Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes Of Heaven PS4 [REVIEW] | OVER HEAVEN

For the first time in ever, i’m actually all caught up with Jo Jo as a whole (currently enjoying reading the print volumes of The Jojolands as they get released here), the Steel Ball Run anime finally started airing/streaming on Netflix this March, so i knew i had to cover some Jo Jo related stuff, and i had this sitting in my backlog for years, waiting for an occasion such as this.

A little game called Jo Jo Bizarre Adventure: Eyes Of Heaven.

I remember this being pretty much whipped by critics and fans alike at the time… which was almost 10 years ago, fuck. But on the upside, there’s definitely enough distance now for revalution.

Developed by Cyberconnect 2, better known for the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series and Asura’s Wrath, but also behind the good Jo Jo Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle, which they released 3 years prior as a PS3 exclusive, Eyes Of Heaven is definitely a non-canon adventure.

While i’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, some are unavoidable since the game sure as hell expect you to know all the main events and ending of basically all 9 series, even with them presenting a digest premise during the story, more as a memory jog exercise, don’t play this if you aren’t familiar with all JoJo series… well, aside Jojolion, which at the time of release of the game wasn’t concluded yet, not that it matters much, given the nature of the plot, but you won’t get much spoiled about that series since it doesn’t have much representation, direct or not.

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Platformation Time Again #8: Yoshi’s Story N64

HISTORY

While nowadays the Yoshi Island subseries has mixed reception, the original sequel to Super Mario World was indeed (and still is) a classic, peculiar spin-off of the Mario formula, and Yoshi Story was the first follow up/sequel of sort to reiterate on the formula, developed by pretty much all the original team for the original Yoshi’s Island, minus Shigeru Miyamoto, here just supervisor instead of producer or director, that here being Hideki Konno, whose portfolio already included the original Yoshi’s Island and Super Mario Kart.

This one doesn’t have much in terms of production history or weird tidbits about its inception.

It was originally just called Yoshi Island 64 and meant for the ill-fated Japan only N64DD peripheral, the game – like many others – was moved from the floppy drive format to cartridge, and when revealed it was meant to also “flex” the 3D capabilities of the N64 alongside its 2D craft, which was peculiar of a stance to take when 3D was the new fangled tech and the industry was more than happy to join on the bandwagon of immediatly shaming the previous tech as obsolete junk in favour of “the future”, regardless the fact that in this case 3D turned out to be the future.

Also yes, you might remember this one in how Nintendo made the soundtrack available on a CD shaped like Yoshi’s face, similar to the one for Diddy Kong Racing.

While i possess a copy of its Virtual Console rerelease back on the Wii, i have used the version included in the N64 Nintendo Classics catalogue for Switch and Switch 2 (which requires to also have the Expansion Pak tier subscription), and yes, it was also available on the chinese N64-based IQue Player.

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Super Mario Adventures [MANGA REVIEW] | Peach Power

Since i’ve run out of older Mario films to review, time to look at some of the manga about the plumbering bros and its magical mushroom world of pipes and princesses.

At least one of the mangas, as we’ll do Super Mario-Kun some other times.

Thankfully italian publisher JPOP did collect all of the more known Mario manga series, simply called Super Mario Adventures, all in one volume, at least for the italian release, the american one is handled by VIZ Media, so you’ll have to check availability for your region or whatever.

Story is by Kentaro Takekuma, mostly known for this and Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga/Saruman series that parodies instructional works about making manga and the industry as well, and received itself a sequel series, Saruman 2.0, back in 2007.

Art is by Charlie Nozawa, whom surprisingly isn’t credited to anything else… at least under that name, a pseudonym for Tamakichi Sakura, whom worked as a character designer for some old Enix games like Dungeon Land and other titles like Pikiinia!, the Sansara Naga series and Tower Dream, all that never left Japan, but he also has other works as a manga artist, as he’s behind Shiawase No Kaitachi (Figures Of Happiness) and Oyaji No Wakusei (Planet Of The Father).

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Eventually comes The Bride, more Laid Back Camp, and some very late Pokemon opinions

Soap box time, i guess, since it’s Sunday.

