When you think of the legends of the beat ’em up genre, a certain list of names comes to mind. Double Dragon, Golden Axe, River City Ransom, Final Fight, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Streets of Rage, and so on form the classic canon of brawlers. But behind the big guns, a lot of less famous names carved out their own niche. One of those was Jaleco’s Rushing Beat series on the Super NES, whose three installments were confusingly localized under completely different titles that obfuscated their relationships to each other. If you played Rival Turf, Brawl Brothers, or The Peace Keepers, you’re acquainted with Rushing Beat.
Frankly, none of the three games were all that great. Still, they offered up some decent multiplayer brawling on a platform where there were fewer such experiences than you might expect. On top of that, the localized versions often made some changes to combat the rental market that made the games significantly worse. Which is kind of funny in hindsight, because I don’t know anyone who bought these games, but almost every Super NES owner around my age seems to have rented one of them at least once. Well, if nothing else, the Rushing Beat games were quintessential Jaleco 16-bit games with all that implies.
Rushing Beat is back! I will certainly grant that Rushing Beat X: Return of Brawl Brothers is a faithful revival, for better or worse. For those with fond memories of the series, this game is a real trip. Unfortunately, I’m in that group. Every returning character, every visual reference, and every janky mechanic conjured up some warm fuzzies in my heart. When the characters dropped a callback to the heretofore not canonically related Jaleco arcade beat ’em up 64th Street, I almost squealed. Like a lot of City Connection’s recent Jaleco-related revivals, Rushing Beat X oozes love for the quirky company’s offerings at every available opportunity. I think any Jaleco fan is going to have a decent time with this simply on those merits alone.
Supposing you don’t have that connection, however, Rushing Beat X still has something to offer. Look, we’re in a bit of a renaissance for the beat ’em up genre at the moment. We’ve seen some of the best brawlers ever released in the last several years, not only calling back to the greatest games of the past but actually properly building on them to bring the genre to new heights. Rushing Beat X isn’t pushing those boundaries by any means. But it’s a competent brawler that knows how to have some fun. You get a good variety of characters to play with, a nice array of moves to employ, and even a cute system for cooking food you can bring with you. Like in the aforementioned 64th Street, you can toss enemies into the background to deal damage and sometimes reveal items.
The gameplay is surprisingly lenient at first, with an auto-combo feature that will kick in if you hold down the attack button after your first hit and plenty of opportunities to recover your health. There are tons of weapons lying around for you to use, and you can even construct your own between stages. The main series gimmick, the Rage Gauge, makes its comeback here. Once it’s full, you’ll enter Rage mode and have access to your special Beat Rush move. You basically have a lot of options in Rushing Beat X, and that helps keep the action varied and interesting throughout the course of the game. For those who like to push the skill ceiling out, the assortment of combos and cancels allows you to pull off some pretty wild moves.
Still, there’s no denying that there is a fair bit of clunkiness to it. It has that problem many early 3D takes on the genre suffered from, where it’s hard to line up the visual depth of the various elements on-screen. The enemy AI is really poor, the collision detection for grabs feels unintuitive, and some moves are quite difficult to find an effective use for. While the stages initially have a good amount of variety, things start to get recycled a lot in the back half of the game. The enemy variety and boss battles suffer from too much repetition. Rushing Beat X apparently went through a lot of heavy reworking during its development, and it often shows. I think the game goes on a little too long for what’s here. It’s clear the budget wasn’t huge, and I think the soup has been watered down a little too much in an effort to push up the quantity.
I was also somewhat surprised to see some performance issues in this Nintendo Switch 2 version. While Rushing Beat X doesn’t look bad at all, nothing here should be causing the hardware to struggle the way it sometimes does. Beyond the technical stuff, the game does have a nice style to its art. It’s very colorful and often silly, and I don’t mind that at all. The soundtrack is just there, neither elevating nor pulling down the experience. Certainly, Streets of Rage 4, Absolum, and Shredder’s Revenge are not going to be troubled by this game anytime soon. But is that not also very true to the Rushing Beat brand?
Ultimately, Rushing Beat X: Return of Brawl Brothers does justice to the Rushing Beat franchise. To a fault in some ways, I’d argue. It’s quite self-aware and earnest, even if it can’t quite hit the mark the way one might hope a modern beat ’em up would. The fighting can be fun, and the Jaleco fan service is on point. Technical issues and a lot of general awkwardness mean this one is best suited for those who have some affection for the Rushing Beat series. If you love the genre and are the sort that can forgive some flaws when a game has its heart in the right place, you might want to take a chance on this one.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Clear River Games
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