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| Rival Schools: United by Fate | |
|---|---|
 North American arcade flyer depicting protagonist Batsu | |
| Developer(s) | Capcom |
| Publisher(s) | Arcade Capcom PlayStation |
| Designer(s) | Hideaki Itsuno Makoto Otsuki Tatsuya Nakae |
| Composer(s) | Setsuo Yamamoto |
| Series | Rival Schools |
| Platform(s) | Arcade,PlayStation |
| Release | Arcade PlayStation PlayStation 3 / PlayStation Portable PlayStation Vita
|
| Genre(s) | Fighting |
| Mode(s) | Single player,multiplayer |
| Arcade system | Sony ZN-2 |
Rival Schools: United by Fate, known in Japan asPrivate Justice Academy: Legion of Heroes,[a] is a 19973Dfighting game produced byCapcom originally released as anarcade game on Sony ZN-2 hardware.Rival Schools revolves aroundtag team battles between groups of students from various schools in a Japanese city, and uses a comical and humorous style.Sakura Kasugano from Capcom'sStreet Fighter series also appears as a character in the game.
An updated and expanded two-disc version of the game was ported to thePlayStation in 1998 withminigames andvisual novel content, known informally asPrivate Justice Academy: Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki. Two sequels were released next; the first was the Japan-exclusivePrivate Justice Academy: Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2 on the PlayStation, and the second wasBurn! Justice Academy, known internationally asProject Justice andRival Schools 2, on theDreamcast.
The main fighting game is best described as apolygonalMarvel vs. Capcom game, with some notable differences. Control wise, the game imitatesStar Gladiator's four button setup (two punches and two kicks, like theSNK game format).[3] Setting wise the game borrows theschool themed environment seen on theAsuka 120% series.[4]
A player chooses a team of two characters, and fights against another two character team. The actual fights, however, are one-on-one fights, with the partner only participating by being called in when a player has enough 'vigor' for aTeam Up attack, done by pressing a punch and kick button of the same pressure. The Team Ups are some kind of double team attack by the character and partner, or (for most female characters' Team Ups) heal the main character or give them more vigor.[citation needed] After the end of a round, a player (win or lose) has a choice to fight the next round with the partner from the previous round, or to keep their main character in play. The 'vigor' meter (essentially a super meter) can go up to 9 levels, with Team Ups costing two levels and super moves from a single person costing one level of vigor.[3]
Much like theMarvel vs. Capcom games, launchers can be done that allow air combos to be performed, with all characters having universal low and high launchers.
The game also has a few defensive techniques.
Rival Schools takes place in the fictional Aoharu City, where several local schools are the victims of unknown attacks and kidnappings of students and staff. The various characters 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 among 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 againstRaizo Imawano, the principal of the school, and first boss of the game. If certain requirements are met during the fight against Raizo, the story would continue as the player would then head into a true final boss fight againstHyo Imawano, Raizo's nephew and the true mastermind behind the events of the game.
The structure of thesingle player game ofRival Schools varied depending on how characters were selected. If two characters from the same school were selected (with a few exceptions), single-player would play in a progressing story with fights predetermined beforehand and each fight preceding and ending with short 2D cut-scenes to explain the story. If two characters from different schools were chosen, the single-player mode would instead play similar to other fighting games, with the player's chosen team fighting against random teams of opponents before facing theboss. In the arcade version, character selection is initially limited to selecting two characters from the same school[3] and free selection of any character is accessed through time; the PlayStation version, which includes all characters unlocked by default, has no such restrictions.
