Jump Superstars (DS)

[Jorpho]

I was sufficiently intrigued by this game the last time I rented it that I am now playing it again. It really does have awesome production value and quite a bit of variety, but I'm not too fond of the way the difficulty level swings from too-easy to freaking-impossible.

Anyone else here playing it? I've been using the IGN guide at http://guides.ign.com/guides/706897/ to figure out what's going on; perhaps there's a better site? (I know GameFAQs has a much more wordier and sometimes more accurate document, but it's not as easy to read.) Also, just how many hours does it take to work its way through everything?

[Jorpho]

Huh. Fifty reads and no response... Oh well.

FYI, it took me about 10-15 hours to unlock Ichigo's last form, which seemed to be a good place to call it quits (540 komas out of 655, I think). Jotaro, Yoh, and Nami kick arse.

[2Dskillz]

This is an incredible game, I imported it a while a go. The seven koma Goku is insane, but personally Jaguar's 5 koma is my favorite.

[Richter Belmount]

id love a copy but I spent to much already as is and to many games to play anyways (goes back to playing tetris ds)

[Jorpho]

I was kind of hoping that there was some massive, visual guide out there, sort of like the GameFAQs guide but with hyperlinks everywhere, pictures of everything, and perhaps some info on the more obscure characters (though I suppose most of them are sort of obscure). Maybe some day...

It's fairly obvious that this could never be released outside of Japan; even if they could get around the licensing issues, there's just too much translation work to justify the release of something with such relatively limited appeal. I suppose they could butcher it horribly, but that would be cruel.

[blissfulnoise]

I know there are other places to get this info, but I'll ask here:

If you're not really much of an anime fan (I probably wouldn't know any of the characters outside of some of the Dragon Ball Z ones) is this game still worth importing?

I heard it compared to Super Smash Brothers. Is that a fair comparison? I'd be up for a fun multiplayer fighting game on the DS for sure. Also, does it require a card for every player or can mp work through wireless download?

Thanks!

[snes_collector]

I've always though this game has looked awesome, need to pick myself up a copy.

[Jorpho]

I know there are other places to get this info, but I'll ask here:

If you're not really much of an anime fan (I probably wouldn't know any of the characters outside of some of the Dragon Ball Z ones) is this game still worth importing?

I heard it compared to Super Smash Brothers. Is that a fair comparison? I'd be up for a fun multiplayer fighting game on the DS for sure. Also, does it require a card for every player or can mp work through wireless download?

Are you not much of an anime fan, or do you downright dislike anime? It requires considerable patience to sort through a guide as you go through the missions, not to mention filling out all the serif koma (which is mostly a matter of semi-random flipping), and if you don't like the way it looks, you'll have little incentive.

Not sure about the multiplayer functionality, but I'd say it was easier to get into than Super Smash Bros was.

[blissfulnoise]

I'm not an anime hater per se so I think I'll be fine with the presentation as long is there is some meat in there. But I'm not sure what "seif koma" means, I'm really not familiar with the core of the game.

I just heard it was a fun multiplayer fighting game on par with Super Smash Brothers, if I have to go through a ton of story/translation in order to get to the game, I may pass.

[Jorpho]

Well, yeah, in order to unlock new characters and other components for your decks, you have to play through the single player missions, and you're going to need a guide to do that. The guide I linked to in my first post should give you a good idea of how things work; in particular, http://guides.ign.com/guides/706897/page_4.html describes the process of completing empty cards (aka serif koma in other guides).

[snes_collector]

So in this game do you just use "cards" attack? I read a few reviews and if so, I really wouldn't half know what I was doing, and by the number of characters I don't know, I wouldn't have a clue. So do you get to "control" the characters at all? Also how English friendly is this, I've never imported a game and although this sounds pretty cool, I dunno if it is too much for someone who doesn't know any Japanese or was never imported. So how hard is it to get to understand what you have to do?

[Jorpho]

Yes, you control the characters directly. Wouldn't compare at all to Super Smash Bros. if things were otherwise.

As I've said, you'll need an English guide to get very far. However, the information you need to get from these guides is ultimately quite straightforward. Flipping through that aforementioned IGN guide will hardly spoil anything for you, least of all whatever enjoyment you may get from the game in the future should you choose to purchase it.

[snes_collector]

Thaks a lot. I might have to get this for my birthday then.

