Video Game / Newgrounds Rumble

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Newgrounds Rumble is a Flash game released in 2007 (and subsequently updated up to 2009) by a trio of users (Luis, NegativeONE, and MindChamber). At its core, its a Newgrounds-themed Mascot Fighter — Various icons of Newgrounds culture duking it out until only one fighter/team remains standing.

The story takes place during a series of competitive battles where the champion gets crowned as the new ruler of Newgrounds (dubbed "King of the Portal"). Each character has their own respective goals, whether it be overtaking the throne, surviving/escaping to their homeworld, maintaining order, and/or simply massacring anyone in their way.

The game can be played for free here.

This game contains examples of:

• Adaptational Villainy: Fancy Pants Man's final battle is against Pico and Nene, who are apparently the ones behind his coming here and the attempted assassinations on him. It's bad enough that Piconjo takes Fancy Pants Man's side in this conflict.
• Adaptational Modesty:
  • Convict was shirtless, possibly even nude in his debut "Pico Vs Convict" but appears in Rumble in a black suit with a loose red tie.
  • Piconjo's redesign takes him from a Walking Shirtless Scene in a long loincloth to being dressed normally.
• And the Adventure Continues:
  • Samurai Asshole, unable to find the person responsible for destroying his village, leaves Newgrounds to continue searching.
  • Hank's ending shows him coming to the conclusion that Tricky the Clown was the one who warped him outside of his homeworld and organized a Zerg Rush for his return, aiming to enact his revenge by hunting him down.
• Artificial Stupidity: The game's AI has its fair share of faults that can lead to some very dumb decisions.
  • The Junkyard stage features a crusher that periodically instakills anyone caught underneath. The AI doesn't account for this, meaning its easy to stand right next to the crusher & lure the opponent directly to their demise.
    • Amplified since there's a powerup spawner directly underneath the crusher, and since the AI prioritizes grabbing powerups, they often make a mad dash for the powerup and get themselves killed before they can move out of the way, all without any input on the player's end.
  • Salad Fingers' Projectile Powerup functions more like a high-range melee attack, but he'll still use it at a distance like the other AI and waste the powerup attacking absolutely nothing.
• A.I. Breaker: The enemy AI always follows a set path to the last position your character landed on the ground, making it easy to dupe/manipulate the AI's movement depending on the stage & your character's aerial mobility.
  • Amplified with Salad Fingers, a character heavily dependent on aerial mobility in order to traverse, whose AI instead prioritizes his ridiculously slow walking speed to catch up with his opponents, making him especially easy to dupe/outmaneuver.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Aside from Projectile Powerups, every single firearm functions like a melee attack, only hitting opponents within close-range. This is most notable with Hank, where a majority of his moveset revolves around various guns that uphold this property.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Predictably the case in Piconjo's ending, where he plunges Newgrounds into its Darkest Hour after killing all of its protectors. Convict does this as well, but in his own way by staying hidden and using his Shapeshifter abilities to manipulate Newgrounds from the shadows.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Tankman's ending has a derisive reference to what was then Newgrounds' latest (and most infamous) April Fools' joke; it shows him immediately redesigning the nation in his image, with hard-working employees spending months laboring away at the project, all for the sake of a prank that was notoriously poorly received.
• Buy or Get Lost: There is a sign in the back of Nene's store that reads "HELLO CUSTOMER. This is not a ribrary. No flip flip with Magazines. You buy."
• The Cameo:
  • In Pico's School, Cassandra (in her Penilian form) appears in the background looming over the rubble. Darnell can also be seen on one of his presidency posters.
  • In Nevada, Jebus occasionally flies by to deliver a gunshot, serving as a stage hazard.
• Combat by Champion: Nene's story mode ends with this; after rumors spread of Nene being truly responsible for slaying Convict, Pico decides to resolve the debate by challenging her to a deathmatch to prove that he's stronger. It doesn't turn out well for him.
• Combo Breaker: Precisely blocking a midair attack results in a Parry, which heavily stuns the attacker & leaves them open to counterattacks.
