Rival Schools: United By Fate is one of Capcom's lesser known fighting games, even more obscure than Darkstalkers, which hasn't had a proper release since the launch of the PSP, but less so than Red Earth which never saw a home console port. Released for arcades in 1997, Rival Schools got a nicely expanded version for PSone in 1998 that included two discs. Despite feeling definitively unique and not relying too much on copying any other fighting games style, it more or less faded into the background amongst heavyweights like Tekken and Street Fighter. Capcom gave the game a second chance with Project Justice: Rival Schools 2 for the ill-fated Dreamcast, but have yet to revive the series since then. While I've owned Rival Schools for a long time, it continues to hold up against other fighting games, and remains one of the most fully featured home fighting games available, although certain aspects, like the graphics, have aged poorly.
The game takes place among various school students and faculty who belong to schools that aren't necessarily rivals, but will fight each other in a pinch if it suits them. Each of the characters is an archetype for a high school student and belongs to a particular school, which can sometimes be themed. For instance, there is the sports school, called Gorin High, that has a volleyball, baseball and soccer player comprising it's in game characters, and a foreign exchange student school called Pacific High that features three American stereotypes. The characters are all pretty unique thanks to the theme, There are plenty of them and most of them look pretty good, although certain characters look a bit ridiculous. In particular, Edge, a punk from Gedo looks alright in the drawings, but in polygonal form is essentially the Slim Jim guy with a palette swap. Tiffany, the American cheerleader from Pacific, also looks a bit too old and way under dressed for her character. She is more akin to a professional wrestler, and a lot like Tina from Dead or Alive. Street Fighter's own Sakura also has a guest role as a playable character in the game, and she fits in unsurprisingly well, considering she wears a school girl uniform and is sixteen. This, by the way, establishes that Street Fighter and Rival Schools take place in the same universe, although the only other cross over to my knowledge was Kyosuke's appearance in Capcom Vs. Snk 2.
I think it actually looks a bit better than this
The gameplay is well suited for a playstation control, having only a light and hard punch or kick, and using the shoulder buttons for grabs and quick keys for special attacks. you can also pair attack buttons together to do your team attack special. Special attacks are called "Burning Vigor" attacks in Rival Schools, but they function a lot like a Street Fighter super attack, aside from the fact that they are mapped to buttons in this game. The team attacks vary between devastating two man combos and health or combo meter recovery depending on which character is your substitute. The game takes place on a 3D plane, much like Tekken, and allows you to move into the background or foreground to dodge, but otherwise seems to be in 3D only to take advantage of the then new technology. The graphics, being 3D on Playstation in 1998, just don't look very good, with characters being very blocky and backgrounds being space, but it's easy to get over that when you get into the fighting itself. It is, at least, colorful and filled with quality 2D art. Even with only four buttons, the gameplay should feel familiar to anyone who's played Street Fighter, and doing quarter circles will occasionally result in some sort of special. The game also has what it calls "tardy counters" where you can counter from a blocked position, and attack cancels in which you cancel the enemies attack with your own, rather than canceling your own attack a-la Street Fighter 4.
The PSone port includes everything that you would expect a fighting game to have one disc one, and a ton of extra modes on it's second disc, called "evolution." The story mode is on disc one and includes all the story from the arcade with added voice work, although the voices are in Japanese, even the American students. You select a character and a substitute, who will be your team attack partner and who you can switch to in between rounds. If you select characters from the same school, you'll get a proper story featuring 2D cutscenes which don't really move, but are at least pretty, and you'll face the same set of fights every time. If you choose a sub from a different school, it will be a series of random fights up to the boss without the story, so it's beneficial to stay within a school. Since you only have to play as one of the characters you choose, it's not too annoying if you don't particularly like your sub but want to see the story anyways. The other modes on disc one are "training" by which they mean "practice" where you choose a character and an opponent and just practice doing whatever moves you want. You can look at a move list and tell your opponent to behave in different ways, much like most practice modes. Then there's Versus, the story-less two player mode, Option, Record and Extras. The Extras you'll get are also what you've come to expect from a fighting game, including the opening and closing movies and concept art.
You learn a lot from the school paper
Disc two, or "evolution," is all the extra stuff that was added to the home version, and it's rich in options. Visually, the menus looks like Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the Dreamcast or PSP, which also had plenty of modes. There's the Lesson's mode, which is another training mode, but functions more like Street Fighter 4's training mode, where there are a series of challenges requiring you to do certain moves. This is a good way to get used to all the little nuances of the gameplay, but sometimes lacks the detail you need to complete the lessons properly. There's a second single player mode, which is like the arcade single player but lacks any storylines, there is a "Cooperate" mode where two players fight enemies together, a Group mode where two human opponents choose between three and five characters and fight until someone has defeated each individual character in a two round match, a standard Versus mode again, as well as both League and Tournament modes. League and Tournament are basically the same thing, except for the way teams are pitted against each other, and unlike Group, you can face off against CPU opponents in these modes. In fact, you can set them all to CPU and just watch them fight a tournament, though I don't know why you'd actually do this aside from needing something to gamble on. As you can see, there's a bevy of multiplayer modes designed to make this game perfect for serious fighting game fans, which is why it would be so great if they made a new Rival Schools with online play. Option, Record and Extra are also on the Evolution disc. There are also said to be minigames, although to be honest, I've never seen any of them, which goes to show how good I am at fighting games.
With Street Fighter 4 and BlazBlue making big waves in the gaming market recently, there hasn't been a better time for Capcom to overhaul the Rival Schools franchise and give it the proper chance that it deserves, but since that's pretty much a pipe dream, I recommend checking out the original if you ever get the chance. It's not the rarest of games, but you might overlook it if you don't know what it is, or if you've ever heard of that band who totally stole their name from this game. Hopefully Capcom will release this as a PSone classic on Playstation Network, but until then, remember, it's fully playable on all PS3s, PS2s and PSones. If you're a fan of fighting games, you owe it to yourself to give it a chance if you haven't already.
Rival Schools: United By Fate was released in 1998 for PSone.
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