"The '80s are back, and they're going to kill you."

I saw Jojo's Bizarre Adventure in a magazine one day. It had perhaps one of the absolute craziest looking character designs and the most unusual looking attacks I'd laid eyes on. I knew that I wouldn't let a game this.. Bizarre slip under my radar. I'm glad I didn't. Today, the Jojo series stands as one of my favorite anime series of all time, with a very good fighting game companion to boot. Fruity characters or not, quality supercedes the most dorky of attire.

''I don't get it.''

Jojo's Bizarre adventure is based on the third manga series of the same name by Hirohiko Araki. The story goes that certain people in the world have psychic personas, which manifest themselves in the form of some weird-looking alter-ego. These tarot-card based ''stands'' are only visible to those who are also stand wielders, which allows them to slip under the detection of most people. The Joestar family has been plagued by stands for a long time, which goes back to Jonathan Joestar and his arch-nemesis Dio, who assumedly got the whole psychic-warfare ball rolling. After beating Dio, Jonathan begat Joeseph Joestar, who begat Holly, who begat Jotaro Kujo. All of the main characters in the Joestar family have the Jo-Jo syllable thing going for them, so the title actually refers to the Joestar lineage rather than just Jotaro.

Still with me? Jotaro has just recently figured out that he has a stand. Not wanting to cause any damage, he locks himself in jail. His grandfather, Joeseph decides to bust him out, explaining that Dio has risen from the grave (as vampires tend to do), and the merry band of Stand users needs to defeat him. Dio is unwilling to be beaten as simply as that, so he rounds up a gang of assassins equally skilled in stand usage. The fight begins, as Jotaro and his friends journey to Egypt in order to kill Dio the vampire for the good of everybody else.

It's like Castlevania without the whips, and more strangely-dressed people. Then again, the Belmonts weren't known very well for their innate fashion senses.

As a small tidbit, many of the manga's characters are named after various rock and pop groups, examples include Enya, Dan Steely, Captain Tenille, Nena, Kenny G, and the evil 80's rock group DIO. Some names were so blatant in this regard that they were changed for the American release: Devo becomes D'Bo, and Vanilla Ice to Iced. It's hard for me to take anyone named after ''Dio'' seriously. Am I the only one that remembers ''Holy Diver?''

The beauty is that everybody capable of using a stand has powers more interesting than anything else I've seen in anime: people can control water, their shadows, and time itself. The manga and anime series had a way of fighting that was based on intelligence and surprise above all else. Because of this, the transition to a fighting game is somewhat rocky, but the personas and characters are faithfully represented in-game. Each fighter exudes style and character whether standing still or using a deadly alter-ego to lash out against their foes.

Let's fight... like Gentlemen.

JBA plays much like Darkstalkers, barring a few exceptions. There are three attack buttons, light, medium, and heavy (who saw that coming?), and a stand button. As a mere human, your moves aren't terribly damaging. Chain combinations are hard to pull off, and you take damage easier. Hit the Stand button, and your psychic buddy will help you out by allowing you to block without taking damage, in addition to raising your overall defense and offense. The catch is that the Stand has a guard-meter which can be ''crushed'' if you don't turn it off to recharge, leading to a long moment of being open for whatever big attack comes your way. Needless to say, the Stand is used for most of the round, but can be turned off.

When turned off, your character is still capable of quite a lot. Although the damage one takes is higher, any special move input is performed independently by the Stand, and allows you to continue to move independently of it. Also noteworthy is the ability to perform a KOF-style dash to the opponent's rear, in order to make the most out of a two-pronged stand attack. Because you can move both in tandem with your stand or independently of it, there can be a lot of depth, especially considering move timing and range.

For the people more tuned to twitch-style gameplay, the Stand mode's straightforward combo engine and ease in blocking and attacking is easy to learn and typical of the versus / Guilty Gear / Darkstalkers chain-combo attacks. For the person looking for more trickery and planning, the normal mode's backdashing and independent attacks are more than welcome. Bluntly, the game can be played either way, both equally as rewarding. The problem is that the stand-off mode is usually overlooked and not as effective across-the-board.

