Video Game / Urban Rivals

Collect. Evolve. Play.

Urban Rivals^note Soft-rebooted as Urban Rivals World is an MMO game mixing the aspects of a Collectible Card Game with a Mons game. If you don't have an adblocker, there's a fair chance you've seen the ads a few dozen times on this site already. The game is played with four on four matches between cards selected at random from your deck at the start of the battle.

You boost your cards' power with Pillz tokens, and there is a great deal of bluffing and trying to get an edge on your opponent in Pillz. The individual cards gain experience and evolve, becoming stronger and more useful. You gain in-game currency with each victory, and can even earn Credits with missions, and can get everything this way, albeit very slowly. Buying random booster packs to increase your collection faster is as big in this as in any physical TCG.

Each group of cards represents one gang in the World Gone Mad that is Clint City. Only a tiny minority of these represent traditional Gangbangers, however. Playable groups range from the mob and the police to surfer dudes and martial artists to invading aliens and anthropomorphic inhabitants of the Clint City Zoo. This game is an absolute hive of Captain Ersatz, with many characters being obvious pastiches of famous actors or characters.

Urban Rivals can be played here.

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This game provides examples of:

• Absurdly-Long Limousine: The Uppers Curb-Stomp Battle animation involves the enemy getting ran over by one (and peed on by a poodle) whenever you win by a large margin with a member of the Uppers.
• Alien Invasion: Played straight, subverted, and plain played with the Sakrohm. Some of the aliens are invaders, some are diplomats which just happen to be carnivorous.
• Animesque: This game is influenced from Japanese manga & anime and have cards that are expies of popular characters from anime. There's even some cards that are drawn by this. Take a look at Terry from All Stars!◊
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Natrang of the Fang Pi Clang.
• A-Team Firing: La Junta's Gatline recognizes in herself a certain deficiency when it comes to... aiming, and thus prefers weapons that tear things to pieces to compensate.
• Ascended Extra: Copper's aunt Martha, who had only appeared in the comic adaptation, is now a member of Sentinel.
• The Atoner: Alec of Rescue is motivated to become the best firefighter because he bullied Kenny to the point where he became a human torch of destruction.
• Bad Guy Bar: The Get 'O' Bar.
• Badass Army: La Junta.
• Badass Normal: In a city filled with monsters, aliens, freaks, mutants, magicians, and cyborgs, gangs such as the Montanas, La Junta, All-Stars, Bangers, and Uppers are still able to fight on even footing despite being completely composed of normal humans.
• Battle Butler: Jeeves of the Uppers and Glorg the troll of Nightmare.
• Battle Couple: Chloe and Havok of Sentinel, Lola and Taylor of Berzerk.
• The Berserker: The Berzerk clan.
• Bilingual Bonus: Serbo-Croatian, of all things. A very conspicuous number of character names and references in the game are quite specifically Yugoslav, from the leader of the Freaks being Boris and looking exactly like Rade Šerbeđija (see Boris the Bullet Dodger in Snatch), Poldachie-Golgovine being Bosnia-Herzegovina, Zlatar simply meaning "Goldsmith" to several Asian character names being embarrassingly close to racial slurs. Especially guilty is Kinjo, which is pronounced Kinyo and translates to something like "Chinkie" (from Keena = China), an outright slur. Lee Moon's name is actually the punchline of a somewhat lame joke, well known to anyone from former Yugoslavia (as an example of a bad Pun) - Q: "What is the most yellow person in Asia called?" A: "Lee Moon!" (Leemoon, spelled Limun, means Lemon, har, har, har.) There are more Yugoslavian references in this game than most players had seen in any media product ever.
• Blessed with Suck: The Leader cards each have a unique ability that none of the other cards have that cannot be canceled. ...Unless another is on the same team.
  • In-game, a few cards qualify for this; namely Milton of Skeelz (whose strength increases along with his intelligence, making him into an overmuscled giant.)
• Blood Knight: The Fang Pi Clang is full of these. Even moreso with the Berzerk clan.
• Body Horror: Several clans like Freaks, GhosTown, Nightmare & GHEIST used this trope on their members but later through the years, they somehow dropped it.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Stanford and Nellie of the Uppers.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: It costs money to buy "credits", which can be used to buy booster packs. However, individual cards are traded for "clintz", an in-game currency that can be won in battles or earned through selling cards. All in all, the game can be played without spending a single cent, but dishing out cash gets you cards faster. After all, this is a Collectible Card Game.
  • And you can now buy clintz with your credits.
• British Coppers: Owen from Sentinel clan is a cyborg copper.
• Bruce Lee Clone: Literally, Xia Leming is a failed attempt to clone Bruce Lee.
  • The Fang Pi Clang's plan for world domination involves replacing the president with one of these.
  • Lee Long is a more successful version of their attempts to clone the legendary martial artist.
• Buccaneer Babe: Almost the entire female half of the Piranas clan.
• Cain and Abel: Morlha and Chloe of Gheist and Sentinel respectively.
• Circus of Fear: The theme behind the Freaks clan. They aren't all monstrous, but they are an ass-kicking circus troupe with a number of... interesting members.
• City of Adventure: Clint City itself.
• Cleanup Crew: GHEIST's Methane is a one-man cleaner. Running into him means one of two things: You're dead, or you're about to be. Strynge, the actual GHEIST HQ janitor, isn't exactly a slouch himself.
• Cool Old Guy: Archie of the Junkz clan, Archibald of La Junta.
• Cool Versus Awesome: Exaggerated, as most (if not all) conflicts between any two clans would already be an example of the trope.
• Commissar Cap: Vansaar could almost pass out as a Commissar.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Zlatar leader of the Uppers.
• Cosplay Otaku Girl: Kati of the Fang Pi Clang. Her cards all feature her dressed as a different fighting game character.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Jackie of the Uppers.
• Cult: Sakrohm could be considered this, with all the head shaving and robes.
  • With Church of Happyology for an extra kick.
• Deceptive Disciple: Gheist's Lin Xia, formerly of the Fang Pi Clang.
• Deep South: The newer clan, Cosmohnuts is this but as alien hunters.
• The Don: Named Don, oddly enough.
• Drives Like Crazy: Niqiloda, the snowmobile driver of the Frozn clan, calls himself the "snow bike super ace''... whereas the rest of his clan calls him "the Ace of Destruction." Apparently, his driving is bad enough to qualify as Car Fu.
• Dumb Muscle: Virtually every clan has at least one of these guys. Aktara of the Piranas, Brutox from GHEIST, Randy of the All-Stars, etc.
• Elvis Impersonator: One of the Berserk members is actually named Elvis.
• Emergency Services: The Rescue and Sentinel clans.
• Fair Cop: Quite a few in Sentinel. Chloe and Aurelia stand out, and Miranda is a more fetishised version.
• Fan Disservice: Ashley (See Unsettling Gender-Reveal) and Dwan of Skeelz. Double Subverted with Bunny of Junkz.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The game includes everything from superheroes to kaiju to mecha to vampires.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Amazingly subverted with Craho: he clearly adapts quite well to the modern times.
• Fish People: A few characters in Piranas and Ulu Watu mutate in this direction.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Kenny of Nightmare
• Funny Animal: The entire Jungo clan.
• G-Rated Drug: Pillz
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Badassery displayed in the official comics or implied by a character's bio paragraph do not always translate into useful card stats...
• Gangbangers: The whole game is about gang wars, but the appropriately named Bangers clan fits the trope the best.
  • It should be noted that despite the general connotations of this trope, the Bangers are one of the most good-aligned clans, spending most of their time doing good deeds and standing up against injustice.
  • They are also on surprisingly good terms with the Sentinel, who are basically police.
• Gentle Giant: Ghoub of the Rescue. Except if you try and take his sandwich...
• Godiva Hair: Lulabee from the Ulu Watu clan.
• I Know Madden Kombat: This is the angle behind the All Stars gang, each member of whom is a fighter who uses skills from their specific sport to beat ass like a pro. While the standard hockey (Alexei), football (Randy), soccer (Striker), baseball (Lamarr), rugby (Loma Noju) and basketball (Mikki) types are present, more esoteric examples include Bhudd, the zen martial arts master and ace bowler; Dan, ping pong expert and channeler of dark forces; and Robb, a legendary champion at darts who uses his flinging skills as a guerilla.
• Hate Plague: The Xantiax gas that created the Berzerk clan instills "a fury that can only be appeased by intense fighting" in its victims. Fortunately, this works out perfectly fine in Clint City.
• Haunted Castle: Nightmare Manor
• Handicapped Badass: Archibald of La Junta and Nakata of the Fang Pi Clang. Half the Piranas could qualify as this, as some have a peg leg as well as a...
  • Also Miss Ming of the Freaks, a human torso who has telekinetic powers.
  • Kerry, leader of the Rescue clan, is confined to a wheelchair after she took a knife in the leg, courtesy of the Freak's expert knife thrower Vassili.
  • Barakatic & McDaffen from All Stars are this; Barakatic turns his prosthetic limps into weapons while McDaffen turns her wheelchair into a mecha in the art of her last two levels.
• Hot Librarian: Emma from Pussycats.
• Hell Hotel: The Berzerk's HQ, Red One Motel is this.
• Hook Hand: No pirate gang would be complete without a character who had this. The obvious example is Cyan, and the character Selma is a pirate Igor, existing to repair pirates with these kinds of prosthetics.
• Human Popsicle: Craho (Roots) and Fabio (Montana).
• Humongous Mecha: XU-Bot (Gheist), Buddy (Rescue) and Rockwall (Riots).
• An Ice Person: The Frozn are a whole clan of ice people.
• Improbable Weapon User: Numerous, most notably Piotr of the Freaks, who uses weapons made from Balloons.
• Interspecies Adoption: Frozn clan leader Kalindra is the adoptive mother of baby yeti Tiwi.
• Kaiju: The monster Kolos is a Godzilla Expy that rampages through the city in one of the comics. He's a bit of a Game-Breaker in actual play as well, though not nearly so much as he appeared in the comic.
• Ironic Name: Skinny Bob doesn't even come close to being slim. He gets even fatter at level 2, if you can believe that.
• Knight Templar: The Sentinels' goal is to bring law and order in Clint City, even if it means burning it down, and paint it in blood.
• Jump Scare:
  • Before the site updated years later, Nightmare's K.O. shows a ghost flying towards the player after destroying the opponent's card.
  • The now Leader, Kate's "OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE TRUTH!"
• La Résistance: La Junta. Almost a namedrop.
• Lazy Artist: The game's card art has some humble moments when it first released in 2006 and today when one of their old studios, Team Chman released cards for the first 12 clans and some of them are just copy-and-paste.
  • The biggest offender is Brandon from Junkz who stood the same pose in each three levels but have his tank-top being in a different color.
  • Through the years, artists attend to improve their art in like the long runner illustrator, Julien "Fudgegraphik" Carette who draws his people in semi-realism and more cartoony in his year debut in late January 2009, through The New '10s and now in 2023, his art is more semi-realistic. These artists improve their artwork but may fall into this trope.
    • djethoblaster overuses art perspective and some of his characters looked weird like the redesign of Akrakk from Raptors.
    • The arts of Chahine "Chahine08" Ladjouze along with colorist, VinceColor can fall from this.
      • Their newer card, Trasker is "leaning" on a minimalistic-drawn broken mailbox and his head in his level 2, level 4 and level 5 are just copy-and-paste with a different expression.
    • Rudy Lespinet has his character, Mascaranga from Montana having his arms◊ being blocky and a lack of perspective.◊
• Lethal Chef: While you get the odd literal example (someone versed in both the culinary and murdering arts), Spycee of the Piranas, while distressingly talented with a knife, lacks the ability to make... food that doesn't kill or poison people. Deadeye lost an eye and an arm when he had two servings of Spycee's surprise omelets.
  • And a leg! it's shown on the full artwork
• Love Makes You Evil: Klawz, heartbroken by Havok, joined Gheist in order to be strong enough to kill her love rival, Chloe.
• Mad Artist: Alexei of the All Stars believes hockey is an art. And the broken skulls of fan, opponent, and teammate alike sitting on the ice is his idea of a masterpiece.
• The Mafia: The Montana gang is a classic version of it, in all its pinstripe wearing, stereotypically Italian glory.
• Mafia Princess: A few cards in the Montanas count, Sharon and Vickie coming the closest.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The Vortex clan's MO.
• Mama Croc/Team Mom - Odile is this to the Jungo.
• Meaningful Name: Some cards have this, most notably Sentinel Leader Copper, who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Just about every character's name is either this or a Punny Name. Except for Skinny Bob.
• The Medic: Some cards have the ability to gain life whether from winning a battle or per damage inflicted. Leader Bridget has the ability to gain life once per turn.
  • The Jungo clan's bonus is they gain 2 life for winning a battle.
  • Rescue is a clan of Combat Medics—though strangely, their bonus is not centered around regaining life.
• Mighty Lumberjack: The first boss card you get in your collection is a lumberjack. He starts looking like the stereotype and hulks out when leveling up. Also adds bonus damage to the whole team.
• Mildly Military: La Junta clan is all over this, being basically made of maverick military characters.
• The Mole: Eloxia is highly implied to be this for Vortex.
  • Carlos for the Sentinels who infiltrates the Montana clan.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: DJ Korr (Junkz), Zoltan (Freaks), DJ Korps (Nightmare), Gork (Gheist), C0re (Hive), and Sol Hona (Sakhrom).
• Naughty Nurse Outfit: A few in Rescue, Alice of the Pussycats, and a Nightmare Fuel version in Gheist's Dolly.
• Nebulous Evil Organization: The Gheist clan. They dabble in genetic manipulation, among other things, but don't seem to have a clear purpose. Nightmare is a more magical version of this.
• Never Mess with Granny: Martha. Given that Copper is her nephew, that should come as no surprise. The same goes with Berzerk's Granny May and Mrs. Spool.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: The Roots clan is all over this trope.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Some examples, most notably Oshitsune, who is a zombie Warrior Monk, and Wesley, a doctor Vampire Hunter that uses bats.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Some of the cards are designed after well-known celebrities, such as:
  • Lance (All Stars): Lance Armstrong
  • Vermyn N (Bangers): Eminem
  • El Mercurio (Huracan): Freddie Mercury
  • Angelina (Montana): Angelina Jolie
  • Gail (Uppers): Oprah Winfrey
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: The squidlike Trinmkkt has four very human-like breasts, with nipple piercings!
• Obvious Rule Patch: A number of cards are banned from certain types of tournaments, and players can vote for which cards this happens to.
  • Notable, however, in that the designers refuse to change the rules at all or alter existing cards in any way.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Pan (Nightmare)
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Among the many odd beings inhabiting Clint City are a few mermaids, mostly in the Piranas and Ulu Watu clans.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Russel (Nightmare), Schredder (Skeelz), and Lady Ametia (Skeelz).
• Parasol of Pain: Sayura of the Fang Pi Clang.
• Perky Goth: Dreen of the Junkz, who later becomes perky in more way than one.
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: The entire Piranha clan
• Pirate Girl: The Piranas clan is full of half-dressed pirate babes.
• Pirate: The Piranas gang is made up of these, and they hit every pirate cliche in the book.
• Poisonous Person: Some cards have an ability call Poison in which the opponent loses a certain number of life points each turn after the ability's activation.
• Put on a Bus: A good sign to know when this happens to a character is when their card becomes a collector's edition (Cr).
  • Actually, when a card becomes collector, there's a little scenaristic justification to the character leaving Clint City.
• Robot Buddy: Many clans has at least one of these, such as Zdrone of Sentinel, Sledg of Rescue, and Ed 12 of La Junta.
• Rolling Pin of Doom: Filomena. It helps that it's as big around as a mid-sized tree.
• Really 700 Years Old: BB Cool G of the Bangers as a result of reciting cursed lyrics.
• Ridiculously Human Robots:
  • Nobrodroid and Haze of the Junks.
    • Justified in Nobrodroid's case since he is supposed to be a combat stand in for Nobrocybix.
  • Would included some recent bioroids from the Hive clan to fall into this trope for having flesh mouths with pink colored tongues.
  • Other recent robots from other clans even fall to this as well.
• Right-Hand Cat: Sigmund and Mini Mund both have right hand birds.
• Reforged into a Minion: Some members of the Gheist are created this way, such as Leviatonn.
• Scary Black Man: Though there are a few who are quite mellow, and some that are of an entirely different ethnicity altogether, most of the Bangers fall under this trope.
• She Is All Grown Up: Nellie from the Uppers, as her evolutions follow her growth. She starts as a rather ugly child, but at the end of her evolution, she is a stunning young adult.
• Shout-Out: This game lives and breathes these. A majority of the characters are shout-outs.
  • A few examples:
    • Sol Hona (Sakrohm): Han Solo
    • Belmondo, another Sakrohm, is also based on Han Solo before turning into Jabba the Hutt.
    • Ginnifer (Jungo): Judy Hopps.
    • Loma Noju (All Stars): Jonah Lomu.
    • Jautya (Sakrohm): Predator.
    • Keanew (Junkz): Neo
    • Python (La Junta): Solid Snake
    • Kenny (Nightmare): Harry Potter
    • Ralph (Fang Pi Clang): Dre
    • Meroo (Bangers): Mr. T
    • Boomba (La Junta): Pumbaa
• Sibling Team: Uxoh and Burger of La Junta, who work together as a minelayer and a bomb disposal expert respectively.
  • Also hackers Keanew and Otakool of the Junkz, performers Hula and Twyh of the Freaks, twin bodyguards Kobalth and Onyx of Vortex, and stretcher carriers Larry and Marco of Rescue.
  • From the Skeelz, Beck - Nena are a unique example in that they are two siblings portrayed on a single card instead of being separate from each other like all the previous examples.
• Spoiled Brat: Nellie from the Uppers.
• Spy Catsuit: Isatis goes a bit like this in level 4, but she still looks like a soldier.
• Starcrossed Lovers: Ratanah and Narendra of Roots, due to a blood feud between their families that lasted for generations.
• Straw Feminist: The Pussycats clan swings between this and Stripperific, though to be fair most of the clans are pretty all over the place in their philosophy.
• Superhero School: The Skeelz clan is based on this, with a majority of its members being odd superbeings.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: The Fang Pi clan is this, as well as being a parody of things like Dragon Ball and Street Fighter.
• Surfer Dude: The Ulu Watu clan is filled with these. The other half are Valley Girl.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Rhed (Piranas). She later gives up on the disguise.
• Take That!:
  • Sydney of the Uppers is a more subtle case towards Paris Hilton.
  • One of the new 2022 cards, Bertung of Berzerk is a heavily caricature of Greta Thunberg.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Darth of GHEIST is specifically noted to be too spectacular a killer, tending to use thousands of bullets where three would have gotten the job done.
  • In-game, it's common for players to use all of their remaining pillz when finishing off the last card of their opponent. Especially when the opponent only has one pill left.
  • Invoked by cards with the conditional ability Killshot. Its activation requires a card's attack to be at least equal or higher than double the opposing character's attack (example: if your opponent has 20 attack, your character must have 40 attack or more if you want to activate its ability). This necessitates a player to invest more pillz than they are confident to spare.
• Those Two Guys: Dayton and Coby of Sentinel, as of the comic adaptation.
• Took a Level in Badass: 1% the game is getting enough XP to make your card do this
• Tournament Play: Being an MMO, it has tournaments constantly. Every other hour is a tournament.
• Tunnel King: Leo of the Junta used to hunt giant moles, then became a zombie hunter; both professions thankfully involve his phenomenal digging ability and using his shovel directly as a weapon
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Ashley from the All Stars.
• Unstoppable Rage: The hat of the recently introduced Berzerk clan.
• Vapor Wear: The girls in Gheist seem fond of this.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Being a surfer-based clan, half the men of Ulu Watu.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The clans not composed of hedonists, criminals, or psychopaths, are this trope. Naturally, many of these good intentions don't always mesh.
• Woman Scorned: Kimberly of the All Stars, who quits cheerleading for bodybuilding so she could find ex-boyfriend Chad (who left her to join Ulu Watu) and smash his head the next time she sees him.
• World of Badass: By virtue of being locked in a war between 22 factions comprised of people ranging from Badass Normal to Cursed with Awesome to Kaiju. Unfortunately, this also has the effect of making the city a...
• Wretched Hive: Clint City. There's a police force, but they're even in terms of power and influence with the mob, the surf bums, and the denizens of the city zoo.
  • Actually, some character descriptions explicitly state that the Sentinel clan and the city's police force are not the same thing.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Clint City doesn't appear to have a right side of the tracks.
• Wuxia: The entire Fang Pi Clang clan is based around this.
• Zombie Apocalypse: This is one of Nightmare's plans in the webcomics.

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