Stardust Crusaders Episode 10 “The Emperor” Teaser Images

This episode contains something that’s a big deal, so be ready for that if you go look at the pictures.

You can see the rest at Yaraon.

Crossfire Tusk Emperor! ASB League Groups A and B Full Fights

More than just a highlight reel, here are the full fights for all of ASB League Groups A and B. This is a lot more telling about the progression than the highlights reel, and we get to see more of what the characters can do. Group A is, honestly, a little dry because there are three projectile heavy characters. There are long strings of fights where Johnny will pewpew fingernails, and you’ll hear “Crossfire Hurricane” more often than you’ve ever heard it before. And it’s not even particularly to their advantage. Johnny seems way more dangerous at close range than picking away with Tusk, especially considering how hard Slow Dancer’s bucking hits. That’s good because there was a time I was worried about Johnny being an easy spam character. Bruno put up a good show, depending on how well you take to his last stand revival ability. His AI does seem really keen on using that self damaging super, though.

Fights get a lot more interesting in Group B because the one character who could spam, Caesar, didn’t actually do it too much outside a few moments. And that was to his advantage because he also hits really hard. His Bubble Barrier especially did a bunch of damage to anyone it hit. Despite getting totally shut out, ACDC actually does seem decently strong, maybe just unlucky. He’s got a lot of agility where I was expecting him to be more about turtling and getting you with the veins when you got close. Jotaro’s AI isn’t doing him much service because he only seems to do stand shoot. He occasionally tries Star Finger, but it has some really long build up that always seems to get interrupted. I would have liked to have seen a bit more Polnareff.

Also, I didn’t notice until this time, but there are warning zones for some stage hazards. That’s good in general since it’ll make an idea I’m not particularly fond of anyway much less irritating, and certain specific ones that are hard to judge exactly where they hit like the poison frog rain have become much easier to understand. This isn’t true across the board. I didn’t see ones for the Senator’s Limo or Yoshihiro. I also don’t feel like I saw it for Lucy Steel or Joshuu and Yasuho, but I don’t think we got to see what it is they do, so I’ll hold off on that.

One week down, two to go. Groups C and D air next week on Wednesday.

ASB League Groups A and B Fight Highlights and Results

The first two groups of the League have gone. The results are tallied and we have who’s going to the finals. Until the full video of the fights comes out, some Nico guys have come along with a highlights reel with the results tables. There’s one video per group, and I’ve got them both on Polsy. You can view by clicking the group picture.

Group A

Group A was going to be a very telling fight for me. I’ve been wondering how Hol Horse would hold up being that he has a gun. I figured he’d have a really good chance every time to control the pace by picking away with ranged attacks whenever he needed, and I was a bit worried about that. This is also the super popularity duel with Johnny and Bruno being the two closest to winning exempt status during the voting section.

I’ll post the results below this. If you’re waiting to see the full on fights before knowing the results, you’ll just need to skip past this. Results tables are oriented horizontally, so the rows are the character’s results.

Turns out my concerns were completely backwards. Hol Horse goes down in a complete shut out and Johnny sweeps up three wins to secure his spot in the finals. Johnny isn’t reliant only on his nails, though. There’s a good amount of horse that he uses to win. Bruno squeaks by into the finals because of his special get up at the end of the fight ability. He just manages to edge out Abdul, who was kicking some serious ass but was not able to carry it all the way. Bruno and Johnny claim their popularity status with their own hands and head to the finals.

Also, we get to see our first in game situation finish at the Ghost Alley. This one takes Hol Horse when he’s finished by a super. It was weird because the transition was so sudden, but cool all the same.

Group B

This fight was also going to be telling. I’ve been worried about stands being able to totally shut down any non-stand user offense ever since the exhibition match between Johnathan and Dio. Two stands on two non-stands was a good testing ground for that, especially since Jotaro is here with Star Platinum and The World having basically the same standard stand shoot.

And my worries are mixed. Turns out the second row is the unlucky spot of the day as ACDC also suffers a complete lock out, but Caeser comes in and sweeps up a total victory for his spot in the finals. Jotaro was able to hold ACDC down totally with Star Platinum, but Caeser’s bubbles easily got inside everyone’s guard to allow his wins. Jotaro and Polnareff have a pretty even match with Jotaro pulling out a win in the end. He and Caeser will be in the finals.

