Jump Super Stars

Jump Super Stars

Developer(s) Ganbarion
Publisher(s) Nintendo, Tommo Inc.
Platform(s) Nintendo DS
Release date(s)
  • JP August 8, 2005
Genre(s) 2D versus fighting
Mode(s) Single player, Multiplayer
Distribution DS card

Jump Super Stars (ジャンプスーパースターズ Janpu Sūpā Sutāzu) 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. Jump Ultimate Stars, the sequel to Jump Super Stars, has been released in Japan as of November 23, 2006.

Gameplay

Jump Super Stars features characters from the Weekly Shonen Jump manga magazine in Japan. The game supports 2-4 players in multiplayer and features over 75 missions.

Koma (panel) is the term for the characters that the player can use in the game. Each koma uses from 1 to 7 squares of the koma deck at the bottom screen of the Nintendo DS. The deck has 20 squares (4 x 5) for the player to place their koma.

There are three types of koma: help koma, support koma and battle koma.

The player can build and store up to ten koma decks, and each deck must have at least one help koma, one support koma and one battle koma to be valid for use in battle. There are also a set of predefined decks that the player can use, but the player cannot change or delete those. It is also possible to exchange decks between friends, but they won't be able to edit the decks.

Ally boosting is done by placing koma next to each other in the deck maker. If the koma placed next to each other are "compatible", their attributes will go up. Battle characters can get a longer health bar, or increase the maximum number of special attack gauges.

Locations

Jump Super Stars features 32 locations and stages; there is a level for each manga that has one of its characters in the game (either battle, support, help, or any other kind of character).

Represented series

This is a list of represented series in Jump Super Stars. Most of the main characters from each series appear as characters within the games. There are 27 series in total.

Sales information

On its first week of availability, Jump Superstars sold 220,912 copies.[1] It was the 19th best-selling game of 2005 in Japan, selling 464,076 copies.[2]

Distribution

Low-budget video game company Tommo, Inc. had exclusive distribution rights to sell Jump Super Stars (and Jump Ultimate Stars) in North America through retailers such as Best Buy and Fry's Electronics. Many small business also received minimal stock of these games. It is possible that since the Jump series could not be localized in North America due to them being a licensing nightmare, Tommo, Inc. took it upon themselves to sell the games to major retailers with a sticker stating that Japanese is the native language. It is possible that Tommo did this through gray marketing.

Release outside Japan

Jump Superstars will not be released outside Japan on account of cross-licensing issues created due to the distribution rights of the several different series being held by numerous anime and manga licensing companies. However some Best Buys in the United States did sell foreign copies for a set time.

Reception

Metacritic gave it 80/100 based 10 reviews.[3]

References

  1. Gamasutra - Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending August 14th
  2. "Media Create Top 500 2005". Geimin.net. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
  3. "Jump Superstars (ds) reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on 30 January 2010. Retrieved 31 August 2014.

External links