"Jump For The Stars...Again!"

NOTE: For the most part, I'll be using the English names to describe the various Manga in this game.

Manga would be quite a different story had it not been for Japan's Shonen Jump magazine. For those uninitiated with Jump, it's a weekly magazine filled with various different manga. While not as dense as a regular American comic book, there's plenty of bang for your buck (or Yen, in this case). Especially since Jump has been home to some of the biggest anime/manga to hit the West (such as Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, Yu-Gi-Oh and more). While Jump characters have been in their own games before, 2004's Jump Superstars was the first time that many of the manga characters were brought together for one purpose: Beating the unholy crap out of each other. Two years later, Nintendo and developer Ganbarion (otherwise known for their games based on the One Piece franchise) have returned to the fray in the form of Jump Ultimate Stars, and for anyone who owns a Nintendo DS, and loves fighting games or Jump characters, it's one of the best games to own for that system.

The best way to describe Jump Ultimate Stars would be a cross between Nintendo's own Super Smash Bros games, a Collectible Card Game, sprinkled with Jump characters. If you've ever wanted to know whether or not Nintendo can actually do a portable version of their brilliant party fighting game, JUS is the best example. It's simple to play, but with enough depth for those willing to explore it. JUS controls like Soul Calibur, in that there are three attacking buttons, but instead of a block button, a jump button. And in terms of attack, you have three options: A standard attack, a slightly heavier attack and a special attack, the latter being limited to the amount of special gauges filled up. Each character attacks the way you would expect them, so by that, I mean that Yugi Mutou would attack using summoned monsters, Luffy using his stretched out arms, or Ichigo and Zolo using their swords. There's no caveats in using these types of attacks, but that's another story...

As I mentioned earlier, there's a Collectible Card Game element to JUS. Despite how much of a turn off that it sounds, it actually is a huge and somewhat interesting element to the game. You see, unlike any other conventional fighting game, you don't actually select individual characters. Instead, you select decks of Koma (Panels). Each deck is made up of 20 koma, on a four by five grid. In JUS, there are three different types of Koma: Battle, Support and Help. Battle Koma represents the playable characters within the game. They take up about four to eight koma, and differ in special attacks (i.e. you may get two different versions of Goku, one having more Koma than the other). Battle Koma also have a unique Rock, Paper, Scissors relationship in the form of laughter, power and knowledge. In this case, Power beats Knowledge, Knowledge Beats Laughter and Laughter beats Power. Support Koma are two to three Koma blocks that quickly summon a character to attack opponents or help the player that summoned the Support Koma. Finally, Help Koma are one koma blocks that are attached to a Battle Koma to help give that specific character a boost in power or what not. So in effect, you could have a deck with some of the most unlikely teamed up characters, but only play as say, two or three.

It's an interesting system, and can make for some fun combinations. However, the only disappointing element about this system is that it takes ages to unlock the really cool stuff. Baiscally, you have to pay to unlock new Koma (using gems acquired from the main ‘J-Universe' mode, more on that later). Getting enough gems takes a while, so you'll need a lot of time and a lot of patience if you want to be able to use all the Koma in the game.

Speaking of characters to use, JUS features hundreds of them. In terms of numbers, there's over 300 characters from 41 different series, compared to the 160 characters from 27 series in Jump Superstars. The range of different series is quite impressive, featuring legendary series such as Dragon Ball, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Hunter X Hunter and Dr Slump; hot recent series such as Bleach, Naruto, Death Note, One Piece and Shaman King; and weird choices such as The Prince of Tennis (exactly what it sounds like). Newer series included in JUS include Kinnikuman (Ultimate Muscle), Hokuto No Ken (Fist of the North Star), soccer manga Captain Tsubasa and Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac). While you won't get to play as all 300 characters, the fact that there's such a number of characters to potentially use on something like the DS is quite something.

