King of the iron fish

What are Rumble Fish? Yeah I had to ask myself that question as I sat down to check out this new fighting game. I had never heard of the series until the game showed up in my inbox and for good reason. This series was predominately available in arcades. There was a PS2 port of the first game, but outside of that it really didn’t make waves. That makes sense as the time it was released the market was dominated by the genre. Everyone and their brother had a fighting game to check out and much like today the discussion was dominated by only a handful of games. Rumble Fish 2 is a sequel, but a sequel that was released back then and while it is nice to have it now, there are not likely a lot of waves that this fish will be making.

While you may not have heard of Rumble Fish you definitely know its developer. Dimps has been around a long time. They have worked with Bandai Namco on Dragonball titles as well as contributing to Street Fighter IV for Capcom. It is no surprise that Rumble Fish 2 has a lot of the same DNA found in Capcom’s series. The animated backgrounds and even some of the mechanics were born here and you can tell that Dimps loves its craft. It still feels like a game of its time though. Rumble Fish 2 is more of a piece of history that is fun to revisit. The mechanics are hard to go back to now.

MSRP: $29.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch
Price I’d Pay: $19.99

Mechanics are always a big part of fighting games and Rumble Fish 2 has plenty to break down. There are visual mechanics called Parts Crush. It is reminiscent of games of that era where during battles parts of clothing would break off or characters would show damage after big hits. The cool part here is that it lasts between rounds. There is a guard meter to keep players from turtling too much during fights and well as breaker moves to push past. There is a dash and even block recovery. The game has great mechanics to dole out, but unless you are playing with friends the computer AI is also reminiscent of those golden arcade days, meaning brutal.

Every character in the game feels plucked out of the ‘how to create a fighting game character’ manual of the early aughts. What makes them unique though are the gauge meters. Every character has both an offensive and defensive meter that has three bars for various attacks. Build up all three of both and you can execute a critical finisher. There is also a unique bar for each character that is tied to their play style. The mechanics are fun, but nothing we haven’t seen before. The moves feel like Street Fighter and the systems involved are easy to pick up. I just didn’t find a lot to keep me coming back for mastery.

So what about content? Rumble Fish 2 comes packed with quite a bit to do. There is your standard arcade and survival modes. The versus mode is both offline and online so plenty of options to take on your friends. Time attack and training are also included as per usual. All of the standard fare is here. There are even unlockable characters, which used to be commonplace before the rise of DLC. The arcade mode has a story and it is a typical goofy affair with a big bad hosting the tournament and some one-liner dialogue that is perfect for the era. Overall this is a solid game as far as content is concerned.

As I mentioned the characters feel ripped out of a handbook. Rumble Fish 2 overall looks exactly like you expect it to. It feels like a game you have seen before. The colorful characters animate well and the backgrounds are neat. I like the design and it runs great, but there is nothing here that stands head and shoulders above the four thousand other games like it. The music is catchy enough, but I won’t be humming any of these tunes anytime soon.

Rumble Fish 2 is a great game for people like me who enjoy solid fighting games. It won’t stick with most players beyond initial contact though. It feels like it borrows more than it innovates and in a sea of familiar brawlers that is rough. I enjoyed my time, but will likely forget it exists in a month or two. Then one day I will be browsing my game library and think to myself “hey, that was a pretty cool game!”

Review copy of game provided by publisher.