The Peace Keepers

The Peace Keepers
Also known as: Rushing Beat Shura (JP) Developer: Jaleco Publisher: Jaleco Platform: SNES Released in JP: December 17, 1993 Released in US: March 1994 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused enemies. This game has regional differences.

The third game in the Rushing Beat series...unless you live in the US, of course, where it's yet another completely unrelated game. Seems Jaleco's US branch just didn't care for consistency.

Unused Enemies

Spider/Sentry

To do: Hunt down the pictures of this enemy that appeared in Nintendo Power.

This mechanical spider enemy was removed from the US version, though it can still be placed in-game via the Pro Action Replay (PAR) code 7E082702. Note that its graphics no longer exist in the game, and it will have a glitchy appearance as a result.

Debug Text

Some leftover text for a debug/test mode exists in the ROM.

At offset 0xA925:

T E S T   M O D E

At offset 0xA943:

P L A Y E R 1
P L A Y E R 2
E N M E Y 1
E N M E Y 2
E N M E Y 3
E N M E Y 4

There is a bit of code which copies the "TEST MODE" string into RAM, but it is no longer reachable. There is a pointer table for the remaining text, but it is not referenced anywhere. It is likely that most of the related programming was eventually deleted.

Also, at offset 0xA716:

AREA
STAGE

These two text strings are preceded by several RTS instructions in a row, which are remnants of related programming that was later removed. The Japanese version actually has most of these routines intact, though the code that references them was unfortunately removed.

Regional Differences

The US version, on top of having a completely different (made-up) story, removed a lot of lines and the kidnapping of Norton's sister. Prokop has a different head than Jimmy and also has different colors. Bild is white in the Japanese version and black in the US release. Some of the options have different names between versions. In addition, the music is turned off by default; you have to enter the options and manually turn it on, but even then it doesn't have all the music found in the Japanese version. Both games have a color edit mode, but the Japanese version also lets you change the names of characters.

Title Screen

Japan	US

Character Names

Norton's name (previously localized as Jack Flak & Hack) remained unchanged

Japan	US
Dick	Flynn
Elfin	Echo
Kythring	Al
Jimmy	Prokop
M-Frame	Orbot

Character Select

The select screen theme in the Japanese version is reused from Brawl Brothers, while the US version is given an original one. They also have totally different character portraits: One other minor change is the fact that player 2's highlighted character faces left in the Japanese version and right in the American version.

Japan	US

Special Moves

The animal-themed special move animations were also changed for seemingly no reason. Notice also that the starting credits were changed from 30 to 12 for the US release.

Japan	US

Japan	US

Japan	US

Japan	US

Ending

As an example of the hilarious (made up) localization, Echo's bad ending in the US version says she formed a successful musical band with her friend Wendy. The original Japanese ending, which uses the same picture, says that Elfin pursued a new martial arts training under Wendy's tutelage.

Japan	US

Speaking of endings, the US version also removed Maria's letter from the good ending.