Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine is home to manga’s most popular characters, and they’re about to get another spin in the video game spotlight. DeNA announced plans to unleash them on mobile devices in JUMP: Assemble, a new MOBA that’s due out sometime in 2024. There’s no word on an English release, but so far it has its sights on release in Southeast Asia and East Asia (excluding Japan).
JUMP: Assemble aims to pit Shonen Jump characters against one another in five-on-five matches. So far eight manga series have been confirmed along with images of their leads. Series revealed include Mashle: Magic and Muscles, Jujutsu Kaisen, Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, Bleach, Demon Slayer, and Undead Unluck. You can see them and their respective heroes in the announcement visual, from MASHLE‘s Mash Burnedead on the left to Undead Unluck‘s Andy on the right.
In between those we have Yuji Itadori, Naruto, Monkey D. Luffy, Goku, Ichigo Kurosaki, and Tanjiro Kamado. There will most certainly be plenty more where those came from. DeNA noted that more titles and characters will be added to the game in the future.
Beyond games based on individual series, the worlds of Shonen Jump manga most recently collided with a whimper in 2019’s JUMP FORCE. That one was another 3D arena fighter melting a bunch of disparate licenses together in one occasionally awkward art style. Not all Jump-based games have been duds, though; far from it. One of the true standouts from the past 20 years or so was Jump Ultimate Stars, a Ganbarion-developed fighter that hit Nintendo DS in 2006.
Will this be the next Jump Ultimate Stars or will we be writing about its shutdown six months after launch? Time will tell!
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