JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is the commonly given name to any one of the versions and ports of a fighting game developed by Capcom based on Part III: Stardust Crusaders. The games were developed by the same team who are responsible for the Street Fighter III series.

It was originally released in the arcade in 1998 on the CPS-3 arcade system; this version was known outside Japan as Jojo's Venture. An updated version of the game was released in 1999 as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future becoming the sixth and last game released for the CPS-3 board. Console ports for the PlayStation and Dreamcast were also released that year making this version the most popular among players.

The game combines Capcom's trademark anime-inspired graphics, as seen in the Darkstalkers series, with the colorful characters and events of Hirohiko Araki's creation, resulting in a highly stylized and detailed visual style. It also features many of the gameplay mechanics seen on previous Capcom fighting games, such as the use of power gauges for super moves, as well as a brand new Stand Mode, where the Stand can be summoned or dismissed at will by the player, resulting in variations on the character's move list and abilities.

Hirohiko Araki served as a consultant for the game and created exclusive pieces of artwork for its promotion and packaging; most notably, he developed from scratch a new character design for Midler, since Capcom was interested in using her in the game and she had been only vaguely shown in the original manga.

Story and Setting
The game's events and characters are based on the third part of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Part III: Stardust Crusaders. Many of the events featured in the game (as well as some character designs) directly contradict the depiction of the story in the OVA adaptation, so the game should be considered to be specifically based on the original manga.

Gameplay
The basic rules of the game are those of a standard fighting game : one-on-one battles consisting of two or three time-limited rounds, in which the goal is to deplete the adversary's health bar using both regular attacks as well as character-specific special and super moves, which require the input of button combinations and/or spending accumulated energy, outputted in a power gauge which fills with every attack.

The game uses a simplified 4-button control scheme, consisting of three attacks (light, medium and strong) and a Stand button, which switches the character's stand On and Off (see Stand Mode below)

Stand Mode
Fighting with the Stand Mode "On" enhances both the character's offensive and defensive abilities; these improvements heavily depend of the character and stand, but some common ones are for example double jumping, absorbing residual damage when blocking special attacks, powered-up special moves, etc.

Most of the game's specific mechanics derive from the introduced Stand Mode. For example, attacking the physical manifestation of the enemy's stand will cause damage on both of them; this is a crucial strategic element, since many of the special moves and attacks send the stand away from the user, adding the difficulty of protecting both of them at the same time. On top of the usual health bar and power gauge, there is a third meter, the Stand Gauge, which decreases when the stand is damaged and refills when the Stand Mode is switched off; if this gauge is depleted, a Stand Break is caused, and the character is paralyzed and wide open to any attack for an instant.

Other features of the Stand Mode include summoning the stand with an instant attack, the possibility of "programming" attack patterns on the fly and unleashing them at will, "releasing" the stand and controlling it directly, and so forth.

Some characters lack an "active" stand, though; some of these "passive" stand users introduce even more complex and specific mechanics into the game, such as Hol Horse's gun-stand or Mariah's magnetic stand.

The stands create strong differences between the characters, and force often radically different offensive approaches for each one; this "character-dependent gameplay" style would be present in posterior fighting games, such as the latter entries of the Guilty Gear series; insterestingly enough, both that series and JoJo's Bizarre Adventures include many Rock music references.

Bonus Stages and Special Battles
Across the game and if certain conditions are met, the player will have to clear special stages and face secret opponents in which special rules apply and which reenact certain chapters of the manga that were less "translatable" as regular combats. Among these special events are card games with Daniel J. D'Arby, a sidescrolling sequence in which the player has to overcome a water stand and find its user N'Dour, or a special battle against Death 13 . They also include matches against Pet Shop, Gray Fly, Enya Geil ((Playstation only special battle), Captain Tennille Imposter (in an interactive movie), Forever (in an interactive action sequence), Nena (interactive movie scene), ZZ (interactive movie scene), Steely Dan (shooter), Arabia Fats (interactive mini game), Cameo (Playstation only special battle against Avdol), T. D'arby (interactive movie scene), Kenny G,

