Digimon Rumble Arena

Digimon Rumble Arena is a series of 2.5D Fighting Games centred around the Digimon franchise, and are among the few Digimon games which are tied into any of the anime series. The series plays not unlike Super Smash Bros, except it retains the traditional fighting game health bar. Similar to the situation with the western renaming of Digimon World DS and its sequels, it's only really a series in the west; the Japanese names are significantly different from each other

Digimon Rumble Arena (Digimon Tamers: Battle Evolution in Japan) was released for PlayStation as a tie-in to the then-ongoing Digimon Tamers anime series, and so the stylistic influence of Tamers is the most prevalent in the game. Despite that, all three then-current series of Digimon were near-equally represented. Most playable characters have access to one evolutionary form, almost uniformly the character's final form (Wormmon being the exception). The Japanese version's soundtrack consisted of remixes of tracks from the anime, all of which were cut and replaced in the translated version. It sold rather well.

Digimon Rumble Arena 2 (Digimon Battle Chronicle in Japan) was a multiplatform release for the PlayStation 2, Game Cube and Xbox. The game's scope was expanded to include characters from Digimon Frontier. However, the game's focus was clearly on the characters of Digimon Adventure, with all eight main Digimon playable; every other series represented got just two representative Digimon at best. For most playable characters, two Evolutionary Levels are now available. Being that it was released at a time with no ongoing Digimon anime series to support it, it was much less of a commercial success than its predecessor.

See also Digimon Battle Spirit, which is pretty much the same thing for Game Boy Advance and Wonder Swan.

Ready? TROPE!

 * Did Not Do the Research: In the second game, Veemon and Gatomon's evolutionary chains, while certainly not implausible in the broader Digimon canon, are downright strange by the standards of the anime and never happened. This is particularly glaring in light of how their default evolutionary lines would've worked just as well or even better.
 * Difficult but Awesome : The wargreymon's. Knowing how to effectively use Great tornado and Black tornado are the first step to effectively use them but mastering that allows you to jump around the field in seconds, travel through the screen faster than anyone on the cast and a good dodging/attacking/combo tool in general. Its just that good.
 * Elemental Powers / Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The first game divided all playable Digimon between elements, pretty much completely disregarding established canon in the process with respect to the choice of elements and elected affiliation.
 * Playing with Fire: Agumon, Veemon, Guilmon, BlackWarGreymon, Omnimon, Reapermon, Imperialdramon Paladin Mode
 * Making a Splash: Gabumon, Gatomon, Impmon
 * Green Thumb: Patamon, Wormmon, Renamon, Terriermon
 * Joke Character: Neemon in the second game.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Even without considering evolved forms as separate characters, both games have a rather sizable cast.
 * Mascot Fighter: For the anime.
 * Rank Inflation: Inverted. Rumble Arena 2 features a Rookie > Champion > Ultimate evolution ladder and the entire cast of the 1st season amongst other franchise favorites. To prevent characters who had Mega stages from skewing gameplay, Megas take the place and function of Ultimates on their evolution ladders. Some evolutions, such as Greymon > War Greymon and Garurumon > Metal Garurumon were popular with the fans because they were considered to have a better thematic flow than the ones presented in the cartoons.
 * Secret Characters:
 * Digimon Rumble Arena: Reapermon, BlackWarGreymon, Impmon and Imperialdramon Paladin Mode. Under certain circumstances, all the evolved forms can also be unlocked as fighters independent of their base forms.
 * Digimon Rumble Arena 2: BlackAgumon, BlackGabumon, BlackGuilmon, Duskmon, Diaboromon, MaloMyotismon, Omnimon, and Neemon.
 * SNK Boss: Reapermon from the first game is a particular offender, as he can spam his Grim Slasher Special multiple times in a row, destroy your guard almost instantly, has better guard than the rest of the cast, and has ridiculous amount of damage done from his attacks.