I really wanted to have an EXPRESSO review for The Bride! far earlier, but schedule conflicts got in the way and so – unless cinema schedules fuck me over by removing it all together – i will be able to see & review the film only next week, which is a bummer but you know, shit happens.

On more favourable – to me – news, we finally got a proper announcement for Season 4 of Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp anime series, which will release next year, with another studio change, this time handled not by Eight Bit (the animation studio that took over C-Station for Season 3) but by Furyu Pictures, the anime production branch of the company mostly known for their figures and now also videogames.

Speaking of which, the previously announced proper Yuru Camp “camping cooking action game” by enish, the developer of the gacha mobile title, All In One, has a date and is launching in a matter of days on PC (though via Steam as a japanese language only affair for the moment) and later will hit Switch and mobile, which sounds odd since this isn’t a F2P gacha game like All In One, it isn’t, it’s an actual game you pay for once (DLC aside).

So expect a review of some sort when they either update it with english language support or it launches on Switch.

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Giant Monster March is a-ready to go-go once more

FIY i also had a hands on ramble about the Virtual Boy accessory for Switch 1 and 2 that i planned to release earlier, but didn’t due to having to tie some uni knots, that article will still come out, for now we’re once again about to begin the now staple rubric of the blog, Giant Monster March, which will have some “obvious” picks alongside some a lot more obscure pulls this year.

I really wanted to make it extra this year but couldn’t due to the aforementioned universitary education business taking a lot of my time, but after all, the new Monsterverse Godzilla film is scheduled for 2027, so..

Platformation Time Again #7: Wario World NGC/SWITCH2

For context: i played and completed the original release on Gamecube, previously reviewed it (more than once), but i recently played it from scratch and finished it again via the Gamecube Classics app on Switch 2, so this review is technically a rewrite, but it’s de facto new, almost completely done from scratch and rewritten/improved/revised to reflect my opinions on the game after re-revalution.

HISTORY

Wario needs no introduction, having been Mario’s Nemesis since its debut on Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, and having not only its own peculiar platforming series, but in 2003 it also branched off into a new genre, with the peculiar mini-games compilation of the Wario Ware series, which had just debutted some months prior.

Wario World was also a peculiar case since it was not only the first 3D outing for a series that had been 2D platformers or puzzle games of sorts (including the Super Famicom exclusive Mario & Wario, and his reskin of Bomberman games, Wario Blast), but was also not developed by one of Nintendo’s internal development teams.

It was actually handled by Treasure, a beloved software house known for classics like Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Guardian Heroes, Ikaruga, after their collaboration with Nintendo on Sin & Punishment proved successful, that lead Nintendo R & D 1 wanting to do so again, but this time on a 3D iteration of the Wario series/franchise.

Who would turn down to opportunity to work on a 3D “Mario” game with Nintendo’s blessing, after all?

Definitely not 2000s’ Treasure, which was in a kind of identity crisis, coming off of both Sylpheed The Lost Planet and Stretch Panic/Freak Out/Hippa Linda not being well received (nor selling well either) and them basically having to take on more and more licensed tie-in work, for anything from Tiny Toons to anime series both well known (like the Bleach DS titles and the excellent Astro Boy: Omega Factor) or obscure, like a shonen series called Dragon Driver.

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One Piece Pirate Warriors 4: DLC Pack 8: Special Selection PS4 [REVIEW]

Gotta admit, i kinda expected this one to release in early February, but nope, that “Early 2026” turned out to be indeed very early, as in, this DLC Pack just released January 22^th, as in, 3 days ago.

I guess why not since it was also the pack that revealed earlier who was gonna be in it, after all, people were eager to see who alongside Enel (which was indeed as obvious a prediction as it could have been) made the cut from the OP character popolarity survey polls’ results, with DLC Pack 8 being the “Legends” one, so to speak, more than the previous Egghead Pack.

(probably is also due to TK demands since the Dynasty Warriors Origins extensive DLC/expansion Visions Of Four Heroes came out the same day, and alongside the Switch 2 release)

I’m not even gonna try and say once again that this might be the last DLC pack for Pirate Warriors 4 as a whole, only to have to rectify that months later, especially now, as i will explain.

