Taro Yamada is the main protagonist of a 1991 Japanese-exclusive action RPG game named
Rent-A-Hero, which was released on SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive and used the same graphic engine as Sword of Vermillion. The game follows him moving to the town of Corja in Japan alongside his family and younger sister Alyssa, after his eccentric father changed jobs. During their house-warming party, he ordered pizza from 'Sensational Cafeteria' (or SECA in short) and instead received the Super Energy Combat Armor (coincidence by name? - as a part of the "Rent-A-Hero" program) by accident, which gave him superhuman strength and other gadgets. After realizing that he is required to pay a fee to rent the armor, Taro decided to become a titular part-time hero for hire (who looks like
Captain Commando), performing various odd-jobs for the townspeople of Corja such as delivering food or finding missing children, before ending up in more intensive missions involving corporate theft, counterfeit money and mafia.
Instead of traditional turn-based battles, Taro will face enemies in a similar format to 2D fighting games, akin to Street Fighter and others, which was an unusual innovation for the RPG genre at a time. The game was a self-parody of SEGA, a decade before Segagaga was released (with a same-named protagonist), alongside cultural references of Sentai, American superheroes and Japan's culture/society between the 80's and 90's.
Despite being lesser-known compared to other Genesis games, Rent-A-Hero has proven to be popular thanks to it's comical tone and self-aware humor, having gained a modern reputation as one of SEGA's fondly-remembered cult classics. The game is one of the 42 pre-installed games on SEGA Genesis Mini's Japanese release, the Dreamcast/Xbox remake (Rent-A-Hero No. 1, which had a cancelled English adaptation) with
Segata Sanshiro on it (which also has beat 'em up sections akin to Spikeout), a
live stage show in Japan and had
a movie/film in works. He even made appearances in Shenmue as a
capsule toy, a poster on Sarah & Jacky's stage in Virtua Fighter 2, and finally,
Fighters Megamix with
his own vocal theme from Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, where he fought various characters such as Virtua Fighters themselves, Fighting Vipers and of all things, Hornet from Daytona USA. A idea of people renting hero suits was later revived by SEGA in a Nintendo 3DS game called
Hero Bank.
For his moveset, as a tokusatsu-inspired fighter, Taro is able to perform various martial arts moves such as punches and kicks, but he also has
projectile attacks (a slashing projectile's likely named Sonic Cutter), even being able to charge up for powerful special moves in Rent-A-Hero No. 1 (techniques like Energy Sword, Dragon Thunder which acts like
's Power Wave in Fighters Megamix below, Burning Claw, Self Recover, Space Barrier, etc. - Ctrl + F in
this page). Borrowed from both the original game and Fighters Megamix (with his command/move list below), Taro's Combat Armor has a battery meter which depletes over time. Once it drops to zero, his armor wil shut down and disappear, making him weaker in stats and unable to use special moves until he's KO'd, which fully refills his suit meter again.
Taro's female counterpart,
Hiroko, who has appeared in various promotional materials, appearently dolls (from what I read on Hardcore Gaming) and even an afore-mentioned live stage show, would also appear in his All-Star Move consisting of a tag-team beatdown or potentially work as his alternate costume, akin to some characters (such as Dragon Quest's Heroes and Fire Emblem's characters like Robin, Corrin and Byleth) in Smash.
