Pocket Rumble

A cute fighting game that carries the spirit of old SNK games on the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Pocket Rumble focuses on reducing the barrier to entry of the genre using a simple two button combo system, while retaining the mind games and exciting strategy people love fighting games for. It's a game in which even a novice could immediately see the metagame after just a bit of practice and explanation, despite how casual it initially appears. It is incomplete as of now, but it looks like it'll become a pretty stellar game once the full release comes out, hopefully sometime this year.

I had a great time! I'm a beginner at fighting games (maybe intermediate at best), and with the simple controls, I had an easier time stringing combos. Also a big plus is that it accepted my super old six button logitech controler as an option unlike most games where I had to buy an Xbox controler to play them properly!

As a serious fighting game player, I think this game captures the competitive element of fighting games in its purest form: the mindgames, and conditioning the opponent. It condenses the fun of the genre down to its purest elements, cutting away the fat, execution barrier, and knowledge requirements, without losing the core essence of the strategic depth. You may have heard the "easy to learn, hard to master" trope before, but never in my opinion has it been done so well as in Pocket Rumble. fighting vets can get long term enjoyment here, and players who have struggled with fighting games can actually play this game with some practice. That said, there is still a ton of room for competitive mastery; the execution barrier is removed, but fighting game fundamentals are still here to master, which is the beauty of the game. Vets will destroy noobs, but noobs actually can learn, because there are no hard motions. After getting bodied by some high level players, I have had rapid improvement after only a day. But mastering the fundamentals and mindgames leaves infinite replay value. The character variety is also quite impressive, despite the 8 character cast. Theres a slice for everybody. People without the ability to do a lot of fast inputs will be comfy with tenchi. Veterans who love twitchy movement and high speed footsies will want to go for Naomi or Parker. Theres even a puppet character (like eddie from guilty gear), as well as a grappler, and more. Bottom line for characters is that it does a great job not only of satisfying different kinds of gamers, but different playstyles too. The game is not done yet, and therefore it is not perfect, as all competitive games have some issues. Certain matchups may be a little too unbalanced, but the foundation here is quite impressive. With some balance tweaks and a few extra characters, the game will truly deserve a strong community. The game is simply great, whether playing casually or pushing yourself to perfection. Don't believe the kind of low steam rating, these are from early access issues and such. TLDR Verdict: this game bridges the gap between fighting game vets and non fighting game players better than any fighter I've seen, and functions very well either casually or competitively.

Good game. But it's early access vaporware. Don't reward the devs for making early access vaporware.

Early Access since 2017. By the way, this was kickstarted.

Still early, very early. Only two playable fighters, but two button controls make this easy to learn, hard to master. Retro sound a style are also awesome. I never knew I was nostalgic for Wonder Swan and Neo Geo Pocket Color games. One of the only fighters I can play online and not get super salty. I played the same guy in ranked, and he mostly beat the tar out of me, for about 30 minutes but I still had tons of fun. 7/10 at current state, but I'm sure it'll get better with more fighers, which will happen about one and month according to the devs.

I bought this game about a year ago when Rising Thunder was shut down, but didn't play it then because lack of players and contet. I started really getting into it 2 months ago when all of the characters and single player content became playable and I have been really enjoying it. Pros +Great gameplay +Diverse roster +GGPO netcode (works well up to 250ms of ping with one frame of GGPO delay added) Neutral(for me they are positives but some players might not like them) * Simplified inputs * Input buffering, so combo timing is easier Negatives -Lack of players when it is day in EU, but at night and evening you can get matches quite easily

If they didn't abandon this It would've been one of my favorite games It's just...unfinished...

Its too bad they never finished this. It had so much potential. But without any difficulty adjustment its just not accessible.

So I actually really like Pocket Rumble as a concept for a game. Everything as the game stands feels responsive and it's actually really fun to lab certain combos out with characters like Hector and Quinn. If you're looking for a very technical review however, I'm not much of a fighting game player, this review is mainly about the lack of anything about this game information or news wise. So I looked up where the last updates for this game could be found, and the last update (IE any information about this game) was found on @CSdoesCS on Twitter. The last time Pocket Fighter was mentioned was on Feb 27, 2021, and judging from the infrequent updates I think this man has either moved on or just doesn't have the manpower to make the changes he wants to the game. This is not an insult to the developer, even I wouldn't blame him if he moved on from this game in the state of it currently. All this to say, Pocket Rumble is probably not going to get the revival most people are looking for unfortunately, the game is most likely just dead in early access period.