Jump Super Stars

Jump Super Stars (ジャンプスーパースターズ) 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. An international release of this game is quite difficult due to copyright issues: Different companies hold the import rights to games based on the different manga series, making it hard to license all of them. Although the game was only released in Japan, the U.S. electronics chain Best Buy now carries the import version of the game, interestingly an advisory sticker is featured stating the game is in Japanese. Recently, this game was announced to be released in the U.S. under the developer: Tommo, a release date is set for December 13, 2006. It is currently unknown whether the game is going to be translated into English or merely being mass produced in the United States. A very helpful and informative guide for the game, including translations and objectives, can be found on the popular gaming website IGN. 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 Jump manga magazine in Japan. The game features gameplay similar to that of Super Smash Bros., however, unlike SSB, characters can be defeated without knocking them out of the stage. The game supports 2-4 players in multiplayer and features over 25 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 his koma.

There are three types of komas: help koma, support koma and battle koma.
 * Help koma are only one square large. They'll boost up or help players in the game, but they'll not appear on Battle Screen.
 * Support koma are two to three squares large. These koma will show up briefly on the battle screen to help the player, either by doing an attack, blocking or restoring health, or eventually other actions.
 * Battle koma are four to seven squares large, and are those used in actual battle. These koma represents the characters that the player controls in the battle screen, and the player can switch between characters by tapping their koma in the koma deck like a tag battle.

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 komas next to each other in the deck maker. If the komas placed next to each other are "compatible", their attributes will go up. Battle characters can get longer health bar, or increase the maximum number of special attack gauges.

Alphabetized character list
Note that supporter 1 & 2 are only for ally boosting. Also note that the type only denotes the characters highest "level". This is because all battle characters actually have both battle komas and support komas (they have different "modes", so to say), and all characters have one help koma. Help characters, however, only have the help koma, but some are used in combination with other help characters to build larger koma. Here are all the characters in this game:

(All Japanese names except names of Gintama, Rurouni Kenshin and select Hikaru no Go, Dragon Ball, and Shaman King characters are in the Western order (given name followed by family name). Characters from Gintama, Rurouni Kenshin, "historical" characters from Hikaru no Go, the Son family of Dragon Ball, and the Chinese characters from Shaman King are usually referred to in the Japanese order (family name followed by given name).

There are a total of 160 Characters which are:
 * 34 battle characters
 * 47 support characters
 * 76 help characters
 * 3 special koma

Locations
Jump Super Stars features a number of locations and stages:

Sales information
On its first week of availability, Jump Superstars sold 220,912 copies, becoming the fastest selling Nintendo DS game until the launch of Animal Crossing: Wild World.