I was browsing PS2 roms and Rumble Roses came up. I never knew it was a Konami joint- I assumed it was published by, I don't know, whatever company did those Oneechanbara: Bikini Zombie Samurai Squad games.
I looked into it and the game was developed by Yukes, a studio that did a ton of officially licensed WWE games, and it ran on the same engine they had developed for those games. Rumble Roses also had some amusing high-level Konami crossovers- Akira Yamaoka apparently did some tracks for the OST and some of the wrestlers made it into MGS3: Subsistence's Metal Gear Online as playable characters (despite initial protests from Hideo Kojima, apparently.) There were seemingly also only two games in the franchise- the PS2 original and a Xbox 360 sequel that not even the original game's fans liked. I assumed there had been two or three games on the PS2 alone.
I just find it amusing that 20 years ago you could have a major publisher release high-profile, prestigious franchises like Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania or Silent Hill alongside Titty Slapfight Simulator
I had the 360 sequel as a demo and I played around with it a bit. These games are 1,000% masturbation simulators with the submission holds and free camera that lets you zoom in on the bouncing heaving booba.
I have a vague memory of me and a bunch of friends downloading that demo in like high school when we were hanging out at someone's house. Pretty sure the humour value was exhausted in like 10 minutes
Tecmo did it first with a whole studio dedicated to Titty Slapfight Simulator, to be fair
Was Tecmo ever a really high-profile publisher on par with Konami in that period? The only games I know from them are the Tomonobu Itagaki Ninja Gaidens, Dead or Alive and Fatal Frame. I guess they also do the Dynasty Warriors games?
Dead or Alive is different from Rumble Roses in that it actually has some cred as a fighting game series and was known for being technically impressive- it just also had a bunch of jiggle physics and panty shots in it. Rumble Roses was only ever seen as tacky, horny schlock on the level of the DOA: Xtreme Volleyball franchise
I think they had some big games during the NES era - some sports games (Tecmo Super Bowl was a big one), some stuff that was big in Japan (like 3 kingdoms and Nobunagas Ambition), the original Ninja Gaidens, and maybe some other action platformers. That was all before my time, though.
You're right on DoA having some legitimacy as a fighting game. DoA walked (as a softcore porn game) so Rumble Roses could run (as a softcore porn game) lmao
Yeah, Tecmo was kind of a B-list dev in the arcade days - not unknown, but not a group you’d mention alongside big names like Konami, Capcom or whatnot.
Star Force was their biggest thing at that point. They had a few breakout hits like Rygar and Silk Worm (which had a really good run on British home computers due to a solid porting effort by The Sales Curve) but otherwise their stuff mostly just became cult classics if it got noticed much at all.
