Your Favorite Manga Dream Teams Come True in a Marvel vs. Capcom Meets Super Smash Bros. Hybrid
Jump Superstars is possibly one of the greatest games I have ever played, and in my 20+ years of gaming, that says a lot.
Jump Superstars combines a large number of characters in the Shonen Jump universe and throws them together in a simplistic, pick up and play fighting game. You earn characters from a number of well known (and not so well known) Shonen Jump mangas like Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Yu-Gi-Oh, Steel Ball Run, Mr. Fullswing, etc...
The gameplay itself is where the fun comes in. You must assemble your team from various manga panels and arrange them in a deck that is called a koma. You have three types of panels. Battle panels are your actual player characters, and they are typically "main characters" from these various mangas. Then there are support panels. When used, they might appear for a quick attack or maybe replenish health depending on the character. If you've played the original Marvel vs. Capcom, think of the sub-characters like Arthur or Shadow or U.S. Agent. Finally there are helper characters, which for the most part give a temporary stat boost. Each koma must contain at least one of each type of panel. Arranging them to fit your style of play is one of the keys to success. What adds to the challenge of arranging your deck is when you unlock new panels, the panels are incomplete. There is a frame missing from the panel (sometimes 2 or 3, such as unlocking SSJ Gotenks where you need to place the panels of both Goten and Trunks into the imcomplete panel before SSJ Gotenks is unlocked), and you need to insert the right character in the blank spot to unlock the panel for play. Unless you can read Japanese, it'll mostly be trial and error, but it's easy enough to fill them out.
The gameplay itself is simple enough. B is a weak attack, Y is a strong attack, X is your special attack, A is your jump button, and L or R or Down on the D-Pad is used to block. You use the touch screen to switch characters or to summon support and helper characters.
The missions range in difficulty from incredibly easy to freaking hard, but with enough perseverance, even the hardest missions can be completed.
I should warn you though. Jump Superstars is incredibly heavy in Japanese text. There is less than 1% of English text in the game. But...don't let the lack of English turn you away. There are some good strategy guides floating around on the internet (IGN's in particular comes to mind) that translate the Japanese for you so that you can get the most out of the game.
For those of you who might be holding off for an English translated version, don't. It'll never be translated into English. Because of many different companies holding the North American rights to many of these mangas and animes, it would be a logistical nightmare to make sure all parties get their piece of the pie unlike the Japanese release which is very simple, with profits split by Nintendo (the publisher), Gambarion (the developer), and Shonen Jump (the owners of the intellectual property). So, the only way you're gonna get a chance to play it is to import it.
There's not many fighters for the DS, but this one is definitely one of the best. If you love frantic, fast-paced fighters like Marvel vs. Capcom or Super Smash Bros., then you will get hours of enjoyment out of Jump Superstars.