After a year of leaving the spotlight and continued development under the radar, Cardboard Robot Games has brought back Pocket Rumble to Kickstarter.
The fighting game takes inspiration from SNK’s portable games on the Neo Geo Pocket, with an eye to lowering execution and memorization barriers for more accessibility.
While the Neo Geo Pocket games still necessitated replicating complex joystick motions, such as half circles and diagonal charges, Pocket Rumble reduces them all to hard press motions. You need only press down-forward or down-back and one of two buttons to execute them.
Buffering, an advanced fighting game technique, is also an element in Pocket Rumble, and is easier to pull off. While your character is in the middle of an animation, you can input the motions for a specific move, and it will immediately come out as soon as the animation ends.
Everything about the game is catered to reaching a wider audience, as the game’s first eight characters display some ethnic / racial diversity, and frame data is readily available for each move. There will even be an onscreen frame data bar. The game not only comes with a fully featured Training Mode, but a completist Lesson Mode that lays out literally everything about the game you would want to learn.
To better give you an idea of how the game plays, check out this tutorial video for their shoto character, Tenchi:
Cardboard Robot Games have gone above and beyond their initial pitch for sure, and they have even more content promised, including a large number of guest characters from other indies, full mod support based on their engine, Lua, and most insane of all, a full Neo Geo Pocket Color port. This will be a complete ROM to be given away for free, and legally playable via emulator or flashcart.
If Cardboard Robot Games gets the $ 22,500 goal, they will be able to bring the game to Steam. Stretch goals bring a story mode, various DLC characters, Vita and 3DS ports and a remix album into the mix as well.
Above all else, Pocket Rumble promises to give everyone the tools they need to be a fighting game master, assuming that fighting game is Pocket Rumble. Really, who wouldn’t want that taken off the bucket list? Check out the official Kickstarter pitch video below and help fund the game here.
