| Project Justice | |
|---|---|
 Japanese arcade flyer | |
| Developer(s) | Capcom |
| Publisher(s) | Arcade Capcom Dreamcast |
| Director(s) | Hideaki Itsuno |
| Producer(s) | Yoshihiro Sudo Koji Nakajima |
| Composer(s) | Yuki Iwai Etsuko Yoneda Setsuo Yamamoto |
| Series | Rival Schools |
| Platform(s) | Arcade,Dreamcast |
| Release | Arcade Dreamcast Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Windows(as part ofCapcom Fighting Collection 2) 16 May 2025 |
| Genre(s) | Fighting game |
| Mode(s) | Single player,multiplayer |
| Arcade system | Sega NAOMI |
Project Justice, also known asProject Justice: Rival Schools 2,[a] and known in Japan asMoero! Justice Gakuen[b], is a 20003Dfighting video game produced byCapcom as the sequel toRival Schools: United By Fate (1997). The game was released on theSega NAOMIarcade board andDreamcast home console initially in Japan and globally in 2001. Like its predecessor, it revolves around team battles between students of different schools and is set one year later, but teams now have three fighters instead of two and a new move mechanic called Party-Up is introduced.Project Justice received a favorable reception.
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(October 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Project Justice's fighting system is lifted from the originalRival Schools, with some notable changes. The game continues to be a team fighter, but has teams of three characters instead of two. This allows another Team-Up attack to be used in a fight, but also adds a new type of attack, the Party-Up, initiated by pressing any three attack buttons. The Party-Up is a three-person attack that varies based on what school the character initiating the attack is from.
The additional partner also allows players to cancel an opponent's Team-Up Special by inputting a Team-Up command of their own. This initiates a short fighting sequence between one character from each team. If the person initiating the sequence gets the first successful hit in during the sequence before time runs out, the Team-Up they are caught in will be canceled, and the game switches back to the main fight; if the opposing player gets the first hit or time runs out, the Team-Up continues as usual.
Additionally, the "vigor" meter inProject Justice is limited to 5 levels (down from 9 inRival Schools), with Party-Ups requiring all 5 levels, Team-Ups continuing to cost two levels, and any attempts (successful or not) to cancel a Team-Up costing one level.
Also carrying over from the first game, the Dreamcast port ofProject Justice in Japan includes a character creation mode that allows a player to create their own fighters who can be used in all modes except for single-player. However, the character creation inProject Justice is packaged as a board game, taking place during an inter-school festival, rather than a date sim game like inRival Schools. As with School Life Mode in the originalRival Schools, though, this boardgame is not included in non-Japanese ports ofProject Justice due to the amount of time it would take to translate the mode. Instead, several unlockable sub-characters were included in these ports, built from the character creation parts in the Japanese version.
All of the playable characters from the previousRival Schools game return, with the exception of Raizo Imawano and guest characterSakura Kasugano, though the former appears as anon-player character in the game's Story Mode. Five new characters are introduced, along with alternate versions of a few existing characters.
As in the original game many of the characters use their chosen field of academic or sporting excellence as a fighting style. As a result, special moves - in particular the Two-Person team up moves - tend to have a surreal edge, with methods to injure your opponent ranging from: forcing them to take part in an impromptu bout of synchronised swimming (on dry land) (if Nagare is in your team); confusing them by taking photographs of them in rapid succession during an interview for the school newspaper (if Ran is in your team), or even berating them so severely that they fall unconscious out of shame.
Project Justice'ssingle player mode was structured differently from its predecessor. WhileRival Schools only plays a story if characters from the same school were selected, the game instead has separateStory andFree modes.
One year has passed since the events ofRival Schools: United By Fate, and things have gone back to normal in Aoharu City. Batsu Ichimonji, Hinata Wakaba, Kyosuke Kagami, and the rest of the fighters had resumed their normal school lives and all of them have since enjoyed the calm peace that came after their last adventure, but the peace itself doesn't last for long as the fighters would soon find themselves getting involved in a new battle.
Kurow Kirishima: a cold-hearted and ruthless ninja assassin from a mysterious group known only as the "Reverse Society" has his sight set on the Imawano family and plans to eliminate them and their allies so that he can prepare for the advancement of his own ambition to rule Japan. To this end, he attacks Raizo Imawano: the principal of Justice High, father to Batsu and uncle of both Kyosuke Kagami and Hyo Imawano so that he can easily put him out of commission and not have any interference come from him. Secondly, he sends both his older sister Yurika Kirishima and his loyal subordinate Momo Karuizawa into the ranks of the fighters so that the two of them can cause tension and distrust to occur between the friends. His third plot involves brainwashing Gedo gang leader Daigo Kazama so that he can order him into forcing his gang to attack various schools in order to cause even more tension to occur. Lastly, Kurow himself plans to destroy Batsu's reputation by disguising himself as Batsu'sdoppelganger (named Vatsu) so that he can attack the fighters and make them believe that Batsu is behind it.
Batsu and his friends must fight back against the evil ambition of Kurow and attempt to not let their friendship get destroyed by the conspiracy of a deadly ninja assassin.
It was released in Japan as anarcade game in December 2000 and ported to theDreamcast, which shares the Naomi architecture, at the same time. The U.S. version was originally slated for a February 2001 release,[3] before it was further delayed to 16 May.
The arcade version is set to be re-released in 2025 as part ofCapcom Fighting Collection 2.[4]
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 80/100[5] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| AllGame |    [6] |
| Electronic Gaming Monthly | 8.83/10[7][c] |
| EP Daily | 8/10[8] |
| Famitsu | 33/40[9] |
| Game Informer | 7/10[10] |
| GameRevolution | B+[11] |
| GameSpot | 7.5/10[12] |
| GameSpy | 8/10[13] |
| IGN | 8.8/10[14] |
| Next Generation | [15] |
The Dreamcast version received "favorable" reviews according to thereview aggregation websiteMetacritic.[5] Many video game magazines gave the game positive reviews while it was still in development.[7][10] Chester "Chet" Barber ofNextGen said of the game in an early review, "Unless you're hard-up for a new fighter, you may want to rent it before making a purchase."[15] Michael "Major Mike" Weigand ofGamePro said in an early review, "Fighting fans looking for their next challenge should spend some time withPreject Justice."[3][d] In Japan,Famitsu gave it a score of 33 out of 40.[9]
Also in Japan,Game Machine listed the arcade version in their 15 January 2001 issue as the most-successful dedicated arcade game of the previous year.[16]
byCapcom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
