The latest PlayStation State of Play featured all kinds of familiar content, like Square Enix’s Forspoken and Housemarque’s Returnal, but it also came with a notable surprise for fans of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. About eight years ago, CyberConnect2 and Bandai Namco released JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, a fighting game that gave players the chance to take control of their favorite stand users and duke it out with characters across JoJo’s many story arcs. At the March 2022 State of Play, Bandai Namco announced JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle R, a remaster of the original game with additional content including several new playable characters.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle R is a welcome surprise for JoJo fans, but more broadly it’s a compelling addition to a year full of major fighting game news. This year keeps getting busier for the fighting game community as everybody from Capcom to Warner Bros. starts to publicize new fighting games, ranging from installations in well-loved franchises to surprising new IPs looking to shake up the genre. All Star Battle R has a fair amount of competition in 2022, but thanks to its unique connection to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, it’s bound to prosper.
2022’s Range of Fighting Games
Some important fighting game franchises have gotten love this year. In February, SNK released The King of Fighters 15, the first installation in its classic fighting game franchise in about six years. The revival and its positive reception inspires hope that King of Fighters will start getting regular releases again in the next few years. Meanwhile, Capcom has confirmed it’s working on Street Fighter 6, and although it hasn’t provided a release window for the game, it’ll discuss Street Fighter 6 this summer. Even if it doesn’t release this year, Capcom fans still have Capcom Fighting Collection to look forward to.
Then 2022 will feature some more surprising fighting game titles. Warner Bros. Entertainment’s MultiVersus, a crossover platform fighting game involving Warner Bros. franchises ranging from Scooby-Doo to Game of Thrones, intends to release sometime in 2022. Meanwhile, Atlus and Arc System Works’ Persona 4 Arena Ultimax will return in 2022, coming to modern platforms including the Nintendo Switch, as well as PC through Steam. What’s more, Arc System Works plans to release DNF Duel, a fighting game spin-off of the hugely successful action MMORPG Dungeon Fighter Online, in summer 2022.
The Rising Fighting Game Tide
These are only a few of 2022’s fighting game releases; plenty of other developers have new games on the way. What’s more, previously released fighting games ranging from Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl to Guilty Gear Strive will likely continue getting significant updates throughout the year, keeping them in competition with other upcoming releases. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle R is coming out in a year that happens to be particularly rich with content for fighting game fans to enjoy, so All Star Battle R needs to do its best to retain the attention of players.
The odds may be in All Star Battle R’s favor, however. After all, no other upcoming fighting game has dozens of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure characters to play as, and as a remaster it’s bound to appeal to the original version’s fans in general. What’s more, 2022’s crowd of fighting games might actually create even more interest in All Star Battle R, since traditional fighting games like Guilty Gear are finding more success among the broader video game community. All Star Battle R may have a lot of rivals in 2022, but in the end these games could turn out to be allies that help the remaster reach greater heights than the original game.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R releases in late 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