Rival Schools: United by Fate entered development when directorHideaki Itsuno wanted to make a 60fps polygon-based fighting game. AsCapcom's earlier 3D fighting titleStar Gladiator was already set to 30fps, because of things such as sword effects and backgrounds, the development team did not exceed the limitations of the arcade hardware.[5]
The game was originally calledJustice Fist, and the initial story was that fighters from every country came together to decide who was the strongest.[5] Itsuno wrote up the design document and showed it to several co-workers but after a humble response he decided to base it on something people had an interest in and understood; he went with a school setting because he believed that everyone has had school experiences.[5][6] Itsuno intended for the setting to be in a school where 40 characters fought to decide who would be the class representatives. After a programmer showed him three playable characters on a screen, Itsuno came up with the two-character team idea.[5] The character artwork was all illustrated by Capcom staff artist Bengis.[7]Street Fighter characterSakura was included as "insurance" due to worries of bad sales.[5]
A 54% complete version ofRival Schools was the most popular Capcom game at the September 1997 JAMMA show,[3] drawing larger crowds thanStreet Fighter III: 2nd Impact.[8]
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| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| GameRankings | 81.74%[9] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Famitsu | 35/40[10] |
In Japan,Game Machine listedRival Schools: United by Fate on their February 1, 1998 issue as being the most-successful arcade game of the month.[11]
Next Generation reviewed the arcade version of the game, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "To be honest,Rival Schools is a button masher, but it's good, clean button mashing, packaged a little differently."[12]
Next Generation reviewed the PlayStation version of the game, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "This is one of the more enjoyable fighting games available, and hardcore players should giveRival Schools a try. They may be pleasantly surprised."[13]
After its initial arcade release, the game was ported to the PlayStation. The PlayStation version of the game came in two CDs. The first disc included the original arcade game and the standard modes included in most home versions of fighting games. Capcom enhanced the original game with animated introduction and ending sequences, as well as adding voice-over to the story mode in single player. The conversion also added two new characters,Hayato Nekketsu (a hotheadedphysical education teacher) andDaigo Kazama (a teenagegang leader and the elder brother of Akira, who was a non-playable supporting character in the arcade version).
The second disc, named the Evolution Disc, featured several new games to complement the arcade original. This disc included severalminigames based on some of the students' activities and theNekketsu Seisyun Nikki mode, acharacter creation mode in the form of adating sim. In this mode, a player would be able to create a student and go through a typical school year. Over this time, the custom character could develop friendships with any of the characters at the various schools, which allowed to give the custom character moves and reveal bits and pieces about the existing characters and their backgrounds. Once the custom character was finished with the school year, it could be used in any of the normal fighting modes, save for the original Arcade game.
Capcom translated most of the games on the Evolution Disc for the English localization, and planned to include the character creation mode (rebranded as "School Life") as well, but later abandoned it, citing the amount of time it would take to translate it from Japanese to English. The rest of the extra modes featured in the Evolution Disc were still included in the overseas versions.
On February 23, 2012, Capcom re-released the PlayStation port on the JapanesePlayStation Network.[14]
Capcom released a PlayStation-exclusive sequel in Japan titledShiritsu Justice Gakuen: Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2 (私立ジャスティス学園 熱血青春日記2, "Private Justice Academy: Hot-Blooded Youthful Diary 2"). The game featured two additional characters,Ran Hibiki, Taiyo High School's newspaper club photographer, andNagare Namikawa, a swimmer who studies at Gorin High School, as well as a new version of the Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki school sim mode, which features additional minigames and further plot developments over the original Japanese version ofShiritsu Justice Gakuen. This version too was later released on the PlayStation Network in Japan, in 2015.[15]
On release,Famitsu magazine scoredNekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2 a 30 out of 40.[16]
Project Justice (Moero! Justice Gakuen in Japan), was released in 2000 inJapan and 2001 in theUnited States andEurope for arcades and theDreamcast. In comparison toRival Schools,Project Justice featured teams of 3, adding three-person team-up attacks and the ability to interrupt and stop 2-person team-ups. Like the previous game,Project Justice included a character-creation mode that came in the form of a virtual board game. This creation mode also was never released outside Japan due to localization issues.
Since at least 2013, director Hideaki Itsuno has expressed an interest in continuing theRival Schools series by developing a third installment.[17][18][19] On August 31, 2024, Itsuno announced that he is leaving Capcom, meaning that a newRival Schools is likely not going to happen.[20]
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Acomic book based onRival Schools was produced byUDON Studios, with its first issue published on May 17, 2006, with art byCorey Lewis. Originally, the comic was to be produced byDreamwave Productions, but when Dreamwave showed signs of financial failure, the rights of the comic were sold to UDON, which had already produced the successfulStreet Fighter comic. The comic was not as successful as the same universe as the mainStreet Fighter series that is based. The comic was made available on August 31, 2007 in the U.S. and later released as awebcomic.
Following the appearance ofSakura Kasugano in the first game, Capcom has established theRival Schools series as taking place within the same world as itsStreet Fighter series, with characters fromRival Schools appearing in variousStreet Fighter media. Hinata, Natsu and Shoma all featured prominently in theStreet Fighter Legends: Sakura comic series, while Hinata and Tiffany make cameo appearances inStreet Fighter V. On August 16, 2021, Akira was added as a playable character toStreet Fighter V as part of its 5th season of downloadable content, becoming the first playableRival Schools character in aStreet Fighter game, with her brother, Daigo as her assist; Edge and Gan make cameo appearances in her accompanying stage.
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