Jump centers itself around the Koma System. On the top screen of the DS, you will see the action unfold, accompanied by your health and "special" meter. On the bottom, your Koma is displayed on a 4X4 grid. The Koma displays your battle characters, support characters as well as helper characters in the game.

Koma’s decks are basically well-constructed decks that are based on a rock paper scissors. Power beats Knowledge, Knowledge beats Laughter and Laughter beats Power. Battle characters are the actual characters you control when fighting, which consist of 4-8 blocks of space on the grid. The support characters are two or three block characters that come out and attack, defend, and boost your character’s attributes. Helper Koma’s are one block Komas that add certain abilities to your characters such as a triple jump or an air dash.You can activate any Koma by pressing the touch screen. The L and R buttons on the DS can be used as “hot keys” for instant access to these Koma. You can also assign a leader to your deck. The leader will come out first into the battle as well as boost your health and provide an extra point knock out. 

Visually, the game doesn’t stray far from old school, 2D side-scrollers. Some detail is provided about your favorite anime characters, but don’t expect anything revolutionary. The music is very catchy, employing great use of MIDI style tones.

The stages are fairly simple. A basic hand drawn background is displayed with various moving floors. Occasionally there are some interesting quirks in the stages, such as One Piece’s giant cannon that fires balls at the players.

The story was hard to understand because this game was released only in Japan. From hands on experience, it is possible to deduce the following: The main antagonist is the mad scientist Mashirito from the anime Dr. Slump. It is up to you to beat him and restore order to the Jump Galaxy by visiting planets that belong to a certain anime. You are presented with certain objectives to beat the planet’s missions. These objectives include: Get the Most Points, Knock out All Opponents in 40 Seconds, Don’t use Y button etc.

When you beat these missions you unlock helper Koma that you can evolve. Using this method you are able to unlock various versions of different Koma. From a one block Koma, you can continue to a two or three block support. From there, you can continue on to four block Komas all the way to eight. Some can be evolved to four, five or fully evolved to eight. Others don’t evolve at all. Evolving your characters won’t make you lose your helper Koma; instead you unlock different versions.

You will acquire Jump Gems from the main game or VS battle. These gems work as currency that is needed to evolve the characters. Once reaching a certain amount and a certain type of gems, you are able to unlock more Koma.

Other modes of play are available in the J Arena mode.  There is the basic Battle and Training mode in the J Arena where you fight against CPUs or train. There are also Ranking and Mission Try modes. Ranking mode is a standard Arcade mode where you fight your way to the top. Mission Try is a time trial of the entire missions in the campaign.

One nice addition is Wi-Fi play. Wi-Fi is implemented with a Friend and Random option. Through the use of friend codes, you can speak directly to buddies using voice chat before and after matches. Although, you can’t communicate during fights, you are at least afforded the opportunity to talk some smack before starting a match.

Once you are done playing, you receive gems and the option of downloading your opponent’s decks. The only catch is that you’re unable to use those decks online. You can just make a copy of it yourself.  It is annoying that you can’t download more than one deck from your opponent. If you download another deck from your friend, you current deck is overwritten.

There are handfuls of unlockables that won’t really matter unless you can read Japanese. All of the manga contains bios and information, such as the author, when it was first published, as well as a picture of the manga’s first volume.

Jump Ultimate Stars has a lot to offer the end user. There are roughly 300 different types of Koma’s and hundreds if not thousands of deck combinations that can keep you busy for quite a long time. Wi-Fi gameplay only sweetens the deal. While $49.99 might be a bit steep for a DS game, it will be something you will want to play again and again.

Bottom Line: 10 out of 10

Anime 3000 reviews anime, manga, and games based on specific criteria designated by each medium's respective editor. Videogames are reviewed individually on a scale from 1 to 10. Games that receives a score ranging from 8-10 is considered oustanding, 6-7 recommendable, 5 average, 3-4 unrecommended, and 1-2 terrible.

Developer: Ganbarion
Publisher: Nintendo
Console: Nintendo DS
Release Date: November 23, 2006 (Japan)