JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 未来への遺産, JoJo no Kimyō na Bōken Mirai e no Isan), simply called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in the West, is an arcade game developed by Capcom based on the third part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders. It was released on September 13, 1999, on the CPS-3 arcade system. As a revision of JoJo's Venture, Heritage for the Future adds eight playable characters and adjusts several aspects of the game.
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 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: a character's Stand can be summoned or dismissed at will by the player, resulting in variations in the character's move list and abilities.
Heritage for the Future and its earlier revision were ported to the Sega Dreamcast. Much later in 2012, Heritage for the Future was ported to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.
Gameplay
The basic gameplay mechanics 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 Vitality Gauge using regular attacks and character-specific special and super moves. Special and super moves require the input of button combinations and/or accumulated energy, which is displayed in a Super Combo Gauge that increases every time damage is dealt or taken.
The game uses a simplified four-button control scheme, consisting of three attack buttons (light, medium, and heavy) and a Stand button, which switches the character's Stand Mode on or off. Pressing all three attack buttons triggers a invulnerable forward dodge; pressing the three buttons while blocking pushes the opponent back a set distance. Depending on which button is used to select a character, a different color palette will be used for that character.
The game's six unlockable characters can either be unlocked via time release or the game's service menu in the original arcade version; in the Dreamcast rerelease, they can be obtained by clearing Challenge Mode as certain characters. None of the new characters have AI programmed for them, so they cannot be fought in Story or Challenge Mode.
Stand Mode
Fighting with Stand Mode on enhances a character's offensive and defensive abilities; these improvements heavily depend on the character and Stand, but the most common benefits are double jumping, absorbing residual damage when blocking special attacks, and more powerful special moves.
Stands themselves are physical extensions of their users, and thus damage and attack effects inflicted upon one carries over to its user. Like avatar/puppet-based characters in other fighting games, Stands are able to act independently of their users, allowing for several offensive gimmicks.
Most of the game's unique mechanics derive from the introduced Stand Mode. Many special moves and attacks send a combatant's Stand away from its user, making it more difficult to protect both at the same time; each character's orientation is based on their position towards their opponent, and not necessarily the opponent's Stand. If a character is damaged while their Stand is far away, the damage received is doubled. On top of the Vitality Gauge and Super Combo Gauge, there is a third gauge, the Stand Gauge, which decreases when a character's Stand is damaged and refills when Stand Mode is switched off. If this gauge is depleted, a Stand Crash occurs, leaving the character paralyzed and open to attack for a moment.
Another feature of Stands is Tandem Attack, which can be executed once a character has one stock of the Super Combo Gauge to expend. During the extended startup flash, inputs can be provided for the character's Stand; the Stand will then perform these button inputs on their own as a Program Attack, leaving the user free to do as they please and attack simultaneously. Controlling the Stand directly by performing a special move will cancel the Stand's predetermined onslaught early, however. Weapon Stand users—Alessi, Chaka, and Joseph Joestar—who are unable to separate their Stand from themselves, can instead perform a Real Time Attack, in which most of their moves can be chained into one another until the stock is emptied.
The mechanics of each Stand create strong differences between the game's characters, and force different offensive approaches for each one. This "character-dependent gameplay" style would inspire several subsequent fighting games, such as the latter entries of the Guilty Gear series (which, interestingly enough, also contains rock and pop music references).
Clashing
If certain attacks of the same strength and intensity occur at the same time and collide, clashing occurs. This only happens with characters with an Active Stand. It is hard to see this system in action as it happens very infrequently. This mechanic would later be incorporated into future JoJo games, such as All-Star Battle.
In some cases, when two certain opposing special moves are performed at the very same time, a Blazing Fists Match can occur. When this happens, both combatants are prompted to rapidly tap the attack buttons to win the duel and decide who will receive damage, a feature first seen in Samurai Shodown. This feature has since been adopted and expanded in All-Star Battle.
