Rumble Roses



In 2004, Konami decided to put a foot in a genre that is rarely touched by video game companies, the wrestling genre which in the last years was in the hands of THQ, the holder of the WWE license (well, at least outside Japan). However, to the surprise of a lot of people, Konami announced that this game would be a pure woman-wrestling game instead of a game with sweaty men (this may have been related to the announcement of Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball around that time). The end result was a big Fan Service extravaganza, with 10 ladies -- each with her own Face and a Heel persona -- wearing quite revealing outfits, appealing to various fetishes. Aside from these regular in-ring costumes, they would also wear swimsuits for beach-side mud wrestling matches. Fanservice aside, Rumble Roses had actually good gameplay and nice graphics.

The story modes for each wrestler persona are also notable in a B-movie way. But let's go into a little more detail. It's set up more like a Fighting Game than a Wrestling Game. Anesthesia, the Big Bad of the series, wants to take over the world. She plans to use a wrestling tournament to do it, offering a large cash prize to the winner as an incentive. She plans to take the DNA of the tournament winner to make an unstoppable cyborg army. Each of the girls has their own reason for being involved in the tournament. Reiko Hinamoto is trying to live up to her mother's legacy and search for her lost sister. Aisha is obsessed with a rematch against Dixie Clements, who she was never able to beat. Makoto Aihara is an Olympic judoka seeking competition. Candy Cane wants the cash prize to save the orphanage she grew up in. Miss Spencer enters the tournament accidentally while trying to chase down a recalcitrant runaway student (Candy Cane). Anyway, at the end of the tournament, the player fights one of Anesthesia's cyborgs, Lady X, and whoever wins goes home happy.

As right now there is one Sequel, Rumble Roses XX for the Xbox 360. It introduced three new modes - tag team, "Queens Match" and street fight - as well as a very unelaborate create-a-wrestler feature. It also introduced "Superstar" personas for each character's Face and Heel modes. Unfortunately, it featured no storyline mode at all, and an incredibly labyrinthine and time-consuming method of unlocking characters and rewards. Additionally, the "extras" like Queens Mode, Street Fight, the shoddy create-a-wrestler system and the playable bear proved very unpopular overseas. While Rumble Roses was generally considered a decent game, Rumble Roses XX was enough of a flop that it seems to have brought the series to an end.

Now with a Character sheet


 * Beach Episode: There's a beach arena. There's also the option to wrestle in swimsuits. Oh, and by the way, there's also a mud wrestling match, which takes place at said beach arena, and the only selectable outfits for that match type are the swimsuits.
 * Damn You, Muscle Memory!: RR has the same control scheme as the WWE SmackDown series, but the actual buttons aren't the exact same, so get ready to run headlong into your opponent a few times when you meant to grapple them.
 * Defeat by Modesty: Sort of. Using a hold that "presents" your opponent to the audience in a suggestive way fills the embarrassment meter, and if it fills to the end it triggers humiliation mode, a temporary stun that opens up special finishing moves, and a special victory type. Some maneuvers add to the attacker's meter, or to both, if it puts them in a compromising position. There's a special match type that only allows victory by humiliation.
 * Everything Is Worse With Bears: Subverted in The Black Belt Demon's entrance.
 * But played incredibly straight with the playable bear in Rumble Roses XX.
 * Evil Costume Switch / Good Costume Switch
 * Face & Heel: Gets a little weird. See, each character has a 'face' and a 'heel' persona. But, for example, Bloody Shadow is pretty clearly a face, yet because she's darker than her alter ego Judgment, is labeled the heel persona. Same goes for Candy Cane to Becky. Likewise, Anesthesia (the face persona) is lighter than Dr. Cutter despite also being presented as evil. Most characters get the heel/face thing straight though.
 * Fan Service: The main selling point of the game, really.
 * Foe Yay: Almost everybody pretty much pairs off for this, but specifically Dixie and Aisha.
 * Foreign Fanservice: Dixie, Miss Spencer.
 * Franchise Killer: Rumble Roses XX
 * Guilty Pleasure: Admit it. The game certainly does.
 * Idol Singer: Reiko and Makoto.
 * Jiggle Physics: Yyyyup.
 * The Jimmy Hart Version: Quite a few, actually. The opening song (which is also Dixie's theme as a face), is a cover of David Lee Roth's "Yankee Rose", Ms. Spencer's theme sounds very similar to Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." Also, Reiko's theme as a face is one of many official remixes of Konami's rather popular Dance Dance Revolution song "Look to the Sky"; and Makoto's theme as a face sounds very much like "Cha La Head Cha La". Evil Rose's theme "Pluck The Roses!" may very well have been inspired by Disturbed's "Down With The Sickness" (If the similarity is indeed intentional, then considering the lyrics of the original song, it's very, very appropriate for someone like Evil Rose).
 * Leotard of Power: Noble Rose/Evil Rose, Bloody Shadow/Yasha.
 * Luke, I Am Your Father: Evil Rose is actually Reiko's Brainwashed and Crazy older sister. Lady X is Kamikaze Rose, Reiko and Evil Rose's mother.
 * Not quite. She is a cyborg made from her DNA.
 * Male Gaze: Everything.
 * The Minnesota Fats: Dixie to Aisha.
 * As a more minor case, Aigle to Makoto.
 * Moe Couplet: Reiko and Dixie; Miss Spencer and Candy Cane; Makoto and Aigle.
 * My Hero Zero: Reiko as a face is nicknamed "Zero Fighter" (having the word stamped on the outfit helps).
 * Ninja: Bloody Shadow and her alter ego, Judgement.
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: Noble Rose is blatantly "inspired" by Cutey Honey. Aisha is sort of a portmanteau of a few different pop starlets, including Britney Spears, Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Lopez.
 * Also there's Becky (Candy Cane's face gimmick), who looks like a cross between Britney at the start of her career and Emma Bunton.
 * Candy Cane is a teenage punk rocker from Canada. Although she is a lot "meaner" than Avril, the similarity is obvious.
 * Obvious Beta: Rumble Roses had a couple of really blatant flaws in the AI ("ignore the running opponent", "continually go for pins in submission-only matches" and the usual "just doesn't work right outside the ring"), one completely finished ring that just wasn't included in the final version along with a couple partly-finished ones, a match type that wasn't actually selectable (although you could configure the rules to get the same thing).
 * Rumble Roses XX's labyrinthine unlocking system is believed to be the result of inadequate playtesting.
 * The One Guy: Sebastian the Clown is an unlockable in Rumble Roses XX.
 * Pro Wrestling Is Real
 * Ridiculously Human Robot: Lady X/Lady X Substance/Lady X Subsistence.
 * Start of Darkness: Conveniently provided in the introduction to the Heel storylines of normally Face characters.
 * Stripperiffic: Well, of course.
 * Super Move Portrait Attack: All the wrestlers' finishing moves fit this trope.
 * That Girl Is Dead: The essence of some of the Roses' responses to their former friends' attempts to get through to them post-Heel-turn.
 * Third Person Person: Aigle/Killer Khan
 * Virtual Paper Doll: In Rumble Roses XX, there are outfits that can be unlocked, although the process of doing so is as labyrinthine as everything else in the game. The girls also come with a slider that can cause them to gain muscle or gain fat, turning them into Amazonian Beauties or Big Beautiful Women. This slider is adjusted by which moves you use in the matches.