Super Pokémon Rumble

The monsters of Super Pokémon Rumble are like none that you have come against before - they’re just little toys who move independently and harbour dreams of becoming the Rumble Champion of Toyland. Players take control of these ambitious tiny trinkets and charge them through levels of real-time melee combat.

Each Poké-toy can have up to two moves that can be used to improve their defences, such as Double Team’s evasion improvement, or - more commonly - attack rivals. Unlike the mainline Pokémon games, you can use moves as much as you like - and you’ll be needing them a lot. Enemies come thick and fast, but are quite easily dispatched whether you want to take them on at long range with Snivy or charge them head on with Tepig.

 

For you are not locked to a single Pokémon; you can switch at any time by tapping X and skipping quickly down a menu that inhabits the touch-screen. Pikachu is the only character at your disposal initially, but almost immediately other toys from all generations of Pokémon will drop onto the battlefield for collection, the rivals that you defeat waiting to be added into your team. All toys retain their established elemental types, and they are used in the same way in Super Pokémon Rumble: a grass Pokémon will be more effective against a water type and deplete their HP more readily, a water type will put out a fire type in no time, and so on. The more you collect, the more prepared you’ll be for any encounter.

It’s especially necessary to pay attention to types, and have a decent number of plastic pets as back up, when coming up against the boss battles that end each area - supersized toys that are more difficult to best, evolved or legendary Pokémon, aided by plenty of standard cohorts. Pick an advantageous type and they’ll go down in no time, but mess around and they will not hesitate to drain your HP. When a toy’s HP hits zero they are no longer usable and are disposed - broken, we suppose - and you are forced to switch to a new one. Defeating a boss will complete the area and might allow you to grab a powerful new ally of a high level. Once you have gained a strong enough Pokémon you can enter rumble competitions. These are big arena contests where it’s every Pokémon for itself in a fight to declare the ultimate plaything.