JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Dreamcast)

Note: This review contains spoilers for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki may be more well-known now than ever before, but the earliest attempts to bring the series over to the US generally flew under the radar. The first of these attempts was the US release of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fighting game, based on Stardust Crusaders, on PlayStation and Dreamcast in 1999. It released to fairly good reviews, but didn’t seem to sell that well, considering secondhand copies go for at least $90. We had missed the opportunity to get the 2012 PS3 port, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD Ver., before it was delisted in 2014 and even though emulated versions of the game exist, we bought a physical Dreamcast copy when we actually saw it so that we could have the most authentic experience. Now that we’ve finally had the chance to play such an expensive game, I can say that it’s very fun, but I wish it didn’t have to cost as much as it does.

One thing to note right away is that the Dreamcast version of this game is actually two games within the same package, JoJo’s Venture and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. As such, this review will cover the complete package while noting the major differences between the two games. Due to the series’ history of renaming characters to get around international copyright laws, I will also mainly use the original Japanese names of the characters, but make a note of the localized names (in parentheses).

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure on Dreamcast is actually a package deal.

The story is based on the third part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders. A Japanese teenager named Jotaro Kujo has gained a mysterious supernatural ability known as a “Stand”. His grandfather, Joseph Joestar, explains that his Stand was awakened by the resurrection of the Joestar family’s archenemy, a vampire named DIO. Jotaro’s mother, Holly Kujo, gains a Stand she can’t control that puts her life in danger. To cure her, Jotaro travels with Joseph to Egypt to find and defeat DIO once and for all.

While the story is generally faithful to what’s presented in the manga, it’s also fairly compressed due to the size of the character roster. Additionally, different characters will have their own liberties taken so that their stories include a certain number of fights. As such, playing through multiple stories allows you get a different perspective on the events and going in with a familiarity of the story can be rewarding. Someone looking for a perfectly accurate adaptation through one character’s point of view won’t find it here, but that’s okay, as some of the altered story paths can be fairly entertaining in their own right.

Speaking of faithfulness, this game is a visual treat, with eye-catching artwork lifted directly from the manga and colorful sprites that perfectly capture the spirit of the unique and diverse cast of characters. One notable exception is Midler, who received a complete redesign, by Hirohiko Araki himself, compared with her mostly unseen manga counterpart. Backgrounds are also rendered to help each location feel unique from one another. The animations are incredibly fluid and feature plenty of small details that fit each character, including pulsating lights, while allowing attacks to feel like they have the right weight. I also noticed an instance of 3D effects, specifically when Hol Horse performs one of his Super moves, that, while a little dated, breaks the fourth wall in a rather impressive way. When characters are defeated by a Super move, the background will also change to show an illustration from the manga, but altered to reflect the type of move that defeated them.

Midler received a (canon) redesign for this game.

The music is also fantastic, with unique themes for each character that match them very well and are pretty memorable even outside the game. A couple that stand out the most are the themes for Alessi and Devo, though one other piece I liked was the one that plays during a scripted encounter with N’Doul and during the scene where Jotaro and co. find DIO’s coffin.

Combat is fairly straightforward, but has unique touches to reflect the source material and add a new spin to fighting games. The controls are simple, with three buttons for light, medium and heavy attacks and a fourth button that turns the character’s Stand on and off.

Stands are actually where the combat derives most of its depth. Depending on the character’s individual Stand, activating them augments the User’s offensive and defensive capabilities for the duration, which can occasionally include enhancements such as double jumping. Having a Stand active also allows access to different special moves or alters the behavior of others. For instance, when Jotaro attacks, his Stand, Star Platinum, will appear and attack independently of Jotaro, allowing him to freely move about. When Star Platinum is activated, however, the two will move together and the special attacks will deal more damage. It’s also possible to “release” certain Stands and control them independently of the User, but the User can’t move, leaving them vulnerable to attack.

One crucial aspect, however, is that any damage dealt to the Stand is also dealt to the User. This adds an element of risk to using Stands, especially since plenty of attacks put some distance between the Stands and their Users. Tying into this, the player has to keep of track of not just their Vitality and Super Combo gauges, but also a Stand gauge, which depletes the more damage a Stand takes while active. If this gauge depletes, a Stand Crash will occur, temporarily paralyzing the User and leaving them completely wide open for any attack. The Stand gauge refills over time, but only if the Stand isn’t active. If two moves of the same intensity occur simultaneously and collide, it will initiate a “Blazing Fists” match, prompting both players to mash the attack buttons to see who will win the duel and deal damage.

