JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle Is Ultimately About Reading Your Opponent

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 was not the only game CyberConnect2 president Hiroshi Matsuyama was open to speaking about when we caught up with him at a recent Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 promotional event in Tokyo.

Since the event was organized by Namco Bandai Games, the developer was also okay with talking about the next fighting-game-based-on-a-popular-manga-franchise they’re working on for the publisher as well – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a franchise that fighting game fans should be quite familiar with, even if they’ve never read the manga series or watched the anime, largely due to the Capcom 2D fighter first released in arcades over a decade ago. The game was re-released now re-mastered in HD for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

Matsuyama allay any fears that All-Star Battle might turn out to be just like the Naruto Shippuden games, which are accessible to anime fans, but otherwise alienating fans of core fighting games such as Street Fighter IV or Persona 4 Arena.

"JoJo is ultimately about reading your opponent’s moves in a fight, more so than in Naruto," Matsuyama said when we asked him how All-Star Battle would be different from their Naruto fighting games. "And so the style and controls here are shaping up here more like a conventional fighting game," he continued.

"Having said that, our mindset here is that we’re not exactly tailor-making the title to suit the tastes of hardcore fighting game fans. Rather, we’re striving to make a game that JoJo fans will enjoy."

As a fan of the manga series himself, Matsuyama also mentioned that his favourite character throughout the entire franchise is Part IV’s Rohan Kishibe, but that his favourite storyline over all is that of Part V.