Finally, there's a number of game modes to experience within JUS. The biggest is J-Universe mode. The main single-player mode, this sees you travelling across the Jump Universe, taking part in missions in the various worlds of each series. Each series is divided into a sort of theme that each of the manga has. So for instance: Shaman King, Bleach and Yu Yu Hakusho are in the one group because they deal with souls and the afterlife. Speaking of missions, at a base, these may range from collecting a number of medals or achieving a number of KO's, but each level may ask you to achieve a certain amount of KO's within 20 seconds or acquire 3 medals within 10 seconds. Or you may be asked to do something completely different such as not take any damage or KO opponents without using special moves.
The other big game mode is the multiplayer aspect. The biggest reason? Wi-Fi Connection support. Anywhere you are in the world, and have access to the internet, it's perfectly possible to take on upto three other people anywhere in the world. JUS is one of the more popular games to play over WFC (as well as Mario Kart DS or Pokemon Diamond/Pearl), so chances are, you'll always have someone to play against.

Unfortunately, the only problem with the game isn't actually the game itself. Rather, it's the fact that the only way of playing the game is in its native Japanese. Despite the quality of the game and the fact that many people would buy and play the game extensively, it doesn't look likely that it'll ever be released in English. Why? Because of all the licensing issues to all the different manga. You see, while various different companies have the video game rights to many of the manga in the game (i.e. Namco Bandai own the rights to One Piece and Dragon Ball Z, Sega own the rights to Bleach, Tomy own the rights to Naruto etc.), only Shonen Jump own the rights to using the manga in any form in Japan. The English rights, however, are a different story. While the US Shonen Jump own the rights to some of the manga, some of the more popular series are owned by other outlets as Viz Media or others. And as well, most of the series in the game would be unheard of to most gamers, and most fans of Jump, so it would be a sell to the hardcore. Either way, it's very disappointing that the game will only ever get fan translated than anything else.

Long story short, if you don't have a working knowledge of the Japanese language or have access to a translation guide, then it's going to be very hard to get into. Such an example happens within the games tutorial, which kicks off J-Universe. All you get is a brief explanation as to what buttons to press, but no visual indication as to how to do it. You could mash buttons, but unless you have some way of knowing what to do, you're screwed. Thankfully, most of the missions in the game are either collecting a number of items or getting a number of KO's, so there's plenty to do without the need of a translation guide. But otherwise, if you get over the language barrier, you'll have a quality game on your hands.

Graphically, JUS isn't all that remarkable. It's not the best looking game you'll ever see, but that's not what Ganbarion was focusing on. Each character looks like they're supposed to, and each looks distinguished enough from one another. There's no copy/paste of any sprites, but each character design has been adhered to the one sort of size. While only the most hardcore will complain that Dio Brando isn't as tall as he needs to be or whatever, it doesn't detract from the game at all, and benefits it in some ways. The same can be said for the backgrounds. Nothing too fancy or remarkable, but they do their job well.

Aurally, JUS falls into the same boat. Again, there's nothing here that's special, but that's not what Ganbarion was aiming for. For what music that's in the game, it works well. It's not distracting or irritating, which is a huge plus. The same can be said for the sound effects. What could've been a nice addition was voice clips from each character. While this is only a want that doesn't really need to be considered, it would've been cool to hear characters exclaim a victory quote after each battle. But again, this is a game where the audio isn't necessarily the focus here.

Overall, JUS can best be described as the closest thing to a Smash Bros game to appear on Nintendo's white wonder of a handheld console. If you can get over the language barrier, or deal with it at least, then you have one of the best games to play on the DS. Hundreds of characters, heaps of replay value, online play, addictive gameplay, what more could you want? For any anime/manga fan, it's a must buy, for anyone else, it's definitiely worth checking out. After all, in how many other games can you boast that you played as Dio Brando and defeated Goku, Luffy and Naruto?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/08

Game Release: Jump Ultimate Stars (JP, 11/23/06)