Ian Lewis' Blog

Last Sunday I bought JUMP Ultimate Stars for the Nintendo DS. Since then I've been pretty addicted to the game. The format is that of a melee type game like Super Smash Bros for the Gamecube. But the characters are all from the weekly JUMP comic book in Japan. JUMP is kind of like a weekly book/magazine with various comics. Part of the reason it's so addictive is the number of recognizable characters. JUMP prints comics like "Fist of the North Star", "Dragonball", "One Piece", "Naruto", "Bleach", "Kenshin", and "Yugioh". All of whom have representative characters in the game.

You progress through the game by traveling to different planets that are themed around each of the JUMP comic series. At each planet you advance by winning a number of battles which generally have different objectives like gaining the most points, or collecting symbols, or just defeating all other players. Because the types of matches are limited they do get somewhat repetitive. But usually they change it up by pitting you against different characters from the various comics or forcing you to use the characters from the comic to achieve your goals.

In order to choose which characters you play with, you create a deck or what looks more like a comic page using cards or comic pictures for each of the various battle, support, and helper characters. Each card takes up a specific amount of space on the page so you have to arrange them so they fit. The cards come in 3 types, battle, support, and help. The battle cards are those used for the characters you control in battle. The support cards are for characters you can summon to perform an action and help you fight during the battle. The helper cards give the battle cards extra power ups and abilities. Each character could have any array of cards. For instance, Naruto has 2 different sizes of support cards and 3 different sizes of battle cards. Of course the larger sized cards are more powerful versions of Naruto since they take up more space on your comic page. Of course it also allows full wireless play with those who also have the game and a limited amount of wireless play for those without (they can download a piece of the game wirelessly so they can play). Though I haven't had a chance to check it out with anyone yet.