Changes in Heritage for the Future
Every starting character from JoJo's Venture is available from the start, along with DIO and five new characters: Hol Horse, Anubis Dual-Wielding Polnareff, Mariah, Pet Shop, and a newly-playable Vanilla Ice. The names of Young Joseph (若ジョセフ) and Shadow DIO (影DIO) were changed to Proud Lineage Joseph (誇り高き血統ジョセフ) and Evil Incarnate DIO (邪悪の化身ディオ!!) respectively. In addition, four new hidden characters have been added, these being Rubber Soul, Khan, Hol Horse & Boingo, and Fearless Kakyoin. Furthermore, there have been several balance changes for the returning cast from JoJo's Venture, such as new moves, mechanical changes to certain characters and buffs. Additional palettes for each character have also been added to be used with the attack and Start buttons, bringing the number of palettes for each character up from two to five. Less significantly, Vanilla Ice's boss AI has been toned down, and Proud Lineage Joseph now wears his tank top from Battle Tendency.
Venture's menu systems have been entirely redesigned, and a new Challenge Mode has been added as a second single-player option. Sound effects throughout the game have been added or changed, and the startup animations for super moves and Tandem Attacks have been altered. The input to perform a Guard Cancel was also slightly changed, now resembling the method seen in the Darkstalkers series. New variants were also added for several stages.
Cast
Voice Actor(s):
Game Modes
Heritage for the Future contains the following game modes:
Characters
Manuals
Localization
Name Changes
The game's English localization changes the names of several characters to avert possible legal issues. Most of these localized names have never been used since.
| Iggy | Iggi
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| Devo the Cursed | D'Bo, the cursed one
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| Chaka | Chaca
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| Alessi | Alessy
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| Vanilla Ice | Iced
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| J. Geil | J. Gale
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| Anubis Dual-Wielding Polnareff | Black Polnareff
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| Mariah | Mahrahia
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| Evil Incarnate DIO | Shadow DIO
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| Proud Lineage Joseph | JoJo
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| Rubber Soul | Robber Soul
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| Boingo | Voing
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| Khan | Kan
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| Fearless Kakyoin | New Kakyoin
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| N'Doul | N'Dool
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| Holy Kujo | Holley Kujo
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| Enya | N-Yah
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Regional Differences
The kanji for "retired" (
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In the Japanese region setting, the new challenger screen changes depending on the character currently being played as: the protagonists say "A new Stand user?!" (新手のスタンド使いか！), the villains (and JoJo) say "Who the hell are you?!" (何者だ！？), and female characters say "Who are you?" (何者！？). This is not carried over to other region settings, which instead use "Here comes a new challnger!!" (sic) for all characters.
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| New Challenger Text (Japanese) | Female New Challenger Text (Japanese)
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The strangest result of the localization process was the translation of Japanese text into English. Most if not all of the Japanese text is cartoonishly translated and the English translation is littered with instances where lines don't even match the original Japanese.
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 消えな: to go out; to vanish; to disappear. A rough translation of this line would be "Get lost," or "Piss off." |
 The English release is quite dramatic, but these choices have to be understood as Capcom selling JoJo's to a new Western audience. |
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Censorship
International releases went through censorship for some of the presentation and explicit content to accommodate younger, foreign audiences. While Western releases had fairly standard changes for the time, Asian releases were more severe due to Korean censorship of Japanese media, with all Japanese text and dialogue being removed and replaced with English where necessary.
All instances of blood in the game are colored white (similarly to sweat), with some exceptions: Midler's blood is removed in her Story Mode ending, and the "Massacre!" graffiti in the "In A Air Plane" stage is colored orange.
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Instances of gore and cutscenes that were considered too intense were altered.
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There are a small number of other mild changes, such as the Anubis sword being recolored to a wooden brown color or DIO's wine being recolored (though this could also be a simple palette oversight).
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Other Versions
Sega Dreamcast
Both Heritage for the Future and its earlier iteration were ported to the Sega Dreamcast under the former's title, allowing the player to choose which version they want to play. The Dreamcast port features a handful of new modes, along with more options for existing ones, such as being able to select difficulty in Story Mode or set handicaps in Versus Mode.
