Jump Ultimate Stars
Posted By: Kevin on Dec 15 2008

Jump Ultimate Stars is an extremely well fleshed out 2D fighter on the Nintendo DS. The language barrier is daunting at first but with the help of any good translation guide to get through the single player missions you can fully enjoy the multiplayer side of the game with little to no Japanese. Ganbarion steals a page from Nintendo and attempts to bring the chaos of Super Smash Bros into the palm of your hand. Jump plays like an anime mash up of Smash where up to 4 players go head to head in an arena to either beat the snot out of each other or simply knock your opponent out of the ring. Several different play modes are available each with their own advantages. You can play by points by allotting a certain amount of time and declaring the winner at the end as whoever earns the most kills. A second game play type is much more traditional king of the hill where the game progresses until a sole winner if left standing. Third you will find a sort of capture the flag mode where the objective is to beat stars out of people until you have grabbed the stars available which are always numbered one over the amount of players. If you, a friend and 2 computer opponents are battling then 5 stars will be available with everyone starting off with their one star. First player to get all the stars or have the most when time runs out is the winner.

I thoroughly enjoy the nuances of each match type. Point system is fun when you really want to have a maniac smash fest, because you are assured your character (or characters, as multiple fighters to one player is possible and even encouraged) will come to back to life quickly after being hammered to the ground. It lends itself well to wanting to pound the shit out of whoever took you down 3 seconds earlier. Recently I have been playing the Kill system more. I am finding those matches too much more down to the wire. Suddenly health is not an obsolete bar on the screen but really carries a lot of weight in your decision to either go nuts on your opponent or play it safe. Star system is much more enjoyable with only human players as the computer rarely puts up a decent defense.

Jump plays just as much like an action game as it does a fighter, and anyone at all versed in the ways of either genre will pick this game up easily. It utilizes every single function of the DS. The D-pad will move your chosen anime character left and right, down will bring up a block that can be broken after enough pounding. Where Jump stands outside of the fighting genre and firmly in the action game genre is that up is not jump, instead if is used in conjunction with attacking to result in a different attack move. The four face buttons provide you with a light attack, heavy attack, the jump button, and a special move button. Light and heavy attacks are different depending on whether you are in the air, on the ground, moving left or right or pointing up. Intricate combos can be developed with any character given enough practice altering between light, heavy and the two special attacks that every character has. Specials are only useable when you have at least 1 full special bar. Unlike Street Fighter, Jump is very kind with giving the player energy to pull of special attacks, giving you a full gauge at the beginning of each match which is determined by how you have built your deck.

I know that most people wince at that: deck building. But this is no card game. Jump features a very enjoyable way of building your team for battle. You are given a grid, similar to the page of a comic book and within that gird you play your characters. A single grid space can hold what is a called a Help Koma, basically a single panel anime character that will give some sort of buff to any Battle Koma it is attached to. Immunities to certain status effects, perhaps an increase in your special gauge build up rate, health regeneration. Characters that take up 2 or 3 grids are called Support Komas and are very similar to the support Pokemon from Smash Bros Melee or the Assist Trophies from Smash Bros Brawl. With the expenditure of one special bar you can call on a brief assist from your support characters. This can include anything from a straight up attack, or a healing move, or even a point towards the win. All characters above that which are unlocked by evolving their help koma using gems acquired during the single player are considered Battle Komas. These are the characters you use to actually fight. The highest evolution for any character is 8 koma. The more popular characters such as Naruto and Goku have 4 battle characters each having their own 2 special attacks and in some cases a completely different normal attack sequence. You are required to have one help koma, one support koma, and one battle koma, but beyond that your team is only limited to your deck space and whomever the hell you want to fit in it. This gives perhaps the greatest amount of openness I have ever seen in a fighting game to tailor your team as you see fit. Combined with over 40 slots in which to store your decks, Jump Ultimate Stars can keep any fighting fan busy for a long time.

Jump Ultimate Stars comes off as one of the clearest examples of 2D animation at it’s best. Very few of the characters, even support koma, come off as hastily drawn. From simply the sheer amount of characters you would believe that a game like this would need years in development compared to other 2D affairs like Castlevania. Being a sequel, Ganbarion does reuses much of the same animation as was featured in Jump Super Stars but the inclusion of so many more characters as well as a host of new stages provided them with the opportunity to flex the DS hardware. Some of the newer stages especially those filled with fire and other moving obstacles will suffer slowdown with 4 characters on screen and even more if you have multiple support koma going off. I have played games during which there were at least 8 sprites running jumping or dying on the screen all at the same time. I’m not sure why Ganbarion avoided having any voice in the game, perhaps it was due to space limitations on the DS cart format but the music is suited well to the game. A particular favorite is the Naruto theme as it includes with good panache the sounds of Japanese flutes. Sound effects are well placed, from the goofy sounds of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo’s flapping whiskers to the multitude of swords slashes from damn near every anime. The kunai that Naruto throws make an audible chink when they miss and the fire that Franky from One Piece breathes goes off with a suitable roar. Each of the newer stages feature a specific anime theme and the music to go with it. While the detail in games such as Bleach: The Blade of Fate goes above Jump Ultimate Stars you will be hard pressed to find a better example of quality with quantity in the current 2D landscape.