to see a Nintendo game display this kind of sarcasm.
Excuse me, Echo bathes regularly. So like all bad guys who hide behind minions, he beats a retreat and leaves Echo to fight a pair of ninjas. Get past that, and...
...a pair of robots is the next threat. Surprised it took this long for full-on robot endoskeletons to start showing up. Area traps (like the electricity) are useful in this game for scissor-throwing foes into.
...or you can just screech at them. This never gets old. In any case, they're the last line of defense before the big boss:
...who grabs a sword to try and fend off Echo. He's basically a big wuss, and barely even puts up a fight after what I had to do to get here. What an underwhelming final boss, almost a joke boss.
BUT WAIT! It isn't over yet. His "offspring" has been given DMC super soldier serum.
Oh shit! His offspring is Broly!
This, the real final boss if you've done everything to get the good ending, is a BRUTAL fight. Absolutely brutal. He just thrashes your character with impunity and no-sells everything.
One of the tricks to winning here is to use the super-move right when he does this pose, as he'll unleash his own screen-wide super-move that does huge damage. If Echo is doing her own super animation, she'll be invulnerable through his super animation.
After lots and lots of reloading, I finally manage to win, and do a Bruce Lee stomp to his groin.
This guy was ridiculously OP with about 3x as many life bars as anything else in the game, and much like the computers earlier, I was only able to win by reloading a save state before the fight. I'd say 4 out of 5 times, this guy is gonna Game Over players who are probably low on continues by the time they get here. You need to basically run away from him and throw him from above or below when he gets close, then perfectly time your super moves, for like five straight minutes until the boss finally keels over.
Snow begins to fall and I think our heroes feel bad. The guy in question was probably just being used by his pops / the DMC corp, like most of the foes in this game.
With the DM Corporation exposed and the social media Ministry of Truth shut down, our heroes return to civilian life. Echo here becomes a scientist like her grandpa. However, that isn't cool enough for a 90's video game, so she ALSO becomes a musical artist and pop sensation! Where does she find the time?
This was a surprisingly solid game and obliterated the first two. However, I can understand why it isn't particularly remembered by anyone compared to some of the other big beat 'em up series' for the SNES. The gameplay's repetitive (as most of these types of games) and it's super long for a game of this type, at least if one's going for the good ending. So it starts to drag. Some of the moves are hard to do consistently, which causes frustration. And lastly, the programming's weird, with bosses in particular sticking to your character like glue in a way that makes it difficult to really have a good fight with them. Despite all of that, it wasn't bad at all and somebody should remember it exists.
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