December 20, 2004 - Any doubts about the clout Bleach now commands in the Japanese animation world (well, the Japanese animation world that takes place in Japan, at least) were quickly cast aside as we waited in line to play the game's PSP conversion at the Jump Festa comic/game event this past weekend. Sony Computer Entertainment, publisher of the game, had hundreds of exciting, screaming fans gathered before a mock radio station for a live talk show with the voice actors from the show. Luckily for us, the PSPs were equipped with headphones.

In its PSP form, Bleach is a one-on-one fighting game featuring cell shaded visuals and screen-filling characters. Players can choose from the likes of Rukia and Ichigo as their in game alter ego. The early Jump demo featured a quick glimpse at the story mode for six characters, each with a conversation sequence featuring full voice and hand drawn character art followed by a fight.

Fighting is pretty basic stuff. You perform a normal attack with X, and can perform special moves using the circle button in combination with inputs from the D-pad. Triangle makes your character jump. While in mid-jump, you can push the jump button again, and in Ichigo's case, you move forward towards your opponent. The R trigger rotates your character into the background, allowing you to avoid attack when in a crunch.

Why the need for a jump button? Up is actually used as part of combos. Examples of combos include X - X - Left - X as well as X - X - X - X -- the actual commands differ per character. Specials can also be performed as part of combos, with Up and Circle providing a different move from Down and Circle.



SCE shows off Bleach
Cell shaded fighting looks about as good on the PSP as it does on the PS2 -- that is, SCE doesn't have the hardware drawing outlines around the character solidly enough so that the game looks as smooth as cell shaded titles on the more powerful consoles. It does look convincingly enough like the show, though, and it seems to play solidly enough so in the pre-Tekken PSP era (it's coming, isn't it?), the game should be a reasonable way for fighting fans to pass the time.

And because those much loved voice actors appear in the game during conversation sequences, we're sure the screaming fans in attendance at Jump will like it too.