YMMV / Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment

• Awesome Music: Most of the soundtrack, including the Southern Cross stage theme. Using the original anime's opening theme sure helps.
• Cult Classic: In its early days in the arcade centers, this game was well-known for its extremely unbalanced gameplay (with Toki being so broken that a great deal of tournament players used him), which would have spelled death to the game itself... But Japanese players who were devoted to the game eventually found that (with the use of Good Bad Bugs below) all characters are viable at doing infinite combos, which means it's entirely possible for a competent player to beat anyone, even when using a low-tier character. The game became popular in Japan again ever since (albeit in a much smaller scale than other big Fighting Game titles but the fandom organized tournaments time to time) and even became one of the minor titles played at EVO.^noteAs of this writing, there's still a tournament held at EVO Japan 2023.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mr. Heart, naturally. It's the only reason he even got a playable spot (what with being the first guy to make Ken bleed on screen and all.)
• Funny Moments: Mr. Heart's Fatal KO: Shin throws a feather from offscreen that sheds Heart's blood. He's not happy about this and kills his victim with one gigantic bitch slap.
• Gamebreaker: Several, many as a result of the broken system mechanics.
  • While Touch of Death combos are relatively rare in fighting games, Twin Blue Stars as ones available for the entire cast on every character. The king of them all are the Basuke Combos^note"Basketball Combos", which involve abusing the gravity system to infinitely juggle your opponents. This has slowly lead to a change in priorities among the cast, with pretty much every character desperately trying to accrue enough resources to initiate their own Touch of Deaths at the high levels of the game.
  • In terms of characters, Toki is the undisputed best character in the game thanks to his insane mobility. His teleports are extremely fast, hard to track, and go all over the place, making him nearly impossible to follow. Despite having a moveset almost entirely comprised of mids, his mixup game is still excellent thanks to the mobility his teleports offer him, his defense is the best in the entire game, and his One-Hit Kill move is a long-ranged move (which can even hit opponents in the air) and possesses great priority. Toki is so good that he nearly killed the game's competitive scene since there was no reason to play anyone else... until the discovery of Basuke Combos levelled the playing field.
• Good Bad Bugs: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment was heavily rushed, resulting in a plethora of these. However, each one adds to the game's charm and makes it incredibly fun.
  • The game uses an increasing gravity system, where each hit increases the gravity of the opponent, to try to avert the execution of infinite juggle combos. The problem is that this gravity along with falling speed is uncapped and when the opponent bounces on the ground, their bounce height is based on their falling speed and the fact that they return at normal gravity, going back to the accumulated gravity after a hit. Eventually, a sufficiently long air combo will bounce the opponent high enough that the other player can hit them again from the ground, "dribbling" them. The end result is that the system that's supposed to end infinite combos ends up enabling them!
  • The "Chikuseki Phenomenon" or the Accