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DS

Japan

Jump Super Stars

by Ty Shughart - August 10, 2005, 7:29 am EDT

Ty's got zany first impressions of this Japanese mega-hit for DS that combines Smash Bros.-like gameplay with about three bazillion manga and anime characters.

"Fanboy" games are rapidly becoming a new genre, I think. A lot of us gamers have pretty much seen it all and have gotten sick of collecting items, driving in circles, etc. And as such, what we enjoy best are totally implausible situations like Samus smacking Pikachu or Vic Viper racing Dracula or Ryu fighting a dinosaur. So, yeah, needless to say, I was positively delighted with Goku, Naruto, Kenshin, Yugi, that stretchy guy from One Piece, and God knows who else being vomited all over the screen in the latest "oh God, look who they put in" game. I will use my Ace Harding-caliber detective skills to find out if it's worth importing since it's a part of the trendy new "pretty much guaranteed to never come out in America, ever" series.

The gameplay flows pretty smoothly, and I can tell there's going to be room to develop lots of techniques, especially with the touch screen. Battle characters have a pretty good variety of moves; B and Y are standard quick and strong attacks, A is jump, X is for super moves. Directions+attacks do different moves, as do double-tap directions+attacks, so each character has plenty of moves. Each character is different in other ways also, like running speed and the number of air jumps they get.

The scoring system seems to be the same as Smash Bros., except that characters are usually beaten to death instead of chucked out of the ring (each arena is actually a panel in a book, and you have to tear through the side of the page or fall through the bottom to ring out). Launching a DREAM COMBO into a bunch of guys is a good way to get some hilarious kill-steals. You can't directly see other characters' remaining life, but when they are low, the color drains from them and they begin to look black-and-white. Characters can recover life by being switched out for a different Battle character (when available).

There are three types of panels: BATTLE characters, SUPPORT characters, and HELP characters. Battle characters are the main guys you fight with, and support characters appear on screen for one move (as seen in a bunch of fighting games, like Marvel vs Capcom). Help characters don't appear onscreen, but they can give your main character a stat boost of some sort.

These three kinds of characters are arranged in a "deck"; the comic page on the lower screen. Piece together a cool page for a strong team. To change characters or call a support character, just touch their panel on the bottom screen. Reaching over and using the touch screen in the middle of a fight may sound completely insane, but it works. Heck, you can even do some cool combos this way, or some tricky techniques like switching to a character that can do an extra jump or two mid-air while already in the air. You can also do a "DREAM COMBO" with the right setup by touching a sequence of Battle characters on the bottom screen. Like a chain combo!

For the Japanese-impaired, well, there's a couple of spots that are an absolute headache to figure out what to do until you bust out the ol' kanji dictionary (or head to GameFAQs, oho!). The single-player mode is strictly a mission mode (as seen in Smash Bros., Naruto 3, and a bunch of other stuff), so it's probably a good idea to know what on earth you're supposed to do (destroy all the walls? The hell?). I'm actually working on a translation/mission guide myself, so watch for it.

The part that's driving me absolutely insane is matching up characters to panels. See, as you complete areas in the Jump World adventure mode, you get more panels and characters, and you must match a character to the panel they belong in (you can only really see the word balloons) before you can use them as a Battle or Support character.. So, yeah, either you have to be a total Jump fanboy and know what a character will probably say (in Japanese, of course) or spend a ton of time trying to systematically figure them out. Man, I hope GameFAQs comes to the rescue on this part, too. I don't even know what to do with the panels with TWO empty slots.

There aren't a whole lot of playable characters UNTIL you figure out all the panel matching nonsense, either, and I don't think there's really any "quick pick" modes for multiplayer. You can save a whole bunch of custom decks and use them in multiplayer, though, so I guess there'll be a bit of team-polishing on the player's own time.

So, my initial impressions tell me that it's worth importing if you're pretty good at reading Japanese, reading GameFAQs, or are just really good at being an absolute nerd in general. I love the fighting, but I hate the panel matching and the odd mission that I can't understand. Pass if a bit of Japanese is going to be a huge aversion, but I think most people will be okay with it.

You can import Jump Super Stars and its accompanying red Nintendo DS from our partners at Lik-Sang.

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Genre Fighting
Developer Nintendo

Worldwide Releases

jpn: Jump Super Stars
Release Aug 08, 2005
PublisherNintendo

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