Pokémon Rumble

The player controls Pokémon as they battle other Pokémon in a series of linear dungeons and enclosed arenas. The game features real-time melee-based gameplay, which has been likened to that of Smash TV.

The game uses a Wii Remote held sideways by default, but also supports the Nunchuk, Classic Controller (Pro) and GameCube Controller. Using one of the attachment controllers allows two players to share the same Wii Remote. Controllers can be changed at the Multiplayer booth in the Terminal area after finishing the first stage.

The game was originally planned to also have Pokémon from Gold and Silver and Ruby and Sapphire, but they were not implemented presumably due to WiiWare's 40 megabytes size limit. This gets proven further when it was discovered that the games collection booth was hard coded to not show Pokémon 152 through 388, and Arceus.

A free demo was available on the Wii Shop Channel. It included a number of functions including: The Normal Introduction, a few stages allowing the player to get the feeling of each stage. Pokémon can be recruited and the Terminal can be used. Once a Pokémon is recruited with Power Points of 100 or more, a short video is displayed in which the Battle Royale doors open and then a screenshot appears stating that the demo is over.

Pokémon Rumble received mixed reception from critics, with the game receiving an average score of 59 out of 100 on Metacritic based on nine reviews. Many of the critics discussion centered on whether the game's simple and repetitive hack-and-slash gameplay style justified its $15.00 USD price.

Jack DeVries of IGN gave Pokémon Rumble a 6/10, describing the game as "mindless, but fun" while acknowledging that it lacked depth to sustain interest, and criticized Ambrella for reusing character models from My Pokémon Ranch rather than creating new ones. Nintendo Life's Philip Reed had a more favorable view of Pokémon Rumble, awarding the game 8/10 and calling it "one of WiiWare's more substantial and replayable offerings". Reed acknowledged that the simplicity of the game's hack-and-slash style could make the combat repetitive, but argued that the range of available attacks meant this repetitiveness was largely self-imposed, and he praised the four-player mode as an "frantic" experience well suited to bringing in less experienced players. He also credited the game's Pokémon-collecting hook with boosting its replay value, since not every species appears on every playthrough of a given stage. An earlier hands-on preview from GameSpot's Sophia Tong described the core loop more neutrally as "a really simple game of button-mashing," noting that Pokémon are collected and swapped rather than leveled up or upgraded, and that the outlet had not been able to get a price or release date from Nintendo at the time.