Rival Schools

"The Tekken type-a-thing, with a cute lil attitude"

Form the times of the great snes Street Fighters i was a fighting game's fan, with my playstation i experienced the peak of my desire with tekken 2 and then with tekken 3, other than that i didn't even wanna take a look at other fighting games... then, there's Rival Schools. RS compares to tekken in both graphics and smooth game play, it's both a fierce game and funny with all the characters, moves and situations.. overally, its a cutie fighter to some point, but them blows aren't cute at all. As i mentioned, the graphics are very good, though you can see what things around here are made of when the camera zooms in after finishing a fight.. of course, them damned blocked out pixels. The graphics move smooth and fast, and the backgrounds are beautifully detailed. Overally, you get 3d characters fighting 2d.. the crude reality, even though you get to shift sides, duck to a side and crouch.. the game's still a 2d gamer with 3d graphics, i don't say this is bad, most games are the same way anyhow. Characters are well developed, for the exception of a couple which i thought were somewhat lame.. you get to pick up both students and teachers from their respective schools and departments, from a nurse to a baseball player and a semi-nekkid boxing chick. The game's pretty complete in within characters and backgrounds, you also get to "win" over alot of secret characters within the course of completing the whole game with the whole crew, pretty much like Tekken. Ok, so this is a capcomer.. graphics are something you won't be disappointed of even if you try.. but the gameplay, well.. its great to a certain point, but ive always had a trouble with capcomers.. you get the ability for combos, which in RS play nicely, but most moves are power moves and kicks and punches alone suck the big one. Anyhow, you can pull out easy combos from your hat, but there's a difference between power move combos or even all punch or all hit, to combos where the only thing you have to cling to are moves and moves alone.. anyhow, this isn't quite much eitherway, RS is still one of the best fighting games i have played on the playstation, and i stand to that all the way. Anyhow, RS is a very distinctive game, characters are no way in being similar to each other, and their distinctive moves are amazing.

Other than moves and power moves you get "teams", you get to choose two characters and optionally change them in between fights, but mainly.. you can have one help the other within the fight, this is really cool and very personalized for each character. Anyhow, the game ships with two cds, one being the arcade game, which is that.. the arcade game, one player, two players, etc. You also get a cool training mode and even, though not sure if it features in the us version also, the ability to create a fighter (first having to complete several tests, i know this cuz i played the jap version before getting my us v).

Anyhow, i guess in conclusion.. RS plays smoothly, has great graphcis, excellent moves, excellent characters and lots of replay value! Playing one on one is real fun, i guess most fighters do that.. but RS excels at it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99