Clashing
Similar to Guilty Gear's system, if certain attacks of the same strength and same intensity occur and collide at the same time, clashing occurs. This only happens with characters with an Active Stand. It is hard to see this system in action as it happens very seldom. Currently, it is unknown if the new Active Stand-wielding characters introduced in the 2nd JoJo game can cause attacks to clash. In some cases, clashing can lead to a Blazing Fists Match. (see below)

Blazing Fists Match
One of the less known features of the game, but also one of the most impressive, it's caused when two certain opposing special moves performed by certain characters at the very same time collide; the player/s are then prompted to quickly bash the attack buttons to win a Blazing Fists duel and decide who will receive the damage, a feature first seen in Samurai Shodown.

Alessi Mode
When Alessi uses Sethan to de-age the characters some of them turn into minor characters instead of their child forms. In the Dreamcast version there's Alessi Mode, which allows these de-aged characters to be played in a set of rules (Both players fighting as the kid counterparts for the whole round or the characters turning into children during a Stand crash). This mode is unlocked by finishing Challenge mode with Alessi
 * Kid forms (Jotaro, Kakyoin, Avdol, Polnareff, Devo, Middler, Pet shop, Vanilla Ice, Alessi)
 * Joseph (Young and Teenager)
 * Iggy (older design)
 * Rubber Soul (disguised as a woman)
 * Boingo & Hol Horse
 * Unnamed boy possessed by Anubis
 * Unnamed cow possessed by Anubis
 * Unnamed boy with Hanged Man in his eyes
 * Unnamed old woman from Mariah's fight
 * Nukesaku
 * Wang Chan

Arcade
The initial arcade release of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was released on December 2, 1998. An English-translated version was released in Asia under the shortened title of JoJo's Venture, which predates the officially licensed English adaptations of the original manga and anime (hence the name change). It was followed by a fully revised version titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future, released on September 13, 1999, which featured eight additional playable characters. An English version that was released in Europe retained the full Japanese title of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Console


Two console versions were produced. The PlayStation version is based on JoJo's Venture, but features some of the additional characters from the second version of the arcade game and an exclusive "Super Story Mode". The Dreamcast version, also released in 1999, features both, the original and revised versions of the arcade game in their original forms. Although there are a few unnoticible frames missing from the Playstation port. The English versions changed the spelling of all the characters to avoid the copyright involved in their names, which reference many singers and songs.

On July 2012 was announced a HD Version of the game, which was released August 21 on PSN and August 22 on XBOX Live.

Trivia

 * In one of Dio's alternate color scheme, "The World" is pink and blue giving it an appearance similar to  Crazy Diamond.
 * One of Jotaro's alternate color scheme recolours his coat, hat and pants white, much like his Part 4 outfit (seen in some of the manga covers).
 * One of Avdol's alternate color schemes turns his coat red and shirt to yellow, similar his apparance from the 1993's and 2001's OVA. The same goes for Joseph Joestar, Polnareff and Black Polnareff, both of them having alternate color schemes that resemble their OVA apparance.
 * Besides being based on Part 3 (Stardust Crusaders), this is the first game to have elements from more than one Jojo saga, having elements from Part 2 (Young Joseph as playable character, Caesar appears in one of Young Joseph's special move in one of several manga panel flashbacks as well as Lisa-Lisa doing the same for Old Joseph's version and the Red Stone of Asia is used as one of Young Joseph's supers), Part 1 (Wang Chan as Shadow Dio's "child" form during Alessi's stand ability as well as both Dios having Space Ripper Stingy Eyes as a special move), Part 4 (the Stand Arrow appears in Polnareff's "Requiem" super) and Part 5 (Silver Chariot Requiem appears as a super combo for Polnareff and one of his win quotes translates to "We'll meet again in future...in Italy.").
 * Three of the game's seiyuu, Mitsuaki Madono (Kakyoin), Hōchū Ōtsuka (Joseph) and Show Hayami (Vanilla Ice) return to voice different characters in All Star Battle (Madono voices Part 8's Josuke, Hōchu voices Hol Horse and Hayami voices Enrico Pucci).