The Sega Dreamcast version of Heritage for the Future contains the following new game modes:
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD Ver. (PSN/XBLA)
In 2012, Heritage for the Future was ported to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network with upscaled graphics and online play, as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD Ver., though this version was delisted in 2014.[8]
The online component featured the ability to filter opponents by location and connection speed in a similar manner to newer Capcom fighting games such as Super Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. It also introduced a new eight-player tournament mode, where players could
compete for a chance to battle in the final showdown.
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Gallery
Expand/Collapse All
Stages
In a Air Plane
Underground Water
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Promotional Material (Arcade)
Cover
Back
Flyer
Flyer (Inside)
Flyer (Inside)
Flyer (Back)
Cart
Disc
Marquee
Marquee
Marquee
Poster
Promotional Material (Dreamcast)
Japanese Cover
Japanese Back
Japanese Disc
Japanese Spinecard
Japanese Cover (for Matching Service)
Japanese Back (for Matching Service)
Japanese Promotional Poster
Japanese Advertisement
North American Cover
North American Inlay
North American Back
North American Disc
North American Promotional Poster
European Cover
European PBack
European Disc
HD Ver. Screenshots
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HD Ver. Trailers Promotional TrailersTrivia
- The game's name is based on Stardust Crusaders's original name during serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump, Part 3 Jotaro Kujo: Heritage for the Future.[9]
- GioGio's Bizarre Adventure, another game developed by Capcom features an orchestral rendition of Polnareff's theme as the background music for Chapter 11-1. Some cutscenes also use the villain intro theme from this game's Story Mode.
- The underlying mechanics of All-Star Battle are based on the Capcom fighting games. In addition, All-Star Battle has two DLC costumes for Jotaro and Polnareff based on promotional material for JoJo's Venture.[10]
- The travel maps featured in Story Mode contain errors, mostly anachronistic oversights due to Stardust Crusaders being set in the 80s:
- The entirety of the Soviet Union is depicted as the Russian Federation (Russia Federation is also misspelled).
- The People's Republic of China's Yangzte River & Yellow River are strangely drawn onto the map (it's name is also missing the apostrophe).
- The Kashmir Conflict isn't portrayed.
- North Yemen & South Yemen weren't united into Yemen until 1990.
- The Ethiopian-Eritrean border is mistakenly drawn. Eritrea was still annexed by Ethiopia in the late 1980s.
- Somalia, Turkey & the Nile River's names are misspelled.
- Iggy's Sand Storm super move is a reference to the Shun Goku Satsu move used by Akuma in the Street Fighter series. This is further evidenced in the game's debug mode, where an unused graphic shows the kanji for the word dog (犬) stylized in a similar manner to Akuma's kanji for heaven (天).
- In Capcom's "Super Elections" survey for their 40th anniversary, Heritage for the Future ranked 179th with 126 votes for the "Which of the following Capcom games do you like the best?" question.[11]
References
- ↑ ［SEGA］家庭用ソフト：ソフトデータベース：ドリームキャスト：発売ソフト検索：ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 未来への遺産
- ↑ Capcom: JoJos Bizarre Adventure for Dreamcast
- ↑ "Official Dreamcast Magazine" May 2000, page 40
- ↑ ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 未来への遺産 for Matching Service | ドリームキャスト | 家庭用ゲーム | SEGA
- ↑ ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 未来への遺産 HD Ver. | ソフトウェアカタログ | プレイステーション® オフィシャルサイト
- ↑ JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE HD Ver. on PS3 | Official PlayStation™Store US
- ↑ Results for "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD" - Search | Pegi Public Site
- ↑ JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD has been removed from Xbox Live and EU PSN
- ↑ Name Variants: Stardust Crusaders
- ↑ Classic JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Arcade Artwork Inspires Free Downloadable Costumes for All-Star Battle | Shoryuken
- ↑ Capcom Super Elections Q1 Results
