I've mentioned this in videos before but to me, there's this special aura to pre-David Production JoJo content, be it official or fan made, either because it represents a time before the cultural zeitgeist that the series would later become or because you wouldn't see some of the more experimental adaptations nowadays when everything has to be homogenized to fit in with the main adaptation. The 1998 Capcom fighter Heritage for the Future stands as a shining example of this mystic aura, through both the game itself and through fan content related to it and in particular, the legendary Road Roller Combo video and the memes surrounding it, which was many people's first exposure to the series, including myself. I'm not an expert on fighting games and the horror stories I've heard surrounding the game's community deter me from learning it on a deeper level so I'm not going to say anything about the standard fighting game gameplay beyond attacks feeling good and Pet Shop being funny. But between stuff like the overall aesthetic as exemplified by the loading screens' cool high quality manga panels, the roster's various deep cuts for characters, and the single player story mode's creative ways of representing arcs that wouldn't necessarily translate to traditional fighting game gameplay, Heritage for the Future has an undeniable charm.

Reviewed on Nov 10, 2023


3 Comments


5 months ago

The best part about this game is that it just goes full force into part 3 exclusively. It makes the nods to part 2/5 in certain super moves feel even cooler and allows the roster and stages to have greater personal identity and be less contrained to fitting in with the other jojo parts which the other games all suffer from. I think what people misunderstand about Jojo's is that its collective identity isn't constructed from a general "Jojoness" that underrides each part but rather from them each being individualistic with fresh takes on character designs, relative power systems, settings, and general aesthetics that crucially all refuse to be shackled by expectations of previous parts and in turn construct the Jojo's brand. Stone Ocean and Diamond is Unbreakable could never meaningfully slot together in something that isn't trying to be entirely new and bold, and even though it was likely just due to Stardust Crusader's popularity, I'm really glad this game understood that.

5 months ago

@Scurvie Absolutely true that focusing on part is a big part of the game's strength, although I mainly noticed it in terms of being able to have deep cuts for the roster

2 months ago

I do enjoy the community around JoJo's but...when it was only exposed to me through random memes like stick figures doing ROAD ROLLA DA, and just hearing WRRYYYYYY randomly on message boards made me laugh as a little kid.

There was a strange time where only a few things got out of the divide between the European/North American centric spaces and Asia spaces (this was because hardly anything from JoJo's was hard to obtain, let alone localize) and seeing clips from the old Stardust Crusaders OVA posted all over hooked me and finally actually learning it's name, started reading and haven't stopped since I was 15.

Guess we end up appreciating the world when it's smaller and we're younger and everything's mind blowing. Those simpler times.

Oh commenting on the review, right! Yeah this game rips! I keep getting my ass kicked online and called horrible things in the game's discord!