I'm a scrub with fighting games. There has never been one that I really took it upon myself to master and learn to play. It's always been a genre I feel lukewarm about. Time to time I have discovered and enjoyed some really good ones, they tend to be games with low entry bars or are widely known. Maybe someday this will change if I begin to play such games with other people.

Having said that little disclaimer, I find myself a bit ill-equipped to review a fighting game. But there are many things that I can say of this one. (The main one being though that it is pretty good!)

One thing I came to learn (And really admire) about the Sega Dreamcast was the hardware. For its time it really was a powerful little system. The fascinating thing about it is how there are so many Fighting and Shooting games on it. When I noticed that was when I learned that the console was a bit of a fluke in that maybe half of these games have arcade counterparts running Sega NAOMI. Guess what, it's the same game most of the time. The dreamcast is unique in that it is an affordable consumer-grade arcade emulator!

Like many of the fighting and shooting games on Dreamcast, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure falls into this camp. It's actually a compilation of two Japanese arcade games that have received a really wonky English translation. The second game pretty much is an expanded version of the first and makes the first one obsolete. (But there are slightly different mechanics to whoever really cares)

I'll focus on the second game for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

Most fighting games in the last half of this era would go for new mechanics and gimmicks. This one has a few that are quite interesting. The main mechanic is actually a lore-friendly aspect of the source-material: that of the Stand The stand is a psychedelic extension of the will made manifest. Think of Spawn or Venom/Carnage and you get the idea.

The stand mechanic is really cool in this game. You press a button to turn it on or turn it off. When off you are vulnerable but you have other move sets and can dodge easier. Many of the character can also do other things in this state such as send the stand in different directions or summon the stand for surprise attacks.

When you turn it on you have some really cool moves as well as a meat shield. This is the main way you'll do your fighting in the game, but take too many hits and your Stand will despawn and you are back in your normal form. To bring it back up you have to deal some damage to the other guys stand. knock out his stand and you also get a point to spend on completing a combo move. That's the jist of it.

The combo moves themselves are quite simple and easy to learn (at least for some characters, such as the main one: Kujo Jotaro, which i highly recommend) the game is pretty simple and doesn't focus on mixes of complex movements with recipes as much. You don't even have kicks in this game. light, medium and heavy attacks are pretty much it. You can look up a simple faq for your moves and get them down pretty quickly.

The way I describe this game may seem pretty light and simple but it gets more involved than that. I found some of the enemies very difficult to learn around their moves, but once I did it wasn't so bad. Most of the game is easy to learn and just challenging to really master and execute finesse with.

In the end this is a cool looking anime-inspired game that has a low entry barrier and has a nice 'n garish celluoid-against-1999x-pixel-backgrounds aesthetic, its just different enough to be interesting and its really pretty funny due to the silly premise of the source-material and (probably?) engrish translation. It features a decent 'story mode' an arcade versus mode as well as a challenge mode in which you battle 10 enemies with ONE life.

That's a whole lot of game really. and its cool that its a localized home-console compilation of two arcade games. What an awesome release! I'd totally recommend it just because its easy to pick up and play. I'll be revisiting this one and Garou Mark of the Wolves in the future.