Highly-anticipated anime crossover fighting game Jump Force was one of the rare surprised to have come out of E3 2018. The game is meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, which has published some of the world’s most iconic Japanese properties including Goku from Dragon Ball and Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece. The game’s trailer unveiled during Microsoft’s E3 conference also featured Death Note characters Light Yagami and Ryuk. However, they won’t actually be playable in the game.
Speaking to Bahamut (translated via Siliconera), Jump Force producer Koji Nakajima clarified several details regarding the upcoming crossover fighting game. The game has actually been in development for the past three years and it was then that Bandai Namco and Weekly Shonen Jump initially met to discuss a high-quality console game to celebrate the latter’s nearing 50th anniversary.
Jump Force: Death Note Characters Are Too Strong
Nakajima confirmed that the Death Note characters Light Yagami and Ryuk won’t be available as playable characters in Jump Force. He said: “Ryuk from Death Note isn’t a playable character, because if he writes names into the Death Note, people die, right? He’d be too strong.” He added that the Death Note characters will still a role to play in the game’s story.
He also teased that since Jump Force will be set in New York, most of the other characters will also be battle-oriented characters. Nakajima specifically ruled out sports manga characters, so that will surely be a disappointment for fans of popular sports anime and manga like Prince of Tennis or Kuroko no Basket.
Addition confirmed features for the final release of Jump Force include a “Clothing Damage” feature. Nakajima confirmed that the game is currently at 60 percent completion and that the AI was definitely set to be weaker for the game demo at E3 2018. Jump Force will be released for the PS4, Xbox One and PC sometime in 2019. We reported last week that a Nintendo Switch version of the game will not be happening, due to the tech limitations of the hybrid console. Meanwhile, check out the gameplay mash-up trailer below.