The biggest advantage to Stands is the fact that they’re unique to each character, giving them wildly different offensive and defensive options. This includes characters who have a more passive Stand, like Hol Horse’s gun Stand, Emperor, that introduce special mechanics. Depending on the individual characters for different strategies opens up a good amount of depth and allows players to adjust their approach when fighting against different characters. Like in the series, it’s not necessarily the ability of the Stand, but how the User wields it.

When there are characters with similar Stands, like Jotaro and DIO, there’s still some variety in their playstyles and the behaviors of their moves. In their case, Jotaro is more focused on delivering quick and powerful blows while DIO is more focused on misdirection and has the ability to teleport.

Jotaro and DIO are similar, but have vastly different strategies.

With such strategic depth, it’s fortunate that the move lists aren’t very lengthy and are fairly easy to memorize. Since the game was developed by the same team as the Street Fighter III series, special moves are simple button combinations similar to the Street Fighter series and use the same visual language. This helps make the characters easy to pick up and still leave room for different skill ceilings.

I’ll also mention that the disc has its own Option menu where you can adjust different settings for the two games included. If you’re looking to set things like the difficulty, number of rounds, damage output, time limit and the starting amount of the Super Combo gauge, you’ll have to go through here. There are also additional audio and visual options, as well as the ability to alter the controls. You’ll also have to use the main screen of the disc to manually save your progress in either game, including unlockables.

Both games are also compatible with the Jump Pack, which you can insert into the Dreamcast controller to add rumble. I highly recommend playing this way, as it adds a sense of power when Stands are activated and increases the weight behind Stand Crashes. On a very minor note, the VMU will display the JoJo logo while playing.

Now that I’ve described the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure package in general terms, let’s dive into the individual games.

The first game, JoJo’s Venture, is a port of the 1998 arcade game, known originally as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in Japan. It includes 13 playable characters, including three secret unlockable characters: Jotaro, Joseph, Polnareff, Kakyoin, Avdol, Iggy (Iggi), Devo (D’Bo), Chaka (Chaca), Midler, Alessi (Alessy), DIO, Proud Lineage Joseph (JoJo) and Shadow DIO. There are also four playable modes: Arcade, Versus, Training and Survival.

As far as the different modes are concerned, it’s fairly standard fighting game fare. Arcade is basically the Story mode, Versus allows two players to go head-to-head and Training acts as a practice space against a CPU opponent with adjustable behavior. Survival stands out, as the player fights an infinite wave of CPU opponents until they lose; Vitality refills between each match and Super Combo is maintained.

What makes JoJo’s Venture stand out, then, is the presentation. The character select screen is reminiscent of a comic book, with characters taking up differently-sized panels and some onomatopoeia for flair. Different moves may also cause onomatopoeia to appear onscreen and illustrations from the manga occasionally pop in. There’s also very catchy music, Japanese voice acting and backgrounds that fit with each character. I noticed that the background stage is chosen at random, but since there are no gimmicks between them it doesn’t really matter.

One thing to note is that it’s possible to change the colors of the character you select, but this is determined by which button you press when you make the selection. For example, if you’re someone like me who likes to play using the default colors, then you’d press X.

The other game, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, originally released in 1999 as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future in Japan, is a port of the updated version of JoJo’s Venture. It includes eight new playable characters, including four new secret unlockable characters: Hol Horse, Pet Shop (Petshop), Mariah (Mahrahia), Vanilla Ice (Iced), Anubis Polnareff (Black Polnareff), Rubber Soul (Robber Soul), Khan (Kan), Hol Horse & Boingo (Hol Horse & Voing) and Fearless Kakyoin (New Kakyoin). As a side note, it was also the sixth and final game released for the CPS-3 board in the arcade.

Compared to the base game, this updated version feels far more substantial and has a significantly upgraded presentation. The announcer sounds more enthusiastic, the VS screen is flashier and the Start screen has more oomph, not to mention the expanded character roster. To accommodate all of the characters, the character select screen now overlays two manga volumes and gives each character their own panel. Additionally, the HUD (or Cockpit as the pause menu calls it) is cleaner and has new graphics.

The playable modes have also received an upgrade. Selecting Arcade now shows Daniel J. D’Arby, who gives you the option between playing a Story mode or the new Challenge mode, which replaces Survival and operates a little differently. You now fight through a set number of characters instead of an infinite number and you get to choose between whether your Vitality or Super Combo gauge refills between rounds; you’re also scored based on your overall performance. There’s also a new unlockable Alessi mode, which allows you to set special conditions where players control the characters as children during a match.

