Rival Turf

Released in 1992 Rival Turf focuses on the themes of inner-city crime and drugs to create a backdrop for an early 90's cyberpunk comic type adventure. At the time of it's release Rival Turf was acclaimed for it's detailed story.

Story

The story opens with Jack Flak contacting his police officer friend Oswald "Oozie" Nelson over the kidnap of his girlfriend Heather. Oozie has been closely checking the activity of street gang "the Street Kings" and it's leader "Big Al". He believes that Big Al is the culprit behind Heather's disappearance and so both Oozie and Flak take the law into their own hands and set out to clean up the streets and find Heather.

The story takes Jack and Oozie through the streets of LA taking down members of the Street King gang and leads them to South America where they are able to put an end to the ilicit drug operations and also rescue Heather.

Gameplay

Rival Turf was essentially a side-scrolling beat 'em up adventure game but it had a few innovations within it's plethora of modes. Firstly, the game used Nintendo's mode-7 graphic system which allowed graphics to be rendered in a near 3D environment.

The game could also be played simultaneously in co-op. This meant that you could tackle the games single player with a friend or alternatively take each other on in an innovative head-to-head versus match.

An angry mode was also incorporated which meant that when a particular player was nearing death they become almost invincible for a short period of time.