(Thanks to JoJo F2C for posting these videos. You can also view them there if you prefer it to Polsy.)

All Star Battle PV 4 Subbed! “I’ve taken the meaning out of your language.”

I assumed you guys would be interested in knowing what they were saying. It helps me out. I didn’t know what it was JoJolion Josuke was doing during his Grand Heat, but the friction stealing is cool. Okuyasu calling Giorno names makes way more sense than insulting his topknot that he totally has. His classic style “uurrryyy” is also a nice touch.

(Thanks to JoJo Tumblr for being that chain link. You can see the original post here.)

All Star Battle PV 4! Father vs. Daughter, Gun vs. Gun, Vampire vs. Pompadour, RERO vs. RELA

Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Can we agree that we’re coming into ASB with a little “who’d win in a fight” mentality? The moment Mista and Hol Horse were both set to be in the game, I was thinking about who has the better gun stand. But the stand out rivalry is obviously the all out cage match of Cherries vs. Cheese.

The gameplay that we got to see with the main showcase characters, Johnny, Johnathan, Will, and JoJolion Josuke are pretty interesting. I was wrong about what move I thought would be the On Fire Fist, but we knew it would be there. Zoom punch got my attention because it looks like it sticks for a second instead of retracting immediately. If it does, it could be really awesome for anti-air because an opponent could misjudge the time and still jump into it. Will also has it, so I await my match where we sit across the ring just doing that at each other.

Johnny looks like he’s either going to be the character that’s really hard to use because of his very limited movement when not on Slow Dancer but very rewarding if you can handle him or the character that caters to spamming because he’s going to be projectile heavy. That does follow; his power was shooting his fingernails, but I don’t want that to mean he’ll be the back-up-and-shoot-you character.

JoJolion Josuke I think is going to be the trap/counter character with that all based around the soap bubble. I’ve got to give CC2 some credit for what they used for his moves because you see him using a bunch of soap bubbles as a barrier around his body like the shaving scene. He also does that at a distance, but I’m mostly interested in when the screen goes black. That specific bubble will steal the players’ “eyes” by blacking the screen so whoever’s JoJolion Josuke can get a free hit. That’s going to be really hard to use for human player because it blanks the screen, but there may be more to it than what’s in the PV.

Oh, and Kira. He has Sheer Heart Attack, but that’s all they’re telling us. I figured he would also be a counter/trap character because of the way Another One Bites the Dust works and all the bombs, but it’s not in the PV. At this point, I think we can be clear that Kira is DLC only. The way he’s rolled in with the Hayato Memo Book and the specific mention of PSN in the text on the still intro page (edit: and that he’s listed as such on the official character page.) You gotta buy him extra. If you don’t want to mess with getting foreign DLC, you might want to import fast.

All-Star Battle Trailer Number 3

Remember how I mentioned that CC2 was bringing out a new trailer for ASB at Jump Fiesta?

Here it is. I’m mostly just going to let it speak for itself because me speaking for the trailer would pretty much just be, “AH. DID YOU SEE THE THING WITH THE BASEBALLS AND THE STEAMROLLER AND-” and so on. What I will tell you are the voice actors.

Jolyne Kujo – Miyuki Sawashiro (Celty Sturlson in Durarara!!, Fujiko Mine since 2011)
Hermes Costello – Chizu Yonemoto
Giorno Giovanna – Daisuke Namikawa (Bat in Legends of the True Savior, both Italies in Hetalia)
Guido Mista – Kenji Akabane (Koji Kabuto in Shin Mazinger, I’m not even writing anything else, he was fucking Koji Kabuto)
Sex Pistols – Asami Imai (Kurisu Makise in STEINS;GATE)
Josuke Higashikata – Wataru Hatano (Largan Drace in Gundam AGE, Rufus in Street Fighter 4)
Okuyasu Nijimura – Wataru Takagi (Eiikichi Onizuka in GTO, pretty much every anime character like that and Okuyasu)
Mohammad Abdul – Masashi Ebara (Might Guy in Naruto, Andy in Cowboy Bebop, Andy in Cowboy Bebop because it bears repeating)
Hol Horse – Houchu Otsuka (Yazan Gable in Zeta Gundam, Gen in Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still)
Noriaki Kakyoin – Kouji Yusa (Shadow the Hedgehog, Urataros in Kamen Rider Den-O)
Jean Pierre Polnareff – Hiroaki Hirata (The Japanese dub actor for Johnny Depp, Sanji in One Piece, Wild Tiger in Tiger & Bunny)
Dio – I’m going to give you enough credit to assume you already know.
Jotaro Kujo – Daisuke Ono (Kenji Kusanagi in Kotetsushin Jeeg, Snow Villers in Final Fantasy XIII)

