Rival Schools: United By Fate

Capcom's new fighter is a fun change of pace from the usual "fighters from around the world beat each other up" type of game.  The fighters here are all high school students and teachers (two or three per school) who all have a mission and something resembling a storyline.  Of course, there's still a lot of fighting going on...

Each school has had some strange events going on (attacks, kidnappings, etc.) and so the quest begins to find the Truth.  Of course, there's misunderstandings aplenty and not a few enemies.

This page presumes you know the basics of fighting games and can figure out special moves (after all, the game's instruction book lists a bunch, and there's websites aplenty for RS:UBF).  I recommend configuring the controller so that the Team-Up can be performed with one button.

You can get artworks and demo movies just by playing long enough, but there's also two kinds of endings: the "Good" and "Bad" endings.  "Bad" means you didn't succeed at what your character was supposed to do.  So how do you get the "good" ending?  It's simpler than you'd think: all you need to do is defeat Raizo at the end of the game by using a Team-Up attack.  Other than that, the game doesn't care how many continues you use (Yes!!) or how long it takes.  Defeating Raizo puts you to the actual boss, and again, once you reach him it doesn't matter how many times you come crawling back for punishment; if you beat Hyo, you'll get the good ending.

Character Endings! Click to read about them!

On the Evolution Disc, if you fail to beat Raizo or his partner -- whoever's second in the fight -- with a Team-Up attack, Hayato comes out and yells at you to practice.  If you beat Raizo/Partner and then Hyo, you get the same "Good" ending as on the Arcade Disc, but you also get a nice little cinema as a bonus.

You can also save your configs and endings to a memory card for later viewing.

A note on the stories:  If you just want to beat the game, you can pick any two characters and jump right in.  If you want the story mode, pick two from the same school and stick with them throughout the game.  You'll get between-fight scenes (no cinemas, sorry) with Japanese dialogue and English subtitles.  The voices do add a lot to the characters' ambience.   (Voices and between-fight scenes not on the Evolution Disc, but you do get subtitles for the endings.)

You'll still get an ending even if you don't use characters from the same schools, but the storyline makes more sense that way.  You only get the ending for your "main" character, not your fighting partner.

Some characters may get a one-round stage in the middle of the story.  Gedo's stage doesn't make a difference to the overall story, but the others do.  In this stage you fight a boss who will prove incredibly difficult to damage, and of course you don't get a second chance.  If you defeat this boss (actual boss may vary), you'll supposedly go right to the final battle.  I haven't managed to do this yet, so I can't verify this claim.

Click on the school emblems below for more...
 
  

Gedo High School
My personal favorite.  Gedo is the school for bad kids (hey, just check out their emblem -- a flaming demon's head?).  Akira's the biker girl who never removes her helmet, Gan's the requisite big stupid strong guy, and Edge the fashion victim likes to giggle and play with knives.  (Edge is not the only character with strange hair, though.)  All three have good team-up attacks.
     Gedo H.S. had a "Big Boss" that brought all the gangs together.  Now the Big Boss, who's also Akira's brother, is missing.  Akira wants to find her brother, Edge is bored so he goes to look for the Big Boss, and Gan mostly just goes along for the ride.
     Note that throughout the game, despite Akira having a female voice, the two guys supposedly never figure out until the end that she's a girl.  Kind of hard to accept, that.
     Edge is a decent character, fairly fast if not the strongest.  Gan's not as slow as you might think (though not real fast, either) and can do good damage just by whomping away with his fists.  His Team-Up looks extremely painful.  Akira is somewhere in the middle.  Her Team-Up actually does damage (most female characters' don't).


