The original Digimon Rumble Arena is best.

User Rating: 7.5 | Digimon Rumble Arena PS
I got this game back when I was in my stages of Digimon-obsession, when I was around nine or ten years old. I won't deny that even now, after nine years since I first watched the show, I'm still a fan. I got this game out of my Digimon love, played it and I must say I enjoyed it a lot. Not a lot of beat-'em-ups appeal to me, but this one most certainly did. It's a basic beat-'em-up with no real story behind it, so I can't really fill you in there. Basically, you just fight other Digimon. What's more, for those who have watched the anime, you find yourself battling with the Digimon from the show, which is a nice plus for the Digimon anime fans.

You get to choose between nine Digimon at first, all of which are popular from the anime series, from the first, second and third series. As you play, you will eventually unlock other Digimon to play as, most of which appear in the anime. So, to unlock all of the Digimon, it requires you to play through the game with various different Digimon, meaning that there is quite a bit to do so long as you still have Digimon to unlock.

The battles are fairly interesting. There are items which you can choose to pick up which can either give you an edge over your opponent, or set you back. There are too many items to go through, as there are so many, but it's nice to know that not all of them are going to help you, nor are all of them going to hinder you.

By attacking your opponent, or getting attacked yourself, your blue bar will fill up and once it's full, your Digimon can digivolve to it's next stage, supposedly becoming even more powerful, though sometimes it feels like you've just become a different Digimon and power comes nowhere into it. What's more, there is only one Digivolution in this game, so don't expect to see all the Digivolutions per Digimon. When your Digimon digivolves, there's a nice little touch from the anime, where their human partners will tell them to digivolve, before the "Digivolution" stage, which is like the one from third series of Digimon.

If you do get bored of the single player, you can have enjoyable multiplayer matches with your friends, or enjoy one of the few minigames. The minigames aren't brilliant, but is enough to keep you occupied if you're really bored.

Digimon usually have two different special abilities, much like what you'd expect to find on the show. For example, Gatomon can attack with Cat's Eye Hynotism, or Lightning Claw. On top of that, Digimon can also attack normally, with punches and stuff.

The graphics are pretty good, considering it is a Playstation game, and it runs quite smoothly I find. The music I found to be pretty good as well. The voice-acting for the most part is okay, though it's fair to note that the voices for Takato and Gatomon are very different to what they are in the anime.

Overall, I'd say this game is a great fighting game, one that Digimon fans might enjoy. Probably the best Digimon game out there at the moment, in my opinion.