Forgotten phone app games- Rhythm of Fighters

 By Mark Rodriguez

Phone app games have a fickle life, even moreso that games on XBox Live and the Playstation Network. Several games have come and gone, such as SNK All Star and Captor Clash, and soon KOF All Star will also be de-listed at the end of October 2024. One such games that caught my was Rhythm of Fighters. Sadly it only lasted a little over a year, hitting the play shops June of 2014 and getting de-listed on July of 2015. Here's a quick look at it and a stroll down memory lane on a game that mixes KOF with the Dance-Dance concept.

In Rhythm of Fighters, you select different SNK characters and pit them against other with different courses, divided by several tracks based on the memorable games. At first you can select from Kyo Kusanagi, Athena Asemiya and Ryo Sakazaki, but as you continue to play and clear the stages, you unlock more courses and tracks. Some of the opponents you run into are Terry Bogard, Iori Yagami and Nakoruru. Unfortunately you're gonna have to buy more characters, support characters and music packs. New tracks open up for sale like the KOF 99 music pack or the Real Bout Fatal Fury pack.

The gameplay is simple. A song starts to play and buttons appear, which you must tap at the right moment to match the beat. Every time you get a sequence right, your character either attacks the opponent, or blocks an attack. When you mess up though, the opponent attacks you. There are several buttons to look for. The regular buttons just require you to tap the screen. The 'swish' buttons have you slide your fingers across the screen in the direction the arrow faces. There's one where you have to press down and not let go until the right time, and another where you press down and have to swish in the right direction at the right time. 

Tapping or swishing anywhere on the screen does the trick, so you don't have to tap directly onto the buttons themselves. You don't have to defeat all the opponents to clear the stage, you just need to survive by the time the song is over to win. However, later harder stages will throw challenges like 'must survive with 30% health' or 'must not miss more than 20 times'.. The more you level up, the more damage you can dish out to your opponents as well.

Aside from the characters you use, there are also extra support characters based on other SNK games that affect the gameplay, like Mudman from World Heroes restores your HP for every hit you land on the opponent, and the Mars People from the Metal Slug games make the opponent's Super Special Move do 0 damage to you once per round.

You can play the game arcade mode to finish the course and unlock more courses and tracks, and there's also free mode where you can test your skill on some new tracks for fun.

My Opinions-

This is a pretty fun and addicting game, and since this was made specifically for a touchscreen phone, it's way easier to play than an actual arcade game converted to an iPhone game. It's a delightful romp through memory lane as fans can point out what games the soundtracks come from, and what obscure games some of the Support characters are from. I had fun playing it, and especially liked how the swish button sounds matched so perfectly with Yuri's Diet song. Songs like Nakoruru's theme get amazing remixes, while others from the newer games like King of Fighters XIII are so good, they're ripped right out of the arcade. The game even features actual songs from the recent SNK slot machines played at casinos in Japan.

The was so much fun that even one of my friends that wasn't really into fighting games couldn't put the game down. If anything, it's a testament to just how catchy the classic Neo Geo tunes are.

Overall, it was a lot of fun and it's a shame it was only around for a year. Had they waited a few years, with updates along the way of course, they could have added KOF 14 and 15 characters and soundtracks. Either way, this was a fun stroll through memory at a time where I was still new to phone app games. Did you play this game? Let us know in the comments!