As most of you already know, this specific DLC character pack is a fan favourite heavy selection, and while Enel and King were the easily predictable guesses everyone thought, i was pleasantly surprised to see Zephyr/Z from One Piece Film Z made the cut, as i said before, very happy about that, can’t deny i’m a big fan of him and that film as a whole.

No Kaku playable, but i’ll take “Mr Z.” gladly, guess japanese fans do love him more than most expected, and how these polls are often made to be skewed towards the new popular characters seen in the anime.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 60: Grunt! (1983)

Back in the mid 60 and 70s cavemen films had come back, going initially for an adventure feel, alongside other dinosaur or prehistoric themed films (most already covered here), but it became clear soon that what made One Million Years B. C. a success wasn’t the stopmotion dinosaur effects by Ray Harryhausen, but Rachel Welch in cavegirl garments, and hence these film began more focusing on the cave girls and the “historical” excuse for pseudo-nudity.

In Italy we had a tradition of sexy comedies budding in the late 60s, so in the 70s some filmakers hopped onto the bandwagon and made sexy cavemen comedies like When Women Had Tails, while others latched unto the more extreme trend of the cannibal films.

It was a fad, in the grand scheme of things, but the genre survived into the early ’80s with stuff like the alredy reviewed Caveman, the one with Ringo Starr, which i assume was the catalyst for director Andy Luotto to try his hand at a caveman slapstick comedy, with Grunt!, indeed one of the more apt titles ever for a caveman comedy, sporting the tagline “La Clava E’ Uguale Per Tutti” (lit. “The Club Is Equal For All”), also used as a subtitle for the kinda modern DVD rerelease it got and which i’m using for review.

You can find the entire movie on Youtube, but you might need to find some subs unless you understand italian, as yes, it’s a dialogue-less film…. BUT there’s also a voice over narration by the director, Andy Luotto (also in the film as the caveman that looks like a Squawkabilly) talking bollocks that intervenes here and there.

Then again, it’s not like it makes the thing have more sense (it’s mostly bollocks, including random homophobic shit and shit tier cabaret jokes), but maybe there are some german dubs around, or maybe french, as far as i know there are no official english dubs for the film.

Which makes sense since there’s just so little voiceover to dub, and no spoken dialogue per sé.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 59: Area 407/Tape 407 (2012)

In our quest to maybe eventually one day review all the dinosaur films ever made, i had to wonder if we missed something.

We features dinosaur comedies, dinosaur battle royales, virtual dinosaurs of the future, some really decrepit pieces of dinosaur media, and an over excess of soldiers fighting raptors.

Heck, we even did see attempts at mixing the dinosaurs with a found footage film in the very decent and mostly realized The Lost Dinosaurs, and today we found him a play-date of sorts with something i never heard once about, and i had to stumble upon by combing upon lists of dinosaur films.

and i mean “stumble” because you wouldn’t guess a movie called Area 407/Tape 407 would be abotu dinosaurs, which i guess should count as a spoiler. I suppose?

Let’s be real, it’s not that much of a spoiler when you have the poster art for the film sport the recognizable “triple clawed scratchmark” that might as well spell “Velociraptors”, or a Garfield creepypasta abomination, i suppose.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #58: The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

For our entry on what now is the “Nessie subcategory” of Dino Dicember, we’re going away from the Irish lochs and into the b-movie version of Northern California, with The Crater Lake Monster.

Directed and written by Richard D. Stromberg, this is an infamous one, indeed, often hailed as one of worst giant monster films ever made, or at least one of the cheapest ever put into production, and unsurprisingly it has received the Rifftrax treatment.

The plot is an obvious, deliberate throwback to monster films of the 50s, and was originally meant to be about the Bigfoot, but due to a glut of films on the cryptid, Stromberg figured it would be better to go even further back and make it about dinosaurs, why not,

Archeologists find a cave in Crater Lake that has wall drawings depicting humans fighting something that looks like a Plesiosaurus, incredibile evidence that dinosaurs did actually exist in the same time as humans. Pity that a meteorite lands in the lake, causing a cave-in that completely destroy the discovered caves system and its wall drawings.

On the bright (?) side, the meteorite seems to revive or awake a long dormant creature within the lake, a giant plesiosaur akin to the more famous Nessie.

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