Daniel J. D'Arby now shows up when you select Arcade.

I noticed a specific change made to the Challenge mode that felt more dramatic than the original Survival. Instead of displaying a character portrait between rounds to indicate who you’re fighting, the screen turns black and the opponent’s theme starts playing. Play enough times and you can eventually figure out who your opponent is just from the theme, which creates a stronger emotional reaction while also making the music overall more memorable.

Since JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is an update to the original, there are some balance tweaks made for each character, which includes subtle but significant changes to the behaviors of certain moves. These changes are more noticeable if you play JoJo’s Venture and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure back to back like I did for this review.

Though the character roster is much larger compared to the original, it’s somewhat disappointing that most, if not, all of the newly unlockable characters are glorified joke characters. They’re generally weaker than their original counterparts and while they do receive the proper amount of attention to help differentiate them with interesting playstyles and fit within the lore, none of them are really going to win you a fight. One example that immediately comes to mind is Hol Horse & Boingo, who has a Super that, while humorous, takes way too much time to play out for the damage it actually deals.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a sizeable roster.

While I do have a lot of fun when playing the game, there are a few blemishes that are hard to ignore. The difficulty varies depending on how you set it in the Option menu and whether you select the Normal or Easy control scheme (the latter allows you to activate special moves with a single button press), but Vanilla Ice is almost always a tough fight as a boss character. He can use his Stand, Cream, to disappear, seemingly always when you’re about to hit him, and launches an unblockable attack from offscreen. While these attacks are telegraphed, some are very difficult to dodge depending on where your character is standing. He also has two Super Combos where he attacks from offscreen in a pattern, but this pattern is random and you’re unsure which Super he’s using until it actually starts, since they have the same opening animation. On top of this, Vanilla Ice’s attacks can hit like a truck and his Supers can hit multiple times if you’re not careful.

The player can overcome Vanilla Ice if they learn how to effectively dodge his attacks and learn to attack and try to Stand Crash him the very second that he reappears. However, from my own observations, it’s objectively more difficult to defeat him as Joseph, solely due to his hitbox. To elaborate, when Joseph kneels, his body still sits higher than other characters. This makes him susceptible to Vanilla Ice’s attack from the middle of the screen, an attack that every other character is able to dodge by kneeling. It got so bad that I ended up switching to Easy controls to cheese the win just so I could actually unlock Proud Lineage Joseph.

There’s also a very notable issue with character balancing within the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure update. Out of all the characters, Pet Shop is easily the most powerful, likely by accident while trying to stay true to the series. Like Iggy, he has a smaller hitbox, which makes hitting him more difficult. Unlike Iggy, however, Pet Shop can fly without any sense of fatigue, meaning he can hug the top of the screen and still get off attacks. He even has an infinite, though it’s hard to pull off without significant practice. Due to such a significant oversight on the developer’s part, we personally soft banned Pet Shop after playing with him a couple times and I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone else picking this game up immediately did the same.

Pet Shop is too powerful.

One other, perhaps minor, issue relates to the character select screen. More specifically, it feels impatient, since after 30 seconds (we timed it) the game locks in your decision whether you’re ready or not. This isn’t so bad in JoJo’s Venture, where the roster is fairly small, but with the complete roster of 22 characters in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and how the secret characters are accessed, it occasionally doesn’t feel like enough time. It would probably help if they had at least included a visible timer on that screen. Also, the text was sometimes hard to read during the story due to the specific blue used to render it.

There’s also one piece of legacy trivia worth bringing up. The current Japanese voice actor of Vanilla Ice, Sho Hayami, actually first voiced the character in this game. To put that in perspective, that’s about 17 years between the release of JoJo’s Venture (1998) and the character’s appearance in the “The Mist of Emptiness, Vanilla Ice” three-parter in the Stardust Crusaders: Battle in Egypt anime (2015).

Taking the two games individually, the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure update is the superior version of the game, with a vastly improved presentation and a variety of interesting characters with unique abilities that add their own layer of strategic depth. As a whole, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a fun, not to mention good, fighting game on the Dreamcast that manages to stand the test of time and still be fun over 20 years later. If you can afford the surprisingly high price tag to add this to your physical collection, I’d say it’s worth every penny. Fans of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure franchise will instantly find something to like about this game, but I’d say that even someone going in completely blind like those in 1999 can still have a good time just on the mechanics and presentation alone.