REVIEW: The Rumble Fish 2


Title	The Rumble Fish 2
Developer	株式会社3goo
Publisher	株式会社3goo
Release Date	Dec 7, 2022
Genre	Fighting
Platform	PC, PlayStation 4 \| 5, Nintendo Switch, XBOX One, XBOX Series
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

I’m always up to check out a classic fighting game, so when I saw The Rumble Fish 2 was being brought to modern platforms I wanted to check it out. The characters looked fun and the double gauge system seemed pretty interesting. I spent a few hours with this one, and finished a few arcade routes, so now it’s time to share my thoughts. Is this fighter a full on rumble or a lunch room scuffle? Let’s find out.

The story here takes place at the end of the 20th century after a large-scale natural disaster struck the eastern area of a nation. This caused massive loss of life and destroyed commerce in the area. At the beginning of the next century a huge conglomerate PROBE-NEXUS, known as Probe, began to rebuild the area. The dazzling new capital city was called Zone Prime. A few month in, the Probe’s founder announced his retirement. In an undeveloped sector of its western block, in an area known as the slums, PROBE-NEXUS was running underground fighting tournaments to distract folks from the news. The true propose of this and the folks funding it remain a mystery, however.

As with most fighting games, each character has their own unique ending, and beating arcade mode will unlock these. I wasn’t really invested in any of this since the game doesn’t really give you a lot of information on about these characters. The endings are saved in a gallery where you can view character artwork as well. This is very basic and as barebones as they come, which will be a theme in this review when it comes to most things with this game.

Graphically, The Rumble Fish 2 looks decent for a game released in 2005. The game has a lot of jagged edges, but the animations are really smooth. The problem is there are no graphic options for this game. You are stuck with the upscaled 1080p resolution that stretched out screens in order to make them 16:9. Not only this make the game look worse, it throws off the combos a bit since some of them have you bouncing characters off the sides. Another big issue with the PC version is there is no keyboard support. You will have to use a controller if you want to play this one, but you can remap the face buttons at least.

The gameplay here seems pretty basic when you start. Each character has a variety of special moves and combo to choose from. I have to give credit to just how unique each character feels when you choose them. Lots of fighters end up having characters that play very similar, but Rumble Fish 2‘s cast really does have variety to fit any style. When you throw in the two meter system that can give you special attack and defense move, this one ends up having quite a bit of depth as well.

There aren’t many modes to speak of here. This is a very straight-forward port without a lot of bell and whistles. There is story mode, survival mode, and an online and offline versus mode. If you can get a match on the PC version, it will run pretty well with the rollback net code, but there are no lobbies so when you finish a match it just kicks you back to the menu. This feels really lazy for a game they are charging folks $30 for.

At the end of the day, The Rumble Fish 2 is a decent fighting game that has received a very lazy port. The lack of graphic options, keyboard support and the barebones online multiplayer really hold this one back. I feel like the asking price is a bit high, and the fact they cut three characters from this release to milk another $12 out of folks just drives home how I feel about this one. If you catch it on a deep sale and love old school fighters you may get some enjoyment here, but there are much better options out there at the full asking price.