Rival Schools: Тағдыр Бірлестіреді

1997 fighting video game

Rival Schools: United by Fate, known in Japan as is a fighting game produced by Capcom originally released as an arcade game in 1997 and ported to the PlayStation in 1998. A sequel, Project Justice, was released in 2000.

The main fighting game is best described as a polygonal Marvel vs. Capcom game, with some notable differences. Control wise, the game imitates Star Gladiators four button setup (two punches and two kicks, like the SNK game format). 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 a Team 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. 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. 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. Street Fighter character Sakura was included as "insurance" due to worries of bad sales.

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 hotheaded physical education teacher) and Daigo Kazama (a teenage gang 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 several minigames based on some of the students' activities and the Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki mode, a character creation mode in the form of a dating 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 Japanese PlayStation Network.

In Japan, Capcom released a PlayStation exclusive update to the original Rival Schools titled Shiritsu Justice Gakuen: Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2 (私立ジャスティス学園 熱血青春日記2). The game featured two additional characters, Ran Hibiki, Taiyo High School's newspaper club photographer, and Nagare 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 of Shiritsu Justice Gakuen. On release, Famitsu magazine scored Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2 a 30 out of 40.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Rival Schools: United by Fate on their February 1, 1998 issue as being the most successful arcade game of the month. 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." 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 give Rival Schools a try. They may be pleasantly surprised."

A sequel, Project Justice (Moero! Justice Gakuen in Japan), was released in 2000 in Japan and 2001 in the United States and Europe for arcades and the Dreamcast. In comparison to Rival 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 the Rival Schools series by developing a third installment.

A comic book based on Rival Schools was produced by UDON Studios, with its first issue published on May 17, 2006, with art by Corey Lewis. Originally, the comic was to be produced by Dreamwave Productions, but when Dreamwave showed signs of financial failure, the rights of the comic were sold to UDON, which had already produced the successful Street Fighter comic. The comic was not as successful as the same universe as the main Street Fighter series that is based. The comic was made available on August 31, 2007 in the U. S. and later released as a webcomic.

Following the appearance of Sakura Kasugano in the first game, Capcom has established the Rival Schools series as taking place within the same world as its Street Fighter series, with characters from Rival Schools appearing in various Street Fighter media. Hinata, Natsu and Shoma all featured prominently in the Street Fighter Legends: Sakura comic series, while Hinata and Tiffany make cameo appearances in Street Fighter V. On August 16, 2021, Akira was added as a playable character to Street Fighter V as part of its 5th season of downloadable content, becoming the first playable Rival Schools character in a Street Fighter game, with her brother, Daigo as her assist; Edge and Gan make cameo appearances in her accompanying stage.