The surprise hit for the DS

Fact it, Super Smash Brothers was one of the biggest surprises to hit the Nintendo 64. The game was a pretty simple delivery of fan service backed by Nintendo’s funds and various lovable characters and Hal Laborites diverse and endlessly creative development know how to make a 2.5d fighting game that many would and still would not forget. I, myself, got Super Smash Bros. right when it came in 1999 with much excitement and was thoroughly satisfied with it as I was with mostly all of Hal Laboratories’ previous titles. But as more of my friends got into Super Smash Bros. I found myself slowly waning away from the series thanks in large part to the Dreamcast which reminded me of many other 2-D and 3-D fighters that I grew up on like Soul Blade, Tobal No.1, Darkstalkers and plenty more with it’s large catalog of new stellar fighting games like King of fighters 98/99, Garou: Mark of Wolves, and especially Street Fighter III: Third Strike all of which had a wee bit [or a lot more depending on which title] depth and less accessibility [something that I prefer from a fighter] than Smash Bros. thus allowing me to forget much about the title. When Capcom pulled out home ports to Power Stone 1 and it’s sequel, both of which were excellent alternatives to Super Smash Bros., I was asking myself the name of “that cute fighting game Nintendo released a few years back”. When Nintendo released Super Smash Bros. sequel, Super Smash Bros.: Melee for the Gamecube I was at first mildly interested in it until it quickly became the ‘go-to’ title for the whole Gamecube’s lifespan as much as Halo did for the X-Box. No offense to many of my friends and family out there who are fans of Super Smash Bros. Melee, but I would seriously wish you bring another multiplayer title to our parties and get togethers for your Cube besides Melee for you killed it multiple times with a large bat and fire.

With that being said, I couldn’t be sure how I would enjoy Nintendo’s new foray in the fighting genre with Jump Superstars when it was announced late in 2004 for the DS. Sure it used characters that spanned the long history of one of the most popular manga compilation magazines in Japan [with such big hit titles like One Piece, Naruto, and Dragonball Z, all of which have cameo characters in Jump Superstars], Shounen Jump, but was that enough? The tired and true question of the quality of a dreaded licensed game reared it’s ugly head. Jump Superstar’s developer Ganbario was the developer of many half decent games based on the One Piece franchise over the years after all [though I did not I know this at the time I started paying attention to Jump Superstars] could Nintendo help push their talents further? Would the game manage to differentiate itself from Super Smash Brothers enough to make me, a very strong critic of ports, remakes, and ‘loose’ sequels, happy? Well I took the ultimate risk and imported Jump Superstars alongside some other select titles before I got my DS last winter and now i can say that was one of the best game decisions I made last year by and large.

As already mentioned Jump Superstars answers the question of otaku all over the world: What if characters from everything from Dragonball Z to Rurouni Kenshin from the Japanese [and American] Shonen Jump were put together in one fighting game? Such a question could make you liable for a slap a few years ago for it just did not seem possible that such a game could come out. But game companies are well known for bending over backwards for fans sometimes as the Alien vs Predator series of games that spanned many a console and developer [anyone remember the arcade beat em up AvP from Capcom back in 1993 that started it all :)?!], Capcom’s Dungeon and Dragons Japanese exclusive arcade beat em up games, Vs game seires [inclluding Marvel vs Capcom, Capcom vs SNK, SNK vs Capcom Chaos, the Japanese exclusive Namco X Capcom, and more], and [sic] Robocop vs Terminator proved. But here we are with a such game that is published by none other than Nintendo who are known fior thier perfectionism as both developer and publisher and it shows here in spades. The battles in Jump Superstars can have 2-4 players fighting in them at once, not unlike Super Smash Brothers. Also similar to Nintendo’s super fighting classic, the game uses a very simplistic system for it’s controls. You have four buttons to be mainly concerned with: light attack, heavy attack, super attack, and jump. The attack buttons can be combined with the d-pad to allow for more moves to be done. You can also guard by holding down on the D-pad or pressing the shoulder buttons. I would personally much prefer a more typical 2-D fighting game controls akin to a typical Street Fighter [having to do quarter circle on a the d-pad in combination with a button to do special moves and so on] and perhaps some form of a parry/counter system [as seen in the Street Fighter III pseudo-series] along with a grapple system in Jump Superstars to get a little more depth to it’s basic combat, but as it stands, I can still find as much enjoyment in Jump Superstar’s simple controls as I can with Dragonball Z: Super Saiyan Warriors for the GBA since both provide quick to the point fighting engines that work well on portable consoles. Plus, Jump Superstars managed to go well beyond Super Saiyan Warrior’s depth thanks to a special ‘Koma system’ used for everything from character selection/switching, power ups, and various battlefield effects. The Koma system works with panels freom notable scenes from the many manga that appears in it. You have to take these scenes and place them on a 4x5 grad that appears on the bottom touch screen of the DS while the fighting appears on the top of the scren during battle. There are three types of Koma that do different things when you touch them and are all different sizes. Help Koma are all only 1 block big and more often than not feature face shots from every main and secondary characters from a manga series. When tounched Help Koma keep to their namesake and boost the powers the character your currently playing as from everything including power to speed. Battle Koma take up 4-6 blocks are feature characters that you actually play as in battle. If you have more than one battle koma battle equipped during a battle you can switch between them simplily by tounching the character you want to switch to. Battle Koma can also be used for an intresting character combo that can be done by first pressing the koma of the character than you are currently playing as which has them do a move , then you must ryhmetically press the panels of every other character you have euipped once [allowing them each to get their own hits in] until the only character you started with is left. After you press this character for the second time they will do their super move [twhich takes one bar off your super bar meter just like it would if you did your character’s super move on ihis or her own] thus ending the combo causing major damage to any one who is hit by all the moves you started. The last type of Koma are Support Koma which range from 2-3 blocks in size and when touched causes a character to come out and give you ‘support’ by attacking your opponents. Support koma can be mixed with normal and super moves to cause some hard hitting combos. Certain Support and Help Koma when placed next to certain Battle koma will increase the strength and life bar of the battle koma if there is a relation’ between the koma [for example if you put a 3 block Gohan, of Dragonball Z fame, support koma next to most of his father’s, Goku’s, Battle Koma, Goku’s strength and life bar will be increased].

