[TpGS 2019] Jump Force – An interview with the producer, Koji Nakajima and Spike Chunsoft development team members

Jump Force, the 3-on-3 fighting game celebrating the 50th anniversary of Weekly Shōnen Jump is coming out next month. Many Japanese manga fans have been excited for the game as it is featuring iconic characters from various manga series. During the recent TpGS 2019, we have an interview with the Jump Force producer, Koji Nakajima as well as team members from Spike Chunsoft, Hiroyuki Kaneko and Sadayuki Kadotani. They have told us some interesting details on the new game so check them out below!

A massive roster of characters have been announced for Jump Force, and we wondered if there will be more characters to come. The producer tells us that of course there will be more, but they can’t reveal them yet. Well, stay tuned for the future announcements.

On the characters’ selection, the officials are considering the preference of global players so they are prioritizing the popular ones. They are also taking the gameplay experience into consideration, for example, is the character exciting to control in the battles? Since Jump Force is a fighting game, we are getting more characters that are good in combat, but there will be some non-combat type of characters as well.

Characters in most of the Jump mangas such as Bleach and Naruto are having all kind of outfits that switches according to the era (or situation) they are in. As Jump Force is featuring so many characters, the team decides to only feature the outfit that the fans are more familiar with.

However, they have made changes to the in-game outfits that it would break down gradually during a battle. For example, Pegasus Saint Seiya’s armor will be destroyed and he would become topless. The team will be happy to add more content to the outfits too if players are demanding it.

Although they can’t tell us whether there will be new characters added to the game as DLC, they are making all characters unlocked immediately so players can enjoy the game to the fullest right from the start. You don’t need to unlock any characters by processing the story mode or by meeting certain criteria.

Those who played the beta should notice that even though the battles are in 3 v 3, the characters are sharing the same HP bar. According to Koji Nakajima, this is to balance the gameplay. If every character has their own HP bar, the players who is having a disadvantage (eg: only 1 character left versus an opponent who has 3 characters left) would be extremely difficult to turn the table around. Of course, every character will still have a hidden HP bar used to determine the degree of outfit destruction.

Other than putting many Jump characters together, Jump Force also features a variety of maps. The team aims to create memorable battle arenas by integrating the Jump world and the real world. For example, you will be able to see One Piece’s “Going Marry” in Hong Kong, or “Marineford” with Tokyo Tower in it. Koji Nakajima says that they hope to bring iconic locations around the world to the game, they will be considering the ratio or natural environment versus the city as well.

Jump Force is arriving for PS4, Xbox One and PC on 14 February, pre-order on your respective stores now if you are interested! You can visit the official site for more info. Special thanks to Acer for giving us the chance to attend Taipei Game Show 2019!

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