 SMIIIIIIINUS GR- Let's start the video by actually answering the question I've asked in the title. What is the Rushing Beat series for Super Famicom? Well, it's a series of 3 beat-em-up games developed by Jailaco, titled Rushing Beat, Rushing Beat shot, Fukusei Toshi and Rushing Beat Shura. The first Rushing Beat was released outside of Japan as Rival Terf. Oh sorry, Rival Terf. Gotta consider the exclamation point there. It's known more for its embarrassingly bad cover rather than anything to do with the gameplay. Russian Beat Run, Fukusei Toshi, or Rushing Beat Chaos, the City of Clones, was released as Brawl Brothers in North America with a slightly less embarrassing cover, and as Brawl Brothers Rival Turf 2 in Europe. Rushing Beat Shura was released outside of Japan as The Peacekeepers. Did you get all that? Anyway, let's start with Rushing Beat or Rival Turf. You play as either Jack or Uzi to rescue Jack's girlfriend from a game called The Street Kings, and oh my god who the hell cares, it's a Super Nintendo beat em up, this isn't exactly the brother's freaking Kara Mazoff. Rather than say the same old stuff I say about every beat em up, I want to take this opportunity to talk about the genre as a whole because I feel like it's treated a little unfairly as time goes on. Yes, I understand the principle gameplay of a beat em up is as simple as a game can possibly get. And the primary criticism is that you could finish just about any beat em up just by mindlessly mashing buttons, and you'd be exactly right. Take Rival Turf for example, when people want to criticize the beat em up genre this is what they'll point to. This game is as boring as the day is long, it's a poor Final Fight rip off even by Final Fight rip off standards, and there's seriously hardly anything unique here at all. It's not even that bad, it's just painfully generic. But just because Rival Turf is generic doesn't mean that every beat em up has the same trappings. Here's the thing, beat em ups kind of belong in their own universe, they're like the mindless dumb Steven Seagal Chuck Norris Jason Statham action movie of the gaming world. Are most of those movies bad by objective standards? Yes, but it's useless to compare Commando to Casablanca. You don't hold them to the same standards of objective quality because they're made for a specific purpose for a specific audience. And that purpose is to see some sweet ass martial arts and some huge explosions. And that audience is people that want to turn their brains off and enjoy some sweet ass martial arts and some huge explosions. The point is, yeah, beat em ups are mindless button mashers, but that doesn't make them all the same by default. Some are still better than others. If you want another analogy, look at Death Metal or Country Music, sure it all sounds the same on the surface, but if you dig into it, there are significant differences that can lend substance and create something worthwhile for the listener. No, Rival Turf may not be worthwhile, but the Rushing Beat series gets better with its second installment, Brawl Brothers. There's five playable characters to choose from, and even in single player mode you have to pick two. Why? Because the three you don't pick are bosses, so yeah, who you pick is just important as who you don't pick. So that's pretty cool. And it gives the game some replay value as well. Also make sure to go to the options menu before getting started with Brawl Brothers and turn on Angry Mode. I have no idea why they defaulted this mode to off, but if you take enough damage, you start to flash red and you go into kind of a berserker mode and start whipping around bad guys. This seriously makes the game. It's funny as hell to see these guys just get utterly destroyed. This mode is in Rival Turf 2, but it's implemented in a much better way here. Brawl Brothers is just plain faster and more polished than Rival Turf. You can run for one thing, and flipping punches from side to side is smoother. The level design has a bit more going for it, as you can electrocute guys or throw them into land mines. I will say the sewer stage really gets tedious as you wander around looking for where to go. Just so you know the door structure here was not in the Japanese version. So if this kind of stuff annoys you, get Rushing Beat Ron instead. But still, Brawl Brothers goes beyond being a Final Fight clone and is a fun playthrough if you're looking for a beat em up especially as a two-player co-op game. Finally we come to Rushing Beat Shura, or the Peace Keepers. I always loved that title. Yeah, that's right, we're here to keep the peace by shoving our fists down your throat. Anyway, what jumps out here about this game is the sheer amount of story and text you have to skip through. I admire that they tried to do something different here and the story at least appears to be somewhat interesting, but to drive my earlier point even further into the ground, this is not why people play beat em ups. I just want to brutally enforce peace with knives and land mines and stuff. Peace Keepers is a great natural sequel to Brawl Brothers because it keeps everything well executed from the first game while making a lot of improvements. For example, the berserker mode here is even more insane. I mean, come on, you can't help but laugh the way these dudes just fly off the screen. That alone makes these games worth it. The game goes back to picking just one character and you don't fight the other playable characters in the main game anyway, but there is a one-on-one fighting mode that supports up to four players, so if you have a multi-tap device, Peace Keepers is worth getting just for that alone. Peace Keepers gives you tons of opportunities to switch between the four playable characters throughout the story mode when you die or when you start a level. And don't sweat dying because you get a ton of continues here. You'll notice the X button does kind of a taunt that seems kind of pointless, but press X and A at the same time and you'll unleash a crazy-ass full-screen attack. That's pretty awesome. There's also branching paths here and there, which the game helpfully points out, and there's at least two different endings here as well. The only flaw about Peace Keepers is that, uh, where's the music? Seriously, did they forget to send the music over from Japan? There is an option to turn it on, but even then, the music is out of order compared to the North American release. So weird. So, yeah, the Rushing Beat series ranges from generic and forgettable to some real quality stuff. I definitely skip Rival Turf. You're not missing anything there, but Brawl Brothers is perfectly okay, and Peace Keepers is definitely a worthwhile pickup. But if you're going to go that route, I'd go with getting the Super Famicom version, Rushing Beat Shura. Just so you know, overall, there's not that many differences between the three Super Famicom games and their North American releases, other than name changes and face shots, and the other stuff I previously mentioned, like the structure change in Brawl Brothers. But the Rushing Beat Shura cartridge is like half of what Peace Keepers costs, and plus, you know, the music is actually turned on. Either way, Peace Keepers or Rushing Beat Shura is easily one of the better 16-bit beat-em-ups out there.