Collection essentials #612 & #613: Jump Superstars (DS) & Jump Ultimate Stars (DS)

If you’re not an anime fan, the name “Shonen Jump” may not mean anything to you…but there’s no denying that you’ve seen and felt its cultural influence. Basically, Shonen Jump is an extremely popular manga/comic book publication in Japan that began in the late 1960s and still exists to this day. Some of the most famous anime of all-time (including Dragon Ball, One Piece and Naruto) got their start in Shonen Jump.

The concept of a “Shonen Jump video game” bringing together the various series that graced its pages was first conceived in the late ‘80s, when Japan got a Famicom role-playing game (of all things) called Famicom Jump. That game proved to be very popular, and one sequel was made, but by the time of the DS’s release, it had been well over a decade since such a game was made. It was about time someone made another one, the type where the various characters could duke it out, and a young company called Ganbarion was tasked with making it. What we got was Jump Superstars and a sequel called Jump Ultimate Starts a year later, both of which proved to be very clever, unique and fun games that executed the concept about as well as you could hope for.

These are fighting games that appear to be inspired by Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series, which seems fitting since that games also involves a crossover of characters from different series. Like Smash, these could sort of be considered “platformer fighting games” where you can freely run and jump around a stage that usually has various tiers, and controls are pretty simple without the more-complicated inputs of a game like Street Fighter. However, there’s a lot that these games do differently, and as a result they don’t feel like Smash ripoffs at all despite the apparent inspiration.

One thing that immediately stands out about this game is that you don’t simply choose a fighter like in a normal fighting game. Instead, you must construct a “deck” which contains at least one fighter. What is a “deck”? Well, each deck divides the touch screen of the DS into a 4-by-5 grid of squares which can be filled with manga-style panels. The many characters of this game have panels of various sizes that can be placed in these squares to construct your deck. A panel of four squares or more is a fighter. Support panels take up either two or three squares, and these can summon a character temporarily to perform one move and then disappear until summoned again. “Help” panels are one square and can provide boosts of various kinds, though the character depicted won’t actually appear on the battlefield. Constructing a deck requires a series of decisions to be made by the player. They can choose to have one strong fighter with a large array of support and help panels, or a few different fighters they can switch between. In battle, different panels can be activated by physically touching them on the touch screen (and Ultimate Stars improved this by allowing button shortcuts too). You can’t have the same character represented more than once in your deck, so for example you cannot have both a fighter Goku and a support Goku.

The fights in this game are depicted as if they were inside of a living comic book, which is really cool. Unlike Super Smash Bros., the characters have health bars, and you primarily win/score points by reducing their health to zero. However, it is still possible to score knockouts by pushing opponents off the edge, it’s just harder to do because in order to do that you have to damage the wall enough to break it first.

Obviously being into manga and anime is a huge bonus for enjoying this game, but the mechanics are really well done and I can see it being enjoyable even to non-fans!

Both these games feature extensive single-player campaigns which require clearing a variety of challenges and reward the player with unlockables. I really like the presentation of the campaign in Ultimate Stars, where you visit various planets in space which represent a different series, and you get to view a really stylish cinematic intro upon going to a planet for the first time showing off various manga panels from the series. Of course, like pretty much all fighting games, these are meant to be played with friends, which is a little inconvenient since that requires multiple DS systems. Ultimate Stars made this easier by introducing online play, though online support for the original DS is long gone by now.

I remember hearing about Jump Super Stars when it was pretty new. It was one of the biggest Japan-exclusive games that the English internet was talking about at the time, and since DS games have no region protection, it wasn’t any more difficult than placing an online order and waiting for it to come in the mail. I’ve only ever been a casual anime fan, but I was still super intrigued by the game. It didn’t disappoint, and I played to the point of unlocking everything (I think) in the single-player campaign. I was very excited to learn that they were making an improved sequel, Jump Ultimate Stars. I bought it shortly after its release, and played that one even more. 

Jump Super Stars feels a little obsolete in comparison to Ultimate Stars. Ultimate has improved controls and much more content, with many more series represented. These games could have sold well outside of Japan, but localizing it would have been a legal nightmare since a wide variety of different companies owned the rights to the English versions of the different series. However, not surprisingly, Ultimate Stars now has a fan-made English patch. It seems unlikely that the game will get a port, but it’s definitely worth tracking down a DS to try it out if it’s something that interests you. These games are among the best DS exclusives, and that plus my own memories of playing them back in the day cements them as absolute essentials in my collection!