Lost Classics: Rival Schools United By Fate (Arcade, PS1)

Secondly only to Capcom’s Tech Romancer in terms of obscurity, this is one of the few times that Capcom bought their fighters into 3D. With a unique control scheme, crazy characters, and a high school setting, this game was something different. Not only was it different from most Capcom fighters, it was different from other fighting games in general. Even though Capcom fans like this game even more than the Street Fighter EX series, the fact that there hasn’t been many follow ups to this game, as well as the fact that Capcom continues to make (or at least Re-make) 2D fighting games more frequently than 3D speaks volumes of Capcom’s apprehension towards 3D fighters.

Like SNK’s King of the Fighters series, players pick one of several 3-man teams (each representing a different school) and take them through a story mode, complete with cinematics and alternate endings. Between rounds, you can switch out your character, and the sideline fighter can be called out to make crazy attacks. And we’re not talking like the one-off shots we see in the Marvel Vs Capcom games either. Characters massage each other to heal them, hold down opponents to have them beaten, and even team up to do crazy fireball moves. The Playstation 1 version of the game shipped with two discs. One contained the arcade version with some extras and the other disk contained “evolution mode’, a special version of the arcade mode where you can select any three characters. The evolution disc also contained several mini games, a league mode, hidden fighters, (including Sakura from Street Fighter Alpha 2) and other goodies. Sadly, the high school dating-sim/create-a-character mode from the Japanese version of the game was left out, but characters created by the mode still showed up as playable characters, similar to the bonus fighters in Soul Calibur 3.

Beside the Dreamcast sequel Project Justice, (which will no doubt be featured in a later column) and Kyosuke’s appearance in Capcom vs SNK 2, Rival Schools hasn’t had much exposure. With a comic book having been released by UDON studios, maybe there will be some newly generated interest in a sequel. I would take that over another remake of Street Fighter 2 any day of the week.