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REVIEW: Rival Schools: United By Fate (1997)

The later part of the 1990’s was a busy time for Capcom’s fighting game lineup.

In 1997, not only was the third entry in the Darkstalkers series on the horizon, but a whole bunch of entirely different Street Fighter-related games were scheduled too (such as Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix and Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha).

With the busy calendar that the company was keeping up with, dropping a new fighting game IP that year would surely have been a case of commercial (and critical) suicide, right?

Not exactly.

Released in arcades in November 1997, Rival Schools: United By Fate began development when Hideaki Itsuno from Capcom wanted to make a 60FPS 3D polygon-based fighting game. The previous 3D fighter from the company, Star Gladiator, was set at 30FPS due to the various weapons and effects that the game used, which resulted in the technical limits of an arcade machine not being exceeded at all.

Originally titled “JUSTICE FIST“, Rival Schools: United By Fate was originally going to be based around a tournament where fighters from around the world meet up and try to determine who is the strongest of them all (sound familiar?). After a humble response from his team, Itsuno decided to base the game around a shared experience that everyone could relate to; school.

Gameplay

Rival Schools: United By Fate differs from many other Capcom fighting games in that it opts for a four button fighting system (instead of the standard six buttons that Street Fighter II introduced us to back in 1991) which immediately makes things feel more like an entry in SNK’s fighting game catalogue. Capcom would eventually crossover with SNK a couple of years later, but having this system in place felt quite different to pretty much everything else in the realm of arcade fighting games, especially for a 3D fighter.

The game also employs a tag team system that is similar to Marvel Vs. Capcom (and, weirdly enough, The King Of Fighters games), where players select a team of two fighters each before their fights. The gameplay is still one-on-one, but players can swap out their fighters at the end of a round, or even call in their team-mate during a match for a special move known as a “Team Up” attack (if their special meter at the bottom is full enough!). These attacks vary greatly depending on which combinations of fighters are used, with some synergies working more effectively if the characters are from the same school.

This selection of teams also greatly affects the game’s story mode too, with several different story branches only being available to specific teams.

As is to be expected from a Capcom fighting game by this point, players each have a special meter at the bottom of the screen, known in Rival Schools as “Vigor Meters”. These work just like a normal special meter, as they gradually fill up during fights. A maximum of 9 levels can be stored, but with Team Up attacks using up 2 whole bars and special “Burning Vigor” attacks quickly drinking the meter up too, players must approach this feature with an element of strategy about them.

The game also utilises a couple of new defense techniques too. The first, known as “Tardy Counters”, allows a player to immediately counter an opponent’s attack from a blocking position. The second, known as “Attack Cancels” allows players to cancel out incoming attacks by timing their own hits with the attack. This does require a bar to be filled in the Vigor Meter, while Tardy Counters are free to use.

Story

The story introduces the player to a Japanese city called Aoharu City, where several local schools are the victims of unknown attacks and kidnappings of students and staff.

The various fighters in the game set out to find who is responsible for the attacks on their school, with the cut-scenes and fights portraying their interactions with the other schools and amongst themselves.

Eventually, the story reveals that an elite school in the city, Justice High, is responsible for the attacks. The player's team eventually faces off against Raizo Imawano, the principal of the school, and first boss of the game.

If certain requirements are met during the fight against Raizo - namely hitting him with a “Team Up Technique” as the final blow in the match - the story continues and the players play a last fight against Hyo Imawano, Raizo's nephew and the true mastermind behind the events of the game.

It’s a refreshing take on the fighting game story mode, and utilises the trope of students fighting each other for no other reason than their association with a different school pretty well. The cut scenes and animated sequence are all executed almost perfectly too, even if they’re a bit pixelated.

Roster

There are five high school factions to choose from in Rival Schools: United By Fate, each with their own specific focus;

Taiyo High – “The High School That Loves Freedom” – A private school that focuses on student individuality.

Gorin High – “School Of Advanced Sports” – A private school that aims to produce athletes that can compete at a national level.

Gedo High – “Collecting The Nation’s Worst” – an all-male school that seems to be more like a correctional facility to rehabilitate wayward youth and criminals.

Pacific High – “High-Class American School” – Located near a US military base, this is an exclusive school for foreign exchange students.

Justice High – “Super Elite High School” – A strict school with some shady rumours circulating around its admission process.

The game’s roster consists of 19 playable fighters (21 in the Shiritsu Justice Gakuen: Nekketsu Seishun Nikki 2 release);

Batsu - The game’s main protagonist; a recent transfer to Taiyo High who is looking for his kidnapped mother.

Hinata - A first-year student at Taiyo. She immediately joins Batsu in the investigation of his mother's disappearance.

Kyosuke - A first-year student and member of the school's morals committee with some interesting family ties to another character in the game. He too joins Batsu in his investigation.

Ran - Appearing only in Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2, Ran is a journalist for the Taiyo student newspaper looking for the next scoop on the kidnappings and attacks. It is also suggested that she is related to Dan Hibiki from the Street Fighter series.

Hayato - A PE teacher from Taiyo who seeks out the persons responsible for the attacks in order to help his students and to watch over them. While he does appear in the Arcade version, he’s only playable in the PlayStation version of the game.

Shoma - A baseball player for Gorin High who seeks out the people responsible for injuring his older brother, Shuichi.

Natsu - A volleyball player for Gorin High. Like Shoma, she seeks the people responsible for hurting her junior high pupils.

Roberto - A soccer player for Gorin High. He helps Shoma and Natsu in their pursuit, as well as serving as a mediator for arguments between the two.

Nagare - An exclusive character to Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2, a third-year student and swimmer for Gorin High. He investigates the incidents on his own, as well as keeping tabs on Shoma.

Akira - A first-year student and new transfer to Gedo High who claims to be the younger brother of the school's gang leader, Daigo. She is later revealed to actually be his younger sister.

Edge - A student at Gedo and member of the school's gang. He is one student that joins Akira in searching for the gang boss.

Gan - A heavy-set student at Gedo and member of the school's gang. Like Edge, he helps Akira in searching for her brother.

Daigo - The leader of Gedo High student gang, he cares much for his hometown and seeks the persons responsible for the attack to exact vengeance upon them.

Roy - A foreign exchange student from the United States. He is investigating the attacks and kidnapping at the request of his father.

Tiffany - Another American foreign exchange student, and a cheerleader. She follows Roy in his investigation, not only to help solve the case but also impress him.

Boman - A foreign exchange student and preacher-in-training. He joins Roy and Tiffany to help solve the case, although the fighting conflicts with his moral beliefs.

Hideo - A Japanese language teacher. He is recruiting new students for Justice High at the request of the school's principal.

Kyoko - Justice High's school nurse. She is asked to join Hideo in recruiting students to the school.

Raizo - The principal of Justice High. Appears to be the mastermind of the kidnappings and attacks on other schools.

Hyo - A student at Justice High. He is the true mastermind behind the events of the game.

Sakura - From the Street Fighter series. Sakura is childhood friends with Hinata and Natsu, and she helps them in finding the people responsible for the school kidnappings and attacks. Her appearance is set before her debut in Street Fighter Alpha 2.

There’s also an extra 24 unlockable characters were created using the facial expressions from the cut character creation mode. These new characters are meant to resemble random students from each of the game’s high schools.

Graphics

Rival Schools: United By Fate is a prime example of the state of 3D fighting games in the late 90’s, especially the output from Capcom.

The character models themselves are well animated, and are exciting to watch in action, but are incredibly blocky and pretty ugly to look at, which also rings true for games such as Street Fighter EX, Plasma Sword and Star Gladiator.

Games such as Tekken and the Virtua Fighter series were constantly breaking new ground with their graphics, but many Capcom games seemed like they were struggling to keep up.

Rival Schools: United By Fate almost gets a pass due to it’s tongue-in-cheek, anime-like nature, but it isn’t quite enough to ignore here.

It isn’t Capcom’s worst-looking 3D game (we’ll talk about that one soon…), but it’s definitely not the best either.

Stages

There are 11 stages to fight in throughout Rival Schools: United By Fate, and each of them is based on an area from or around each of the game’s respective high schools.

Ranging from a classroom, the gymnasium and the athletic tracks, to some very imposing school gates, a library and a drive-in movie theater, there’s plenty of variety when it comes to the game’s scenery.

These stages utilise a similar graphic style found in the Street Fighter EX series and even the earlier Tekken games, in that the floor of the stage is in 3D, but is surrounded by 2D backgrounds to give an illusion of depth.

The quality here has aged as well as the graphics, and is sadly one of the weaker points of the game.

Replayability

Rival Schools: United By Fate undeniably features the highest amount of extra content in any PlayStation-era fighting game.

Not only does the game contain several unlockable fighters and alternate costumes, but it also collects together every unlocked ending movie and loading screen in an extensive gallery mode. There’s even specific criteria for unlocking a character’s “good” ending too.

The game’s training mode is one of the finest that the era could offer, by grading your training performance much in the same way as a school student taking a PE class, showing players exactly which areas they are performing well in and which areas need improvement.

Then there’s the “extracurricular” game modes that are unlocked on the “EVOLUTION” disc.

Players who complete several playthroughs of the game’s story mode are rewarded with new game modes;

“Target mode” (in which you take control of Roberto as he tries to achieve the highest score possible by aiming and kicking a football towards scoreboards).

“Home Run Derby” mode is a baseball simulation, where players take the role of Shoma, with high scores being determined by how far players can hit a baseball across the field.

“Penalty Shot” mode is similar to “Target” mode, but this adds the ability for a second player to take on the role of a goalkeeper, and goes off the number of goals scored instead of points scored.

“Service Mode” is a volleyball game that sees players take control of Natsu, who must volley a ball toward large “chibi” versions of different characters from the game, each varying in their worth points-wise.

“Kyoko’s Office” is one of the more unusual additions to the game, as it isn’t really a “game” as such. Players press combinations of the controller’s shoulder buttons in order to make the controller vibrate, while Kyoko looks like she’s giving you a massage. Given that the original Dualshock controller was released just a few months before the game’s arrival on PlayStation, it makes sense for this fun little feature to be included.

For the exclusive Japanese release of the game - Shiritsu Justice Gakuen: Nekketsu Seishun Nikki 2 - even more content was added into the game, offering a school sim mode in the same vein as the Persona series, along with the ability to create your own character in the process. This was scrapped from the western releases, as it would have taken way too long to localise and translate. Many of the assets from the character creation mode did sill find their way overseas in the form of unlockable fighters, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Final thoughts & overall score

Rival Schools: United By Fate is, without a doubt, one of the most criminally underrated fighting games in the genre’s long history, and didn’t get the exposure it truly deserved when it was originally released.

While the graphics are somewhat choppy by today’s standards, the gameplay aspects that it shares with other Capcom games such as the Marvel vs. Capcom series make the game an absolute dream to play through, and throwing in such innovative features such as a Persona-style school sim mode*, character creation* and a plethora of fun bonus content that is bursting with character makes Rival Schools: United By Fate a worthwhile investment of any fighting game fan’s time and attention.

It’s just a shame that some of the extra content was cut from the version I grew up with.

*These modes are exclusive to the Japanese upgrade of the game; Shiritsu Justice Gakuen - Nekketsu Seishun Nikki 2

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#Review #Capcom #1997 #Rival Schools: United By Fate #Shiritsu Justice Gakuen - Nekketsu Seishun Nikki 2

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