• Combos: One of the biggest gameplay aspects is stringing-together a combo by mashing an attack button. These rarely involve multiple different inputs, but you're able to switch to a different attack mid-combo for potentially powerful results.
• Comeback Mechanic: If a fighter takes alot of damage in a short timespan, they can quickly press the Fierce Attack button to gain a free "rage" power-up (which boosts their damage output).
• Commonality Connection: Piconjo protects Fancy Pants Man in the latter's story because he was once a stick figure like him.
• Crapsack World: Fancy Pants Man's ending outright states Newgrounds to be "a civilization of people who kill anything they don't understand."
• Cycle of Hurting: It's quite easy to do this to the AI with Fancy Pants's neutral normal attack, due to the lack of Mercy Invincibility.
• Dead Person Impersonation: After Nene hangs herself in her ending, Convict employs this to one day destroy Newgrounds from the inside out.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Various Projectile Powerups (especially Alloy's & Pico's) deal very low damage per hit... but they hit an absolutely absurd amount of times.
• Demographic-Dissonant Crossover: Downplayed. The majority of the roster features characters from series that are violent, crass, or unsettling, and then there's Fancy Pants, who originates from a platforming series that has none of the above.
• Doomed Hometown: Samurai Asshole's backstory is that he's searching for the person who destroyed his village.
• Doppelgänger Attack: One power-up creates an intangible clone of your character that follows and attacks alongside them.
• Driven to Suicide: Nene's ending has her hanging herself days after becoming king of the Portal, unable to deal with the pressure.
• Easy Level Trick: Any single player level taking place in the Scrapyard can be finished quickly by luring the computer opponents under the crusher (which is a One-Hit Kill). It even works if the player themself gets crushed as well, in which case the win is automatically given to Player #1. It's downplayed a bit since it's not 100% guaranteed to work, but when pulled off, it makes the battle trivial to win.
• Evil Is Cool: Invoked with Challenge 12, "Royal Grumble Pt. 2", where you play as Piconjo and team up with Convict to fight Pico and Alien Hominid because, as the game puts it, "evil is cooler".
• Evil Versus Evil: Convict's penultimate story level sees him fight Piconjo (because the latter refused to give up his "position").
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Alloy's listed as so in his "Pros & Cons" section, noted for being fast & agile with low health^note although this doesn't fully translate into gameplay
  • Alien Hominid is fast/agile with decent range, but has relatively low health as well as some tricky combos.
  • Despite being listed as Strong & Slow, Samurai Asshole fits this archetype due to having various fast-but-weak attacks in conjunction with very low health.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Regarding Convict's transformations — certain parts of the game (such as his story mode and Nene's ending show that he's able to fully control his transformations, impersonating specific targets in order to fly under the radar. In gameplay, however, he's completely unable to control his transformations at all, simply turning into random fighters at random intervals.
  • Pico pulls out a pair of uzis to threaten Hank in the latter's story mode, despite Pico never actually utilizing his uzis in-game.
• Guest Fighter: Fancy Pants Man counts, since while some of his games are playable on the Newgrounds website, he didn't originate on Newgrounds.
• Hitbox Dissonance: Certain attacks on certain characters (such as Pico's standard attacks on Piconjo) won't connect if the former is directly overlapping with the latter.
• Hit Points: Numerical damage is directly shown with every attack in the game, including items & stage hazards. The only exception is the insta-death crusher from the Junkyard Stage.
• Home Stage: Every fighter has a unique stage associated with them (sans Fancypants & Henchman).
• Human Shield: One of the achievements, titled "Meat Shield", has you trick an opponent into killing their own teammate with a Projectile Powerup.
• Invincibility Power-Up: A golden sword (actually the level 57 icon) serves this function.
• Jack of All Stats: Convict, at least in his original, non-transformed state. He has good-but-not-great stats all around, decent reach with his attacks, and has the added bonus that his attacks don't get any weaker when used in succession unlike the other characters, but he also lacks a projectile.
