Let's get ready to Pokémon Rumble!

I was very lukewarm on Pokémon Rumble when it hit WiiWare in 2009. The demos I played seemed to be nothing more than a mindless dungeon crawler. Maybe I didn't give it a good enough chance, because the time I spent with Pokémon Rumble Blast, the first Pokémon game on 3DS, at Nintendo's New York office this week were surprisingly fun.

The Pokémon Rumble series revolves around the idea of wind-up toy Pokémon that battle (or rumble) their way through a variety of randomly generated dungeons. Each Pokémon has an attack or two, and you go through seemingly endless hordes of enemies until you reach a giant boss Pokémon. Along the way, you collect certain fallen Pokémon that are then added to your merry band of monsters.

Now, let's rattle off the Pokébabble. It's got every damn Pokémon in it (all 600+), and while naturally some of them will be harder to find than others, you can catch them all. It makes use of StreetPass, as you can fight opponent's Pokémon and if you defeat them, you can borrow a creature for a level. Also, you can play the game wirelessly with a friend (sadly, no online), and if you are replaying a level that you both completed, you up the chances of obtaining rarer Pokémon.

Rumble Blast is, in all honesty, a pretty mindless affair. You wander around, pressing one of the two attack buttons to wipe out the foes around you. The charm of it, though, is that it's Pokémon. It basically takes the long, slow-paced combat and collectathon aspects of the series and boils it down into simpler terms. That might not appeal to everyone, especially folks who don't dig Pokémon, but it appealed to me during this demo. It was fun, mindless entertainment. Much like the main games in the series, the strategy lies in putting the right Pokémon out there, and you can switch between any character in your collection on the fly.

I went from not caring about this release to caring about it after spending some time with it. It's a new Pokémon game, and it might not be as substantial as Pokémon Black and White, but it might wind up being just as good when it comes out in North America on October 24.