"Is it worth importing? I believe so."

For ages, people have wondered what would happen if characters from two different anime series fought each other. With this game, you are finally granted a way to settle all those debates, reenacting your favourite battles by taking all the important characters to a single battlefield. Be aware that this game doesn't contain all series that were ever featured in the "Jump" magazine, but at least it has quite a few characters for you to pick.

Special enphasis is given to One Piece, Dragon Ball and Naruto, all fan-favourite series, but there are tons of other series available in this game, such as "Tennis no Oujisama", "Yu-gi-oh", "Dr. Slump", "Rurouni Kenshin", "Yu Yu Hakusho" or "Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo", among many others. Depending on the series, its available characters may only include support ones, which unleash some sort of move before going away, or playable folks, which are fully available as selectable characters. As an example, I can state that all "Tennis no Oujisama" characters are support ones, while "Dragon Ball" features not only controllable characters but also plenty of those who can be used as support ones.

Also included in the game are help characters, which are easy to input in your deck and simply provide active bonus to your playable characters. They may restore your health, increase your physical damage, make your character faster or give him beneficial special effects, among many other possibilities.

All these characters come in the form of small comic strips, named "koma" in Japanese. With 20 spaces available in your lower screen, you'll have to fit the all the koma you want to use in that small grid. Help komas take a single space, support ones take up to three and controllable characters always occupy more than that, which turns the management of komas into a small game by itself. Would you like to include a more powerful character, which takes six komas, or you'd rather have one that occupies four spaces, along with a small support character? You're allowed to create all kinds of strategies, taking advantage of the characters you have available, and you can even devise small plans to have an easier time with particular kinds of battles.

The game obviously features a lot of pure battles, ones where you just have to defeat everything that crosses your path, but if you're playing the "J Adventure" mode you'll also be given some small objectives to achieve in each stage. Just to name a few of those objectives, you may be asked to defeat everyone that is facing you, not losing any of your characters, destroy some kind of items available in the field, get rid of all the walls presented in the battlefield, or merely collect some items. These targets are usually easy to achieve, but some require you to know what you're supposed to be doing, and knowing Japanese turns out being a huge asset when it comes to the task of trying to complete the whole game.

Fortunately, controls aren't one of the things you have to worry about, since they are basically taught before heading to the real battles. You control characters with the directional pad and strike with the buttons available in the right side, each key used to perform a different task. As for komas, you have to activate them by tapping their depiction in the lower screen. Such an action may sound easy, but in the heat of action it turns out being hard tap the desired area, since you have to let something else go (either the hadnnd controlling the movement or the attacks), sometimes with harsh results. Disregarding such an issue, which you'll probably master sooner or later, you'll eventually face your first real stage.

Each stage may contain up to five different objectives, and as you complete them you'll be granted a new stage and new komas, which usually come in the form of simple help komas or blackened ones, where you should input help komas to gain access to its true content. Let's say that you just acquired Goku's 2-koma, you'll have to put Goku's help koma in an empty spot displayed in a blackened area and you'll receive the real thing. Such a task is better said than done, since there is no logical way to figure out what help koma belongs to each blackened portrait, which eventually leads to this game's first flaw - unless you're a huge fan of all series depicted in the game, you have no easy way of figuring out what character belongs where, making you believe that you should simply try to fit every possible character in each spot, an obviously boring task, unless you're using some sort of guide. Yet, you'll have to do it hundreds of times, or else you won't be able to unlock the many secret characters here available.

"J Adventure" mode also features a small storyline, which may not be that appealing but at least provides you with a reason to keep on playing, even if you're just looking at some images without understading anything at all, while you're facing the more than 70 missions that the game has to offer. If you bear in mind that this is a fighting title, you should be even happy with the presence of something that even resembles a storyline, as most games in this genre tend to neglect that part of gameplay.

Also present in the main menu are basic multiplayer options, which make it possible for you to play against other opponents, either if they human or controlled by the console. Virtual opponents are exactly like the ones fought in the "J Adventure" mode, filled with reasonable A.I. that makes it possible for you to win, but without making it too easy for human players. Regardeless of such option, you can also fight other human players, even they don't own a copy of this game. Sure, a player who has the game is given the choice to select his personalized deck, but if you use this console's famous Download Play option your opponent will be given a sample deck, ones that contains Goku and Naruto, along with a few minor komas. Even if this turns out being a quite limited experienced, allowing those who don't have the game to experience some of its true appeal may turn out being an enjoyable function, apart from giving free publicity to the game.

The last two important options are used to deal with komas. The first allows you to visualize all the komas you've unlocked, while the second one makes it possible for you to put them in decks, either changing your current ones or creating new possibilities. This is where you'll probably spend most of your time, as deck personalization and the task of unlocking new komas plays a major role in gameplay, even if a possibly boring one, as previously mentioned.

Despite having an enourmous play time and quite a few replay value, this game's biggest flaw was the innability to play online, which may severly limit your experience, if you have nobody to play with. While such an issue was fixed in its sequel, here it harshly limits the things you can do after completing the many stages of the "J Adventure" mode. Even if this is a real issue, the game still has more replay value than the average fighting game, mostly because it allows you to select your characters among a wide variety of available ones.

Characters are completely recogniseable and present all the details that made them famous. This fidelity is also patent in the depiction of their most famous attacks, providing a quality that may be enjoyed by major fans and newer fans alike. Sometimes, there are minor graphical glitches, seen when two characters are extremely close to each other or too near the scenario, but such problem barely affects gameplay - it may look slightly bad, but it turns out being a bearable flaw if you realise the overall quality of this product.

Being based in the mangas that were released by "Jump", it is obvious that the game's sound has nothing to do with the anime counterparts of each series. Don't expect to hear people calling their moves or major sound effects, but I can assure you that songs heard while you're fighting or travelling across the menus are quite enjoyable.

As you may suppose, knowledge of the language is obviously important when and since complex licensing issues prevent it from ever being released outside Japan, this is a great game that may turn out not being experienced by most players. Back when it was first released, this was a title that fully deserved to be purchased. While it is still an high-quality game, nowadays players tend to aim at importing "Jump Ultimate Stars", the sequel where all of this game's flaws were fixed. However, if you find this title in a store at half-prize, feel free to pick it up - you won't be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/07

Game Release: Jump Superstars (JP, 08/08/05)