Rival Turf!

I'M BADDDD!! No wait, wrong game. "Look out, street scum! Here come the Brawl Brothers! The roughest, toughest street-fighting game ever!" -Actual box quote.

Hidden Text#

KATOREIKO!

A RAM initialization test string, located at 0x1BF7. Possibly a reference to former J-Drama actress and gravure idol Kato Reiko.

Hidden Graphics#

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

This message is located at 0xCBA00, between some enemy character graphics, and is present in all releases of the game. Hasegawa is listed in the game credits as "Graphic Designer".

Character Name Configuration#

There's a hidden debug mode which allows you to rename all of the characters in the game. To do this, defeat at least five enemies and then get a game over. At the high score screen, enter your name as CHRCONF and you'll be taken to the character name configuration screen.

Secret Warps#

Buh?

Four secret warp points are programmed into the game, although only two of them are normally accessible, likely due to programmer error. The conditions for activating most of them are fairly complex. Upon activating a warp point, you are sent to the "warp room," in which you must destroy a strange statue before time runs out. If you succeed in destroying the statue, you are warped to the next area of the stage you were on; if you fail, you are sent back to the beginning of the stage instead.

Stage One
This one is normally inaccessible due to an incorrect pointer, but it can be restored by changing ROM address 0x2A07 to 2F. Near the beginning of the first area, walk to the part of the fence the thug breaks through and press Up to warp to the second area.

Stage Four You must have exactly 30 kills to activate this one. At the beginning of the second area, walk into the first doorway to warp to the third area.

Stage Five You must have exactly 66 kills to activate this one. Near the end of the second area, position yourself in the center of the lower stairway, then jump straight upwards while pressing Up to warp to the third area.

Stage Six This one is normally inaccessible due to the fact that it is placed slightly too high for your character to reach, but it can be accessed by changing ROM address 0x2B15 to 00. You must have exactly 4 kills to activate it. At the beginning of the second area, position yourself in the center of the first doorway, then jump and kick straight upwards while pressing Up to warp to the third area.

Crash Handler#

If a BRK opcode is encountered during gameplay (generally as a result of a program crash), the game immediately sends you to the warp room described above as a means of recovering from the crash. All CPU registers are purged and the stack is reset, though all other data (kill count, continues, lives, etc.) is retained. When the room is accessed in this manner, destroying the statue will always send you to the third area of the stage you were on.

This type of "user-friendly" crash handler is exceedingly rare, especially on the SNES, since the 65816 CPU doesn't have much in the way of exception handling. A similar type of crash handler can be found in the Genesis version of Sonic 3D Blast.

Regional Differences#

Title Screen#

The game was renamed to "Rival Turf" outside of Japan, and replaced the Jaleco logo on the title screen with "Licensed by Nintendo".

Japan	US/Europe

Intro#

The Japanese version contains an introduction screen which was completely removed in the western version. And not only that, but the story was changed completely. In the Japanese version you're actually rescuing your sister, who doesn't even appear in the western release.

Option Screen#

The Japanese version options screen lets you pick the difficulty, number of lives and continues, all of this was taken out of Rival Turf. Rival Turf also lets you mess around with the L and R button settings, whilst Rushing Beat doesn't.

Japan	US/Europe

Name Changes#

The names of the main characters were changed from Rick Norton and Douglas Bild to Jack Flak and Oozie Nelson in the US and European releases. Douglas Bild also had a slight makeover.

Japan	US/Europe

Most enemies also had their names changed:

Japan	US/Europe
KAMIKAZE RIDE SINGH KATO POE ARNOLD GIGANTE SLICK BOB BUTCHY BIGEL SHO RYU T.OMARI CAPTAIN HONKY KARN KINTARK NORTON BILD	BULLET CASE GENIE GORO KATO ARNOLD GIGANTE SKINNY REGGIE BUTCH LOUIE WARRIOR DINGO SLASHER CAPTAIN SLEDGE ICEMAN BIG AL FLAK NELSON

Groin Kick#

In the Japanese version, when Douglas Bild grabs an enemy, he can kick them in the groin, which even produces a funny "ding" sound. This makes the enemy wince in pain while grabbing their groin. In the Western release, the enemy just does the regular animation when getting hit and the sound effect was altered.

Japan	US/Europe

(Source: Censored Gaming)

Death Icon#

When you die in the Japanese version, your character's icon flashes with an image of a kanji. In the western version, the kanji was replaced with an X.

Japan	US/Europe

Ending#

The ending in the Japanese version much a lot longer. After rescuing your sister, she reveals that the last boss is their father. Strangely, Douglas Bild/Oozie Nelson's skin color was not changed for the US/EU releases.

Translation:

“Maria! What on earth… why…?”

“Big brother, this person is…?”

Credits#

The Japanese version also contains a credits scene. The US version of the game still has the staff list at 0xF609. The list is unchanged from the Japanese release, and still calls the game "Rushing Beat". The list was removed from the European release.

Miscellaneous#

In the Japanese version, there's music playing during the name entry screen. In the western version, it's silent. This is actually (track 0F) in its sound test, which was removed in the US and European versions.
The gameplay is noticeably more difficult because you can get hit while grabbing an enemy where the US version took this problem out.
When you pause the game in the European version, the screen darkens. This doesn't happen in the Japanese or US versions.