Unlike Super Smash Brothers, battles in Jump Superstars taker place in self contained maps that resembles page from Shounen Jump where you can win both by knocking out your opponent or, after destroying the borders of the map, knocking them off the map. I prefer Jump Superstar’s overall battle system to Super Smash Brothers for battles don’t last nearly as long and require more intial skill [especally with the construction of your koma deck] then Super Smash Bros does though from what little i observed of friends playing Super Smash Bros Melee I can see Melee perhaps having more long term depth than Jump Superstars. But considering that I have very few friends to test this theory with either game I am left only knowing that both games have a ‘simple to learn, but hard to master’ design wiith their battle systems. The graphics of Jump Superstars are in simple yet detailed 2-D which fits it’s very well. The sprites ofall the playable characters in the game look good and animate smoothly while the backgrounds in all the levels as well as the koma themselves look just as good as the mangas they are representing. The sound of the game on the other hand is descent but unremarkable and forgettable. It’s a shame there are’nt any voice samples from the many characterr’s anime counterparts in thisgame to liven things up a little bit, but I can live without them.

There are three primrary modes in Jump Superstars besides a Koma Deck editing mode [where you make new Koma decks from the Koma you have unlocked] and a Koma viewing mode are J Adventure mode, a Multiplayer play mode, and a mode simply titled Battle. J Adventure mode is a single player mode where you go through a large world map consisting of stages with 3-5 goals in them each. These goals range from KOing your opponents a certain way a certain number of times to using your help or not losing once in a battle The J Adventure mode is where you unlock all of your Koma from and is revetively easy as long you have a solid translation of the mission goals [try out IGN’s excellant game guide at http://guides.ign.com/guides/706897/index.html or try using a guide over at Gamefaqs.com]. The multiplayer play mode includes single and multi cart multiplayer. Up to this time, I have only tried out the single cart play mode with my cousin which plays just like a normal game would except your opponent will get a random assortment of komas you unlocked instead of being given the ability to make his or her own deck, which is cool but it also destroys the strategy of creating your own deck. The battle mode is a simple exhibition mode where you fight 2-4 CPU opponents equipped with koma decks of your or the game’s creation in any maps in the game you have played on in J Adventure mode. Though I love the modes this game offers I really really wished this game had some form of a straightforward ‘Arcade mode’ where you play through a set amount of matches before fighting a final boss as well as a survival mode of some sorts to increase the replayability of the game. After you beat J Adventure mode there is really isn’t much incentive to play the game lest you have friends to play against since the computer is very easy to fight against.

Any replayability problems with Jump Superstars willl be quickly remedied in the game’s sequel, Jump Ultimate Stars, which will be released this Winter for the DS since it will include online play with a large increase in character roster. As of now Jump Superstars is one of my favorite games for the DS [alongside Band Brothers and Ouendan ] and I would highly recommend any curious DS owners to import the game since the chances of this game coming to America is next to nothing due to all the licensing issues bringing it over here will cause and all DSes are regionless making import gaming much easier than with most consoles. Whether your a hardcore anime or fighting game fan this is one DS game you cannot miss.