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Jump Super StarsBy Nils De Jonghe - 09-01-05 Print  EmailSince its announcement, Jump Super Stars has been branded by many as the next best thing to a Super Smash Brothers game on Nintendo DS. While that may have been a bold thing to say, at the same time it was very reasonable. From the start, Jump Super Stars showed an awful lot of similarities with Smash Brothers. The game was developed by Ganbarion, who were aided by Nintendo. That fact alone was enough to keep many a fan anticipating this game. The core concept is basically the same: you take some popular franchises owned by the same company, put them in a bag, give it a nice shake to stir things up a little and see how things evolve from there. Jump Super Stars features a huge variety of manga characters from the weekly magazine Shounen Jump. Representatives from hit series such as Naruto, Samurai X, One Piece and Yu-Gi-Oh are all present and ready to kick one another's proverbial behind.  Anime lovers often argue who would win a hypothetical matchup between two characters of totally different series, only to snap out of that fantasy when realizing the chances of actually seeing them battle are slim to none. With the advent of this game, this is a thing of the past. Were you always shouting that Kenshin would surely obliterate Zoro from One Piece? If so, now is the time to put your money where your mouth is and let your hands do the talking. While the game does look a lot like Super Smash Brothers at first sight, it would be unfair to constantly compare these two games. Jump Super Stars does indeed borrow certain elements from the aforementioned franchise, but has enough fresh elements that make it an entirely different and very unique title. The fighting system is surprisingly deep, although the fighters don't have access to complicated combos that will really strain your fingers. In that regard it is pretty similar to Smash Brothers; with a limited array of moves, things can still be pretty strategic. The main goal is to defeat your opponent by either bringing his life bar down to zero, or by ringing him out. The player with the most points wins when time runs out. Unfortunately, you can only play timed matches, which will encourage cowardice in some players. The controls are superb; Jump Super Stars sports one of the best uses for the touch screen to date, but more on that later. One small gripe though: there are three buttons for blocking. Surely at least one of them could have been put to a better use - a grabbing feature perhaps? Such a technique is strangely missing and could have spiced things up a notch. The game heavily focuses on the manga theme, as everything is basically presented as one big comic. Furthermore, it ties in with the gameplay extremely well. Jump Super Stars is definitely not your average fighting game, and the comic themed gameplay delivers further proof of that. Before entering the fray, you are required to select a deck. That's right, a deck. Not what you'd expect to see in a fighting game, right? In essence a deck is a 5x4 grid and is designed as a comic book page. It's up to you to fill the deck with comic panels that best suit your battling style. These are called koma in the game, and there are three different kinds: help koma, support koma and battle koma. All of them are activated by tapping the touch screen and your deck needs to include at least one of each, or it will be regarded invalid. Help komas take up one space in the grid and generally heal you or boost your stats - speed, strength, stamina, the usual. Support koma on the other hand are characters that are briefly summoned to the battlefield to perform one of their trademarked attacks, such as Sanosuke's devastating fist attacks. These panels take up 2 to 3 spaces, and need to be timed well as your opponent could cancel them otherwise. Last but most definitely not least are the battle characters. These are the characters you actively control; they are sized 4 to 7 spaces. There are 35 individual characters, but alas, only good guys are in the character roster. Some villains would have been welcome. Each character has one out of three possible natures that are set up like a rock-paper-scissors system. Power characters deal more damage against characters with the intelligence nature, but are bested by laughter type characters. This adds to the game's depth, although it may be difficult to keep track of each character's nature given the fast pace of battle. You can switch between characters at any given time, while the other kinds will drain your special bar when you use them. Quickly alternating between two battle characters will produce a dream combo, which results in a sort of tag team attack that usually delivers a flurry of hits. Executing them will deplete the special bar. Certain character combinations can also execute a Co-operation attack where they combine two attacks into one huge destructive special; nice touches like these will greatly please avid manga fans. Each individual playable character has at least three versions, depending on koma size. To be more precise, Naruto's four block version will have the same moveset as the five block one -the only difference is that the bigger one will have a larger lifebar and different specials. Generally speaking, the bigger the koma, the stronger the character, though in some cases the player will have to choose between power and speed as some specials the larger koma offers may be more powerful yet less practical to pull off. The key is to see what fits your style best and build a deck to your liking, and because of the many licenses involved you can rest assured that this won't be problematic. Each character feels unique and has a different playing style. With 657 different koma in the game, decks are extremely customizable. The game supports up to 10 self-made decks and also allows you to download another batch of 10 from a friend. Advancing through the single player will unlock some sample decks, each with a distinct theme.  