[Jorpho]

Holy crap!
http://www.translationrl.it/images/zoom/jss-en/viewsize/jss-en-20060415-03.jpg

I didn't even know this was possible!

[snes_collector]

Wo....is English accessable from the start, if so, whenever I buy this, I won't have to look online to figure out what's happening. Awesome.

[THATinkjar]

I didn't think there was an English language? Why would people bother to produce translation guides if they could just pick English the whole time... ?

[youruglyclone]

Holy crap!
http://www.translationrl.it/images/zoom/jss-en/viewsize/jss-en-20060415-03.jpg

I didn't even know this was possible!

thanks to that image I was tooling around the menu and somehow I deleted my nearly complete save...

thank goodness I had used jump superstar to test the DS action replay.

also to prevent dumbasses like me...

NOTE: THERE IS NO NATIVE ENGLISH SUPPORT, THE IMAGE IS FROM A TRANSLATION GROUP THAT IS WORKING ON A PATCH TO THE GAME!

here is a link
http://www.translationrl.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=26

they're working on an italian trans as well as an english one

[Jorpho]

(Oh, yeah. Sorry, I should have been more explicit. :embarrassed: )

[WiseSalesman]

So, wait, you'll download the patch directly to the DS or what?

[Jorpho]

That's what I was wondering about. I had no idea people were dumping DS roms already, let alone writing them back to some device that the DS can read.

[Jorpho]

After all the hype this game got, I'm surprised that I've heard almost nothing about its sequel, Jump Ultimate Stars.
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-9g-49-en-70-1d3q.html

I'm guessing it will be one of those things where it might not be worth it if you already own the original, but definitely an excellent buy otherwise.

[Jorpho]

Word comes from VGCats (http://www.vgcats.com):

Jump Ultimate is the sequel to Jump Superstars. Easily one of my favorite DS games and it's done everything to improve on it. The controls are just as tight with new features like improved dash and ledge holding. Supermoves have all been improved on as well. Lots of new ones to check out. It's now the closest you're going to get to Smash Brothers on the DS.

One HUGE improvment is how you unlock characters. In the old one you'd assemble komas (comics) to create characters. Slowly matching up panels to faces. That was a pain. Now you collect upgrades and points while playing. You use these points to upgrade Komas and thus create new characters. WAY simpler and makes this far more enjoyable.

Another great addition is this thing is online. Used to be only at cons I'd get to be able to play this with others. Now just hope online and play. I'd publish my code but my deck needs SO much work. :B I'm only good at getting my butt kicked right now.

Tons of new characters this time around too. One Piece fans, Franky is playable. The only downside to the game that I can see is that some of the characters got too powerful. Former level 7 characters are now level 6 to keep up with the manga. So you get really powerful really fast. Thankfully to offset this you'll have stages that use unique premade decks in substitute. So it's never always the same. If you're a Jump fan and like Smash Bros I HIGHLY urge you to import this. It's region free. :D

I hope this doesn't stay at $60 CDN forever.

[djsquarewave]

I have both Superstars and Ultimate Stars, and they're both very much worth it. Ultimate Stars is ever-so-slightly slower, but you only really notice this if you go straight from one to the other.

Unlocking new komas is a hell of a lot easier. Each mission you complete either gets you a help koma or a number of points -- these points can be used to upgrade the help koma in different ways, making support or battle komas, unlocking new evolution paths on other characters, opening new stages or database information, etc...there's no messing around with sticking different characters into empty boxes to see who fits there. :)

Also it's got online wifi play, which is excellent.

Some of the new characters are also pretty cool. Saint Seiya... :D

[Jorpho]

Gee, have we not had another thread about this..? Oh well.

I finally got around to playing Ultimate Stars recently, and it is very enjoyable indeed. I wasn't too sure of the new koma system at first, since it seemed to let you go right ahead and unlock powerful stuff that only became available towards the end of Super Stars... but then, towards the end you start unlocking even more ridiculously powerful stuff.

Anyone been playing this on wi-fi?

One thing I haven't been able to figure out: on Mission 4 of the Boss Tower (the last level of J-Blackhole) and Mission 3 of Planet "U", there's this weird but insanely powerful support character that looks like some guy riding a white duck and throwing fireballs everywhere. I thought it might just be a special attack of Ryotsu (the KochiKame guy), but it doesn't seem like it. Which character is it?