• Joke Character: Henchman (unlocked by clicking Hank's sunglasses on the character select screen). He has Hank's Mighty Glacier moveset, but does less damage and only has a measly 40 health.^note The average is around 350.One of the secret medals for this game is actually obtained by beating a match as Henchman.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Fittingly, Samurai Asshole uses one.
• Launcher Move: Most fighters have at least one attack with this property, often leading to easy aerial followups.
• Lighter and Softer: The fact that Fancy Pants Man's game series is this trope compared to the other characters' home games is actually a plot point in his route, as the other characters try to kill him because they were against "wholesome, non-violent gaming".
• Limit Break: Projectile Powerups can be obtained at random from item spawners (or by parrying an attack as Hank), replacing the user's Fierce Attack with a unique special attack for each character, which ranges from extremely useful to arguably a downgrade.
• Loading Screen Message Gag: While most of the loading screen messages are genuine gameplay tips, one instead says, "Shaving your pubes will make your weiner look bigger."
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Featuring Pico, Nene, Piconjo, Convict, Salad Fingers, Fancy Pants Man, Hank, Henchman, Samurai Asshole, Tankman, Alien Hominid, Alloy, and P-Bot.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Hank has a unique gimmick where every parry grants him a free Projectile Powerup (as well as a Rage Powerup if he parries multiple attacks in one jump), giving him massive counterplay potential. The downside is his parries don't stun the opponent anymore, making it a bit of a risk/reward system.
  • Taken to the extreme with Convict; he changes into a random fighter at random intervals, forcing the player to quickly adapt to whatever moveset they end up with. Pray you don't get stuck as Henchman.
• Meta Fiction: Fancy Pants Man's story is about how the other Newgrounds characters hate him for being too innocent and peaceful, and ends with him deciding to leave lest Newgrounds' "vicious spirit" change him for good, reflecting how he is not a Newgrounds original character.
• Mighty Glacier: Piconjo has good range & some of the most damaging attacks in the game, but slow movement & high endlag as a result.
  • Salad Fingers has incredibly high range, letting him dish-out strong attacks from a safe distance, but his attacks are very slow, and he's got the worst walking speed by far.
  • Hank has high damage output and a gimmick where parries instantly grant him a powerful projectile attack, but he's very slow & sluggish overall.
• Mirror Match: One of P-Bot's missions in Story Mode has him fighting a second P-Bot with unknown origins.
• Mythology Gag: A whole page's worth.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: You wouldn't wanna get on the bad side of someone literally named "Convict" or "Samurai Asshole".
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Tankman's ending has shades of this, primarily with the banners bearing a "T" symbol with an obvious resemblance to a swastika.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: Some of the game's fighters reuse assets from pre-existing games, most notably Resident Pico and Alloy Arena.
• Not Himself: Samurai Asshole's penultimate mission begins with Pico coming into his garden, oddly eager to destroy the place. His final mission reveals that it was actually Convict (attempting to frame the real Pico).
• Obviously Evil: Convict and Piconjo play this straight, the former being a Red and Black and Evil All Over skeleton and the latter being some kind of lanky zombie version of Pico. However, Convict is aware of this and even declines becoming King of the Portal in his ending because influencing Newgrounds from the shadows is far more efficient than ruling as himself.
• Odd Friendship: Piconjo, of all people, helps Fancy Pants Man in the latter's final stage. "Seems that [he] spent much of his childhood as a carefree stickman, and understands Fancy's plight."
• Once More, with Clarity: Nene's penultimate single player level reenacts Pico vs. Convict, revealing that she was really responsible for capturing him. The last level has Pico himself try to kill her once this gets out to the public.
• One-Hit Kill: The trash compactor in the Junkyard stage squashes anyone who is unlucky to be underneath it, killing them in an instant.
• Rule of Cool: Various attacks fall under this category.
  • Pico's breakdance is conceptually ridiculous but fits as a way to flex on his opponents, literally dancing on them mid-combat.