The single player mode is ironically both expansive and limited at the time. The main attraction is J-Adventure, where you tour the Jump world, completing missions with up to five objectives. These range from tasks as break all the walls or clear the stage without getting KO'd. Completing them will net you either a help or a serif koma. Gamers that are not fluent in Japanese will have some trouble figuring out the objectives, and even more problems with the serif koma. Serif koma are shady comic panels with one or more pieces missing; you have to complete them by inputting the correct help koma. Solving them will unlock support or battle characters. The speech bubbles in the panel are there to help as they hint at the characters identity, but will be useless to people that don't know any Japanese. Does this mean the game is virtually unplayable to those people? Hardly! The fact that you are reading this review probably means you have access to the internet. Luckily this magical place also harbors handy FAQs which provide you with all the needed information to break this dreadful language barrier. Waiting for an English release probably won't do you any good, as there are many legal issues involved which greatly hinder the chances of a US release. J-Adventure is quite long; there are tons of missions and getting all koma will keep you occupied for at least 20 hours, which is pretty long for a fighting game. However, once you've achieved all this, there isn't much left to do. The other single player mode is battle mode, which merely offers you a normal fight versus CPU's. Of course, you can toggle some options on and off; for instance: you can team up with a CPU, turn items on or off, select a stage, et cetera. Regrettably, there are not enough options to make this mode actually worthwhile.  As said before, J-Adventure is very enjoyable, but the game lacks the almost standard time attack, survival, or ladder battle mode. This absence seriously hurts the replay value. If you happen to know a friend with a copy of the game, the replay value will drastically increase. Multiplayer is a blast - or at least multi-card multiplayer is. The single-card multiplayer just randomly gives you one out of 4 decks and lets you fight on one of the game's stages. This is nice to give a friend a preview of what the game is like, but will tire fast. However, the multi-card multiplayer is superb. It's really satisfying to work out a deck full of fiendish tactics only to see how well they fare against a friend. This mode has a long lasting appeal and it's a shame this game isn't online, as finding friends that own the game might prove to be tricky. The multiplayer mode does suffer from the same inconvenience the battle mode does, though. There are too little options to my liking. What else is there to say? The graphics are really nice. Don't be fooled by screenshots, they don't do the game much justice. Every single character is instantly recognizable, as are their distinct moves. On top of that, everything is beautifully animated, and fluid to boot. The stages are fittingly designed as comic pages and usually have wonderful backgrounds. Lovely backgrounds aside, it's a pity that they're all a bit too similar to each other in terms of size and platform placement.  The game's sound is average at best; none of the tunes really stand out. You won't find yourself subconsciously whistling them. Voice acting's absent, but don't let that bother you as getting all the voice actors together would be impossible and, furthermore, the game's theme is manga, not anime. If you're looking for a game that reproduces the greatness of Super Smash Brothers in almost every single way, you might be a tad disappointed. However, in the end Jump Super Stars is definitely worth a purchase. Don't let that nasty language barrier frighten you, it is perfectly overcomeable. If you're not into manga and are just looking for a solid fighter, the game will still be very enjoyable, so don't be dissuaded. Of course, if you do know a lot of the characters and happen to be a frantic manga/anime lover, this game will delight you like few others. The title does have some fundamental flaws that could have been avoided, but it is easily one of the best games available for the Nintendo DS right now. P.S.: Be sure to check out our media gallery for scans of the game and don't forget to view the convincing footage on the official website. Ratings |
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