Like many similar-playing games (in the Stand mode at least), JBA uses the now-ubiquitous super bar, which allows for either a tandem attack, in which your Stand fights independently of you for a continuous amount of time, or the equally ubiquitous super attack, which are usually quite deadly. Openings in the enemy's defense can be severely exploited through these faux-catastrophic attacks, and many opportunities arise to exploit and crush the defense of your opponent.

Computer opponents are both fair and challenging, a rarity among 2-d fighters. Most opponents are smart enough to block attacks that are telegraphed in advance, but fall for many things human foes would, such as strikes from different directions or carefully set-up combinations. The difficulty is adjustable, but more truthful than other games: the lowest setting is actually very easy (unlike Guilty Gear, per se), and the highest setting will wow you with smart moves and adept combo use. It's pretty hard to get ''cheesed'' in this game, given the backdashing and the relatively slower fighting engine, which is a plus in my book.

If it's not Quake 4, I'm not having anything to do with it!

Your opinion of JBA will vary highly based on your choice in games graphic-wise. Should you still revere the KOF series like I do, JBA will satisfy your tastes. If you're used to Guilty Gear X and Steet Fighter III and expect nothing less, prepare to have your hopes crushed. JBA, while not ugly, is pixelated and old-school. Everything moves fluidly and fast, but the detail is hardly comparable to newer games. It seems like an awkward friend of KOF99 and Capcom vs. SNK on the technical level.

JBA quickly regains the ground lost by the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) character designs by Hirohiko Araki. It's personal preference whether you like Jotaro's hair-cap, D'Bo's gloves, or Kakyoin's green trenchcoat, but the two widely held views are either ''FROO-tay!'' or ''Interesting.'' In that order. I'll admit, the first time I saw some of these characters, I thought the designs were fruity and odd for the sake of being so, as if a group of fashion design rejects got into a bar fight. Imagine my surprise when they began to grow on me. If nothing else, you do have to admit that things in this game look bizarre.

Attacks themselves are well-animated and impressive, even if not the sharpest graphics in the drawer. There are lots of moves here that are hard to dislike, like a barrage of cadillacs springing out of the ground in order to hit someone, or juggling someone with an extended free-moving robot arm. My personal favorite: the painful opus of dropping a steamroller on someone and hitting it until it explodes on top of your squashed victim.

For a characteristically violent series, much of the bloodlust has been toned down for the US DC release. Whether you let it spoil the experience for you or not, the DC version has white blood, which does detract some when you cut someone and are greeted with spraying milk. I would think that most gamers like myself would have liked to see the game presented in its original visceral glory with the option of censoring it.

Soundtrack by some Japanese guy!

The audio can be mostly forgettable, with tunes that fail to stand out as well as character voices and effects that are very indistinct and muffled. It's a shame, really, as many of the characters have lots to say during moves. The downside is that whatever they say or do sounds like it's heard from down the street. Although I can't say that the audio ever got on my nerves, it was very hard to ''groove'' to the tunes or identify with a slashing or punching sound.

HERE COMES END!

JBA will appeal to those that don't mind new character designs at the sake of looking fruity, those that are willing to explore the depths of a fighting system exteriorly playing the familiarity card, and those that don't mind aged graphics. However, it seems that in terms of marketing demographics, finding someone that fits into those three categories is somewhat slim.

At first glance, JBA seems to be an anime-based fighter which is riding on the high of surrealism and bizarre themes to take away from the fact that it plays almost identically to a Darkstalkers game (Stand mode, of course). Those that get into the story and characters will find that JBA has a considerable amount of depth behind the fighting, and a simple yet refined pace that rewards long after the game has been played quite a bit.

Although there could have been a few problems fixed for the 128-bit translation, such as the inclusion of the PSX's ''super story mode,'' or the revamping of character sprites to optimize for a DC release, JBA is a solid package as it stands currently. Play it for the unusual premise and characters, stay for the unexpected gameplay depth and the faithful recreation of the story.

JBA is hard to recommend to people if only because of how inaccessible it seems on the visual level, but deep down I really enjoy it.

OVERALL: 8 / 10
An innovative and flexible fighter not afraid to take a visual gamble.

--------------------------------------
*The hanged man is a tarot card!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/26/02, Updated 02/26/02