Burning Rival is a 1993 arcade game released by Sega for its Sega System 32 hardware, and is the very first fighting game developed by in-house developer Sega AM2, well known for later developing the Virtua Fighter series, the Fighting Vipers series, Fighters Megamix, and the first two Shenmue games.
So, what's the plot? Several fighters from around the world gather in the middle of America in pursuit of battle. Some are doing it to hold honor for themselves, friends, and family members while others are doing it for pride and recognition. Among these brave fighters are:
- Arnold, a karate expert who accidently killed his master while training and wants to make up for it by aiming To Be a Master.
- Craze, A simple street punk looking for an opportunity to test his power.
- Jackson, an elite kick-boxing champion ready to settle down with his fiancée, Elly.
- Santana, a Masked Luchador known as the "flaming wind of Mexico", who's trying to raise money for the operation of his sick younger sister Lena.
- Shingen, the ghost of a cursed Japanese samurai formerly known as Shingen Yagyu.
- Mr. Chin, an overweight kung-fu master looking to expand his Chinese restaurant business.
- Asuka, a kunoichi searching for her long lost brother.
- Bill, an American Football player, pro wrestler, and former crime syndicate henchman who wants to patch things up and live his life with his wife and daughter.
It's painfully clear that this was made to capitalize on the success of Street Fighter II, but this being during the height of Sega's innovative stride, the company wanted to do something different. Just have all of the characters animated as if it was a hand-drawn anime, making that the game's selling point. On top of that, the game itself seems to have had a very rushed development. As a result, this is one of the few Sega-produced titles that has been all but lost and forgotten to time, as the company itself has never made a port or re-release of the game. The only known acknowledgment Sega has made of the game since has been Asuka's cameo in the opening of several Sega Ages re-releases on the Nintendo Switch, being among several older Sega characters (mostly females) presenting the games along with Alex Kidd. Capcom eventually took notes and began using a similar art style in their fighting games, starting with the first Darkstalkers game and X-Men: Children of the Atom.
The game itself does make a few small appearances in the anime adaptation of High Score Girl.
This game provides examples of:
- 10-Minute Retirement: According to the Japanese version, Arnold thought about completely giving up on karate as a result of the shame of killing his master just being too much to bear. Instead, he decided to go on a journey to become the world's strongest fighter, using everything his master had taught him as a way to honor him.
- Animation Bump: The main selling point of the game. Instead of going for the standard realistic/pixel-look of the time, the animation of the player characters and background characters were hand-drawn, digitally colored, and inserted into the game in a manner that made them look almost as if they were ripped straight from an anime, similar to what Guardian Heroes would do a couple of years later.
- Big Fun: Many of Mr. Chin's match-ending animations show that he's silly and a times childish in addition to already being a fairly large guy who's a complete ham.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The English version of the game has a lot of grammatical errors and misspelled text.
- Calling Your Attacks: As expected from a fighting game.
- Cherry Tapping: If your character manages to finish off their opponent on the ground with a light punch or kick, a prompt exclaiming "FINISH" will appear for a few seconds while your opponent is stunned, allowing you to knock out your opponent anyway you'd like.
- Downer Ending: Asuka's ending unlike all of the other characters, or in the case of Arnold, who has more of a Bittersweet Ending. Even after beating her opponents, she herself is completely bruised up, the search for her brother proves fruitless and she forces herself to keep searching.
- Final Boss: An interesting case with Shingen as he's not only fought at the end of the game (his blue palette anyway), but is also fought beforehand, even when playing as him.
- Hospital Epilogue: Satana's ending has him go to the hospital for the impending operation of his younger sister Lena. The Japanese version reveals that he received a call during the victory ceremony about Lena now entering critical condition at the hospital. Before his victory, he was poor and unable to come up with the money to fund Lena's operation. By the time he earned the money from the tournament, the doctor believed it was too late. What's even worse is that Satana even prays to both his mother and father to protect Lena, implying that both are dead and Lena is all he has left. Thankfully, the doctor confirms that the operation is successful and though all Lena needs is him at her side, Satana vows to the better care of her. In the English version, Lena even shows some guilt and feels bad that she had to make him work so hard for her sake.
- Kick Chick: Outside of the traditional ninja moves, a lot of Asuka's attacks revolve around using her legs, which is easily noticeable given she doesn't have anything covering them.
- Life Meter: While the game's health bars are smaller than normal, it gives way to the game's unique timer that also resembles a life meter.
- Palette Swap: A strange case of being able to manipulate which set of palettes you want your opponents to have, but cannot manually select your player's palette without another person present and switching cabinets.
- Playing with Fire: As the title of the game implies, several of the characters have fire-based attacks such as Arnold's Phoenix Punch, Mr. Chin's Flaming Elbow, Asuka's Flaming Tumble and Flying Flame kicks and Shingen's Fireball Spit.
- The Protagonist: Arnold, being the standard karate man archetype found in fighting games.
- Secretly Wealthy: The Japanese version states that Craze was born into a wealthy family, but was a violent and uncontrollable rebel even at a young age, eventually turning into a generic street punk.
- Shock and Awe: Craze's Lightning Wave attack.
- The Smurfette Principle: Asuka is this game's only female player character, which along with arguably being the least generic-looking character has unsurprisingly made her the game's most popular character.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: Once at least one of the fighters has 25% of their health remaining, the music switches to a frantic melody that plays the exact same tune regardless of what stage you're on.
- Take That, Audience!: Unlike in most other games, the round announcer straight-up calls you a loser after you've lost a match in the arcade mode.
- Vague Age: The inconsistency between the way Asuka's normally drawn and how she appears in her ending scenes give the impression that she could be anywhere from fourteen years old to somewhere in her early twenties.
- Video Game Sliding: Asuka and Mr. Chin's crouching heavy kick.
- Wrestler in All of Us: All of the characters have strong grappling throws.
