Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle review: fabulously niche

The number of people who can truly appreciate Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle (Jojo ASB) are few and far between, but if you somehow fit the demographic, you’re in for an awesome time.

Jojo ASB is a 3D fighting game developed by Bandai Namco. It is based on the questionably-popular anime and manga series Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

This is actually the second fighting game made for the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure series. The first was an arcade game released in 1998.

Don’t even bother trying to figure out where his hat ends and where his hair begins. No one knows.

Before we talk further about the new game, however, we need to first take a closer look at the source material, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Penned by Hirohiko Araki, it is a manga that has been running since 1986. Nineteen eighty freakin’ six! Apart from it being a long-running and very famous series in Japan, it is enjoyed in very limited circles outside of its country of origin.

I am personally a huge fan of the series, but all my attempts to get my friends interested in it have been met with strange looks and questions towards my sexual preferences. I think it takes a special kind of person to look past the interesting art style and bizarre storyline.

It is for this very reason that, despite being a pretty well polished fighting game, you can’t expect to see Jojo ASB being played in large droves. Just last week when I was covering a tournament for the game, I overheard two spectators discussing how the game simply turns them off due to how—[insert degoratory term used to mean “homosexual” here] every character in the game looks, despite the fact that they consider themselves fans of anime and Japanese culture.

(See: Jojo All Star Battle tournament swept by teenage newbie)

Okay, I get it—not everyone is cool with bulked-up men in colorful mid-riff-baring clothing. But if you could just look past your prejudices, you will find that the manga, the anime, and most definitely the game—add new meaning to the word ‘cool’.

General stuff

Jojo ASB features over 40 playable characters, most of which can be unlocked through the game’s “story mode”. I use inverted commas because the story mode consists of the story being told on the loading screen only via text, and it covers nothing but the bare bones of the lengthy Jojo storyline.

The game was initially released in August last year in Japanese, but Bandai Namco has graced foreign fans with an English version. However there are no English voices in this game, just subtitles to accompany the original Japanese voices.