It's amazing how much
Rushing Beat was trying to copy
Final Fight and
Streets of Rage back in the 90s. More so the latter. It really got noticeable with
Rushing Beat Ran though. In the first game, Rick (the Axel and Cody of the two) and Douglas (The Mike Haggar) have a front throw and suplex/wresting move when going behind an enemy, just like in
Streets of Rage 1.
Rushing Beat 1's story copies
Art of Fighting 1 of all things. Mainly the ending for those in the know. The only difference being
RB1 doesn't end on a cliffhanger,
but has heavy bittersweet ending where Rick's father dies. It does visibly affect him later sequels, and especially in RBX for the first story sequence after beating stage 2. None of the stories/plotlines ever come up with the Western localization versions of the trilogy for dumb reasons and the American division being thundering dumb-asses insulting their target audience. Another attempt to copy the first
SOR game was that Jaleco US made Douglas from white to black in the American/EU versions. To compete with
SOR, because Adam Hunter is black, and always has been from the start. They also changed Douglas name to "Oozie Neslon", and they changed it again to Slash in
Brawl Brothers (Western version of Ran). Douglas being black is now canon in
Rushing Beat X, and that game is being done another Japanese developer called City Connection. They gave him beard too.
In
Ran, this gets expanded, as each character has a special and special forward attack like
Streets of Rage 2. If you use the forward special attack, you lose health no matter if you hit something or not. The unique thing about it, was that if you used your health draining special, you could get your health back by not getting hit for about 10 seconds and your health would fully regenerate at whatever you had at previously. The only advantage Ran has over
SOR2, is universal dashing.
SOR2 still the better game, because it has 8 stages, better level design, more enemy variety, can fight up to 5-8 enemies at once without any slowdown (blast processing motherfuckers!), and the OST is Godlike!
Rushing Beat Shura is basically Jaleco's attempt at
Streets of Rage 3/Bare Knuckle III. More than 4 characters playable, one character has to be unlocked by finding a different/multiple pathways (
Shura does a better job with this, but not for the lack of trying in
SOR3'
s case), deeper and darker story line with multiple endings, and new implemented super moves. It is the easiest of the trilogy similar to
BKIII, but challenging in the right ways compared to the other two
RB games.
Shura still has it cheap moments with certain enemies and bosses. It's still not better than either version of
SOR3/BKIII. I also don't like half the roster in
Shura, so there is less replay value for me at least. I actually prefer
Ran over
Shura, even though
Shura has the surperior gameplay.
Here we are, over 30 years later and we have 4 mainline entry, though it's sequel prequel. It takes places after the first two games, but before
Shura. RBX decides to come out 5 years after
Streets of Rage 4, and about 5 other
Streets of Rage style games. It plays pretty good, even though the early environments are not the best looking. CC decided to go 2.5D with this one, and combat got a complete overhaul. It still feels like
Rushing Beat, but there are more direction inputs for ground and air combos or ground and air grapples depending on the character. A super meter, instead of turning red when losing a lot or half of your health. The game itself feels more like a sequel to
Demolish Fist of all things, gameplay wise and somewhat thematically when fighting monsters or mutated/genetically modified people.
For comparison:
Rushing Beat X Demo
Demolish Fist Arcade Game