And that’s the new PV. It’s looking fantastic, the sense of humor they’ve got with the little Josuke and Okuyasu moments, the casting is really good. Now all we need is the characters from Part 1 and hopefully more from Part 7. Then we’ll be set.

All-Star Battle Gameplay Shots 2! The Emeperor Can’t Strike a Pose; It’s a Gun

Just like with the last preview shots of All-Star Battle, Famitsu comes through for us again with quality shots and gameplay pictures of All-Star Battle’s newest announced characters.

Dio and The World

Abdul and Magician’s Red

Hol Horse and The Emperor

The upclose shot makes it all the more apparent how fabulous Magician’s Red is. I mean, naturally growing feather pants and what I think may be go go boots. They don’t really compare to Dio’s striped elf shoes, but feather pants. I’m also impressed with how accurate to the manga they made The Emperor.

When looking for a picture of manga The Emperor, I didn’t mean to find the actual reference picture.

Dio’s looking good, like you would expect, and everyone’s doing well in their gameplay pictures. If I’m seeing this right, Magician’s Red had retained it’s ability from the original fighting game to grab your face and make you blow up.

And his taunt lets him tell you exactly what he thinks of you.

Pfft. Couldn’t handle a little facial explosion. What a pussy.

Hol Horse gets to use a fellow Dio follower as an ultra. His ultimate attack is recreating Abdul’s “death” scene by summoning The Hanged Man.

I love how he looks like he’s shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know how I got here either, man.”

But did you really come to see Hol Horse and J. Geil, or did you come watch Dio throw hundreds of knives at Jotaro? And then a steam roller. And then punch the steamroller because a steamroller to the face isn’t enough to kill Jotaro.

This looks really weird when you take a still image of it.

And finally, we get a nice new battle map based on Dio’s lair from just before the final fights of Part 3. Considering that they’re doing the stage hazard thing, do you think Kakyoin blowing up the wall will be one? Maybe Vanilla Ice will run around the room and bump into you turning you into a mass of discarded limbs. Sounds unfair, so probably Kakyoin.

With all the gameplay images of All-Star Battle, I’m hoping we get some more Steel Ball Run characters soon because I think we’ve only seen Gyro up to this point. I want that Double Dio Madness Match I was talking about before.

(All images from Famitsu.com as you can probably tell from their watermark)

Dio’s Beautiul in-game Model. Also, Hol Horse and Abdul

A handful of new All-Star Battle confirmations. We already know about Okuyasu and Hermes, so what could be next.

Well, all right then. I don’t think any of us doubted he would be, but Dio brando is confirmed. Specifically Stardust Crusaders Dio. I’m not sure if there will be an alternate Phantom Blood Dio or if that will just be an extra costume or something. We can expect time stopping powers just like we’ve seen with Jotaro in the trailers since he comes with The World. To that end, Jotaro will be able to move around in the stopped time if his super gauge is filled. Possibly the most important thing is that if you look on the left hand of the page, you can see a steamroller getting dropped. I’m not surprised that they put that in, but it makes me happy to know that they did.

And, not to sell them short, Abdul and Hol Horse have their confirmation tucked away in the lower corner. They look good for what you can see. It had been long enough since playing the Capcom fighting game that I’d forgotten Abdul has green hair. You unfortunately can’t seen Magician’s Red, but hopefully we’ll get some gameplay screens of Abdul and him soon like we did with Okuyasu  and Hermes. I wasn’t expecting Hol Horse. A lot of Dio’s Part 3 underlings came and went pretty fast, so Hol Horse did end up being one of the more prominent ones. I wonder how he’ll comepare to Mista since they both have gun based Stands.

So we’ve gotten Parts 4, 5, 6 and now Part 3 characters. Who do you think we’ll get for Part 7? Think we’ll get Diego Brando? Double Dio Madeness Match? If that does happen, I demand it as a warm-up show at every tournament with this game in it.