is a fighting

Fighting game

Fighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as...

 video game developed by Ganbarion

Ganbarion

Ganbarion is a Japanese video game company.Their most notable works are the Jump Stars series of games.-Games created by Ganbarion:*From TV Animation: One Piece Grand Battle!...

 and published by Nintendo

Nintendo

is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....

 for the Nintendo DS

Nintendo DS

The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...

. It is the sequel to Jump Super Stars

Jump Super Stars

is a 2D fighting game for the Nintendo DS. It was developed by Ganbarion and published by Nintendo. The game was released on August 8, 2005 in Japan and accompanied the release of a red Nintendo DS...

, also released for the DS. The game was released in Japan on November 23, 2006. There are no plans for the game to be released outside of Japan, largely due to international licensing issues for the plethora of series represented.
The game keeps many features from its predecessor, and adds many more. The game boasts 305 characters (56 of which are fully playable) from 41 different Shōnen

Shonen

The term refers to manga marketed to a male audience aged roughly 10 and up. The Kanji characters literally mean "few" and "year", respectively, where the characters generally mean "comic"...

 manga series compared to 160 characters (34 fully playable) from 27 different manga in the original. However, the characters from Hikaru no Go

Hikaru no Go

is a manga series, a coming of age story based on the board game Go written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata with an anime adaptation. The production of the series' Go games was supervised by Go professional Yukari Umezawa...

and Mr. Fullswing

Mr. Fullswing

is a manga written and illustrated by Shinya Suzuki. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, and collected in 24 tankōbon.The main character, Saruno Amakuni, is a loser at attracting girls, perverted, prone to getting into trouble, yet has great strength of heart and body...

do not return in this sequel (Steel Ball Run

Steel Ball Run

is a seinen manga series by Hirohiko Araki. Originally presented as an unrelated story, this series was officially declared a part of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure storyline. The series stars Gyro Zeppeli, who uses a set of steel balls that spin incredibly fast, and Johnny Joestar, a former hot-shot...

is unaccounted for because it has been revised into a story arc within JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

is a manga written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki. Every main character's name in each part can be read as JoJo. The manga, published by Shueisha, first ran in the magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1987 to 2002, before being transferred to the seinen magazine Ultra Jump in 2004. The current story...

between the releases of both games).

Gameplay

The bulk of the gameplay is based around using koma ("panel" in Japanese, referring to the panels in a manga comic) that represent characters to create decks on a four by five grid. Koma come in various shapes and sizes, taking up one to eight blocks. There are three kinds of koma that can be initialized in battle; Battle, Support, and Help koma, with decks needing at least one of each type and an assigned leader before being playable. Battle koma are 4-8 block koma that represent playable characters. They are based on various manga panels and are used to represent what kind of special attacks the characters have. Support koma are two- or three-block koma that represent non-playable characters that can perform actions such as attacks, healing or status effects. Help koma are one-block koma that can give different boosts to characters they are placed next to. Each battle koma comes with a certain nature. These natures (Knowledge, Strength, and Laughter) act in a Rock, Paper, Scissors

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two people. The game is also known as roshambo, or another ordering of the three items ....

relationship with Strength beating Knowledge, Knowledge beating Laughter, and Laughter beating Strength. The stronger type will deal more damage to the weaker type. New komas can be unlocked by clearing challenges in Story mode, or evolving existing komas using gems collected in Story Mode to unlock new paths and komas, such as stronger variations of Battle koma.

Battle

Battles commence in arenas made to look like the page of a manga. Each arena has a unique background and obstacles based on the different manga series. They also contain a variety of different platforms. Many are static while others will move, break, or disappear and reappear randomly. Certain walls and floors are also destructible. During battles, players use their Battle komas to attack opponent, defeating them once they have taken enough damage, or knocked them off the stage.

New features

Jump Ultimate Stars has been changed slightly from the gameplay of Jump Super Stars. Jump Ultimate Stars gives battle characters the ability to dash and to do a new attack while guarding, which, instead of breaking the guard of the opponent, forces them to change characters, and can be identified by a green glow coming out of the characters which executes it. Also, certain 7 and 8 panel koma (along with certain 5 and 6 panel koma) obtain a visual difference during battle as opposed to the appearance of the 1-6 koma of the very same character, some of these variations also bring a totally different set of attacks to the character (e.g. Naruto becomes Kyubii Naruto for his level 7 & 8 koma, and Ichigo becomes Bankai Ichigo for his level 7 koma and Vizard Ichigo for his 8 level koma). Battle characters now have a new ability known as Ultimate Actions (UA). These UA are different for each character, as some recover health, other recover sp, while others can be used to dodge enemy attacks. Another new feature added is the Evolution Chart. This area allows players to upgrade their characters by spending gems(currency earned for ko'ing opponents) to buy a new koma. Each character has a chart, starting from the 1 block help koma and branching off into the 2 and 3 block Support and the 4 to 8 block Battle koma. Some characters have alternate block paths which unlock a different type for that character (e.g. Goku as a laughter type instead of a power type), while others can be used to unlock koma for characters from the same series, quizzes for the series, and new worlds in the story mode.

Represented series

This is a list of represented series in Jump Ultimate Stars. Most of the main characters from each series appear as characters within the game. Note that almost all of the Battle Characters are also Support and Help Characters. This is also true for Support Characters being Help Characters. However, the exception is Sasuke Uchiha, Raoh, Freiza, Majin Buu, and Heihachi Edajima. These characters do not have a Support Character Koma, however, they do have their Help Koma alternative. The asterisk marks newly included series.

External links

• Jump Ultimate Stars Official Website