  • Samurai Asshole has an attack where sticks his katana almost entirely through the floor as he spins around extremely fast, defying the laws of physics twice in order to do something that looks really really awesome.
  • Samurai Asshole's Projectile Powerup has him turn around so he can shoot his pistol in a more stylish pose, sacrificing practicality for coolness.
  • Hank shoots his firearms in various cool/impractical manners, from holding them sideways to spinning around on his back while shooting.
• School Setting Simulation: Pico's stage is a wrecked classroom based on Pico's School.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Fancy Pants Man's ending. Disgusted with the Crapsack World that is Newgrounds, and fearful of the vicious spirit fighting its residents provoked within him, he leaves via the Portal with no intention of ever coming back.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Nene's Ending. She's unable to deal with the pressure of being King Of The Portal and hangs herself days after getting the title (by killing Pico, no less). Convict subsequently takes her place, waiting for the right time to destroy Newgrounds entirely.
• Spotlight-Stealing Crossover: The Pico-based characters have three representatives (four if you count Piconjo). The next-highest is Madness Combat, which has two (really more like one-and-a-half, due to Henchman's... er, deficiencies). Every other series gets a singular representative, leaving about a third of the roster to be Pico-related content.
• Stats Dissonance: Some of the stats listed in the "Pros & Cons" section for each character are inaccurate to how they function in gameplay.
  • The health values are the most notable cases of this, such as Alloy being listed as "Below-Average Health" despite having one of the highest health pools at 370 HP, or Nene & Salad Fingers being listed as "High Health" and "Mediocre Health" respectively, despite both being nearly identical at 310/320 HP.
  • Samurai Asshole is described as Strong but Slow, despite his in-game damage output being fairly low & many of his attacks being on the faster side (especially considering his decent range).
• Status Quo Is God: P-Bot's reason for entering the tournament was to prove himself capable of being more than a simple moderator, but he ends up leaving his newly-earned title as King of the Portal to go back to his original function in his ending.
• Storming the Castle: Invoked a couple times in Story Mode, where certain characters actively travel to Piconjo Manor in order to fight the menace himself.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • P-Bot, a simple bot helping to moderate Newgrounds submissions, is capable of deadly combat prowess & advanced weaponry in this game.
  • Salad Fingers was notably frail & passive in his original series, with any harm done to others being largely unintentional. In Newsgrounds Rumble, however, he's able to fight & fend for himself just as effectively as everyone else.
  • Fancy Pants Man, whose main method of offense in his home series was the Goomba Stomp, becomes an efficient weapon user here (even if it's a pencil).
• Training Stage: The aptly-named Training Room, a neon-green grid arena which serves as the most basic battleground in the game, as well as the only stage without items or music. Its accessible in Training Mode, Versus Mode^note after purchasing it from the store, and Tankman's first story mode mission.
• Unblockable Attack: Projectile Powerups ignore shields altogether, making it easy to rack up high damage (depending on the character).
• Urban Warfare: The stage "Wartorn" takes place in the middle of an urban war landscape.
• Vague Hit Points: Every attack shows the amount of damage dealt numerically, but the health bars don't show any numbers and only calculates the percentage of health that character has left rather than their actual HP value.
• Vague Stat Values: The "Pros & Cons" section makes use of this, referring to certain stats like Health as "High", "Poor", or "Mediocre" without specifying the exact number.
• Victory Is Boring: Once P-Bot becomes King Of The Portal, he realizes how hollow fame is and inconspicuously returns to his job as a website moderator.
• Villains Out Shopping: Inverted in one of Piconjo's missions, wherein he attempts to catch Alloy off-guard at the convenience store.
• We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: Most of Alien Hominid's first encounters with other characters in Story Mode result in a violent battle out of confusion.
  • Subverted in Tankman's Story Mode, where Salad Fingers successfully befriends Alien Hominid before Tankman arrives to kill them both.
• Zerg Rush: Hank's final mission forces him to face dozens of Henchmen, who managed to consolidate while he was gone from the Madness Combat universe.