Gorin High School
The jocks are out in force to protect Gorin High.  Their emblem is reminiscent of the Olympic Rings.  Natsu plays volleyball, Shoma plays baseball (that bat's huge!) and Roberto the Brazilian-Japanese plays soccer.  More strange hairstyles here -- Gorin apparently has a contract with some gel/hairspray manufacturer to supply product to its students.  Both Shoma and 'Berto look like they could put someone's eye out.
     Shoma's bat gives him an amazing reach; the game really pumps him up, making him a more formidable character than you can hope to have when you play him.  All three students somehow carry around an infinite supply of volley-, base- and soccer balls (at least Edge's pants are big enough to hold all them knives!). When fighting Shoma, try to keep a distance away if you can, to avoid that baseball bat.
     Gorin students have been attacked by unknown persons; one of the victims was Shoma's brother, whose future sports career may be in ruins because of his injuries.  Some of Natsu's junior volleyball players have also been hurt.  The trio begin investigating to find out who's attacking their school, and to make them stop.
     As an aside, poor Roberto seems to break up an awful lot of fights between his friends. He also wears a Capcom armband.
     If you use Natsu as a backup, her Team-Up gives you several extra Power Bars.  It does slight damage to the enemy in the process, but your best bet in the Raizo fight is to switch characters and use Natsu as the main and your other character as the Team-Up.
Pacific High School
The school for the children of expatriates and foreigners, Pacific gets a neutral world-and-laurels emblem.  Roy, Tiffany and Boman are all Americans but speak Japanese very well, as their dialog attests.  Roy's a bit of an "ugly American", hating the country and not liking the people much better (his grandfather lost a leg in World War 2's Pacific Theater and never stopped talking about it).  Tiffany is apparently some kinda cheerleader, although boxing gloves aren't normally the cheerleading attire of choice that I know of (of course, the rest of her outfit is... uh... not exactly standard, either.)  Boman's dressed normally, but what is it with Capcom and blond mohawks on African-Americans?
     The Pacific High students (doesn't "Pacific High" sound like a teenage TV soap opera?) are investigating the strange occurrences in the other schools.  Roy's sleeve cuffs are starched like Guyver blades, which is kinda neat.  Tiffany suffers from zigzag hair, which seems very popular in he land of the Rising Sun lately.
     Tiffany's Team-Up is, well, one for the men in the audience.  It adds a tiny bit to your lifebar and does a little damage, but basically, Tiff's Team-Up is worthless for actual fighting.  The two guys' Team-Ups are better, and they generally do more damage in combat, too.

Taiyo High School
Taiyo High is represented by the "hot-blooded transfer student" Batsu, cute-as-a-bug sailor-suited schoolgirl Hinata, and mysterious, aloof Kyosuke.  Taiyo is supposed to be the "normal" school (I suppose because it's got girls in sailor suits attending it).
     Batsu's looking for his missing mom, perky Hina wants to protect her school (seems no one else will) and Kyosuke... well, he's along for reasons of his own.  Kyosuke makes a great Team-Up partner, but he's not so hot as a main character, at least in my experience.  Batsu is the game's de facto Ryu -- in other words, the one who's supposed to be the "star" of the game, all-around balanced and the best fighter, etc. etc. Shoma's usually a worse opponent, though.
     Kyosuke is hard to fight with, but he's a great Team-Up partner.  Hina's Team-Up is identical to Natsu's (of Gorin High) -- extra special attack energy.  And, like Natsu, this makes her a lousy "damage" partner, but she's great for players who like to use those special attacks.  You'll probably get spoiled as to how many special attacks you can make.  (On the negative side, Capcom couldn't come up with a different Team-Up for one of these two girls?  Well, Ken & Ryu of Street Fighter had the same attacks, so I guess it's to be expected.)
 

The "Secret" Characters
They're not really secret; just playing the game will start unlocking them.  From left to right:
Daigo is the Big Boss of Gedo High, who's gone missing.
Akira (out of cycle gear) is his sister. She has somewhat different attacks and team-ups when out of cycle gear.
Hyo is the actual endboss of the game, a real cheeseater and full-time megalomaniac and cheat.
Sakura (from the Street Fighter series) looks an awful lot like Hinata; guess you can't have too many sailor suits in a game, huh? Whatever.
Hayato is an instructor from Taiyo High, and he also gives you training help in the Evolution Disc part of the game.

There are also 24 hidden characters on the Evolution Disc.  You unlock a new one every time you end the game on the E-Disc.  Note that playing the "arcade" version of the game on the E-Disc is usually a lot tougher than that of the Arcade disk!  It doesn't matter who you end the game with -- the 24 hiddens just unlock as you end the game.
 


 Justice High School
These three are teachers and the principal of Justice High.  Kyoko is, depending on translation of game materials, either the school nurse or the hygiene teacher.  It's amazing how she can land safely in those heels... Hideo teaches Japanese and is good at martial arts (like who isn't in a fighting game?.  Raizo looks like a giant humanoid badger most of the time.  I don't think that was intended, but when he rushes at you with huge claws a-chuggin' like some freaky mole, that's what he looks like.
     Raizo is actually not too tough to beat.  His Team-Up (with your kidnapped partner) will take a good third or so of your lifebar, though. Hideo and Kyoko are midbosses in their own right and Not Fun to fight.

students have visited since 12 Jan 99