The 68th edition of the GBAtemp book game club is now up. For those just joining us this series is one of a couple we have aimed at highlighting good or otherwise interesting games to play with this one in particular being less about what the person writing the opening post is about and more about what those participating in the club think.
Our main sources of games for this are the GBA, DS and Wii although if the DS can emulate something well then something there might appear. All the consoles mentioned there have substantial libraries leaked code, commercial releases, homebrew games and ROM hacks which we have only just begun to scratch the surface of. If another platform sports notable entries in the franchise or ports of it we will try to note those as well.
How selections are made we do not care to elaborate upon but we do take pains to note this is not aiming to be a "top ? games list" as those are done all the time and often miss some of the more interesting ideas game makers come up with. There may be a special reason or theme (a run of games that were in English by never made it to North America was a theme some time back) and on those occasions we will note it and there may instead be challenges and runs posed (possibly even with a hack to facilitate it). As this is a weekly series we will try not to overload proceedings and as such there will probably be a single game per entry unless there are a few similar games in the franchise or a few related games might be put up with the intention of comparing and contrasting them.
#68 - Jump Ultimate Stars (NDS)
Crossover mascot driven fighting games are nothing new although they only really made a hit outside Japan in the PS1 and N64 days with the Capcom vs and Smash Brothers franchises although to this day not that many make it outside Japan. Fighting games on the GBA and DS on the other hand were usually seen to be (quite justifiably) quirky alternative controlling games in games like Medabots AX or sub par "ports" of existing fighting games (see just about any fighting game sporting the name of a popular franchise). Those reasons combined along with the developer, Ganbarion, having largely dealt only anime/manga tie in games meant that Jump Super Stars (the first entry in the series) was not that highly anticipated by fans of fighting games but by the time the sequel was up for release the decent controls and use of well liked characters, both of which the games delivered, saw one of the better games in the DS library both then and to this day. The gameplay itself is somewhat closer to the likes of Super Smash brothers than a more traditional fighting game with it being somewhat arena focused and less move list memorisation happy although fans of having to employ precision timing will get something out of it.
That is not the whole story though as the characters used were largely part of the Shonen Jump series which is a Japanese comic series/company not unlike Marvel or DC. However seen as individual series (Shonen jump and so the Jump ? stars franchise includes such franchises as Naruto, Bleach, The Prince of Tennis and One Piece) all had licensing rights sold to various companies outside Japan the chances of a localisation were slim (a similar story told by fans of the Super Robot Taisen franchise). Step in ROM hacking and where the translation project of the first title, one of the first attempted for the DS, did not manage to get finished the second game eventually saw a high quality translation completed and released to the delight of many.
Various overviews are also available for those needing to get to grips with the play style.
Translation download (includes windows patching program)
Filetrip download
The main version linked translated the Koma images (Koma are touch screen selectable tiles used to allow supermoves or other improvements) but as the Koma images themselves do not really describe what they do some instead preferred to leave them untranslated for aesthetic reasons.
Did licensing nonsense nearly deprive you of a good game or was it just that fighting games on handhelds do not work?
gbagotw should get you other links in this series
