Welcome to VC Weekly, N-Europe's guide to the wonderful world of Nintendo's download service. Written by Sam C Gittins.

Do you like a good fisticuff? Of the virtual variety of course... If so then you may be pleased by this brutality based beat-em-up. Anyway enough from me and on with the game!

Available for download this week we have...

• Rival Turf

Points: 800
Publisher: Jaleco
Developer: Jaleco
Released: 1992
System: SNES

Arguably when it comes to side-scrolling scrappers titles like Final Fight and Streets of Rage tend to reign supreme in the minds of gamers... and rightly so, for they are both stunning examples within the genre. However there was one thing that the SNES version of Final Fight lacked when it was ported across and that was of course a co-op mode - not to mention the exclusion of Guy - and with this in mind Jaleco set out to achieve what Capcom didn't and quickly ported across Rival Turf with a two-player mode that was such a big selling point back then.

But sadly for everything it includes in the form of features it lacks basically everywhere else, the characters are uninspiring, the story is basic plus everything about the gameplay and the surrounding world/enemies just screams genericness!

You take control of either 'Jack Flak' who's a Guy lookalike or 'Oozie Nelson' who's a low-budget version of M.Bison... - no originality there then - as you attempt to clean up the streets. Basic brawling moves are available to you as you'd expect but due to some rather clumsy collision detection the game never really feels that solid even when your hits do end up connecting.

Everything feels marginally better in two-player mode as it's instantly more fun when you get a friend involved but the fun is more likely to come from jointly laughing at the faults of the game rather than actually enjoying any of it. When a games only redeeming feature is that it's such a joke compared to the real hard-hitters of the genre you have to wonder if it's even worth playing at all, if you want a simple answer I'd have to say No... it isn't.

If you're after a true side-scrolling classic then download Streets of Rage 2 instead because this pales in comparison, Rival Turf may have been semi-playable back in the day due to lack of choice but now it just doesn't stack-up at all and isn't worthy of your points.

Verdict : As basic and banal as a brawler can get.

That's it for another installment of VC Weekly which will return again soon. So until then, enjoy the rest of the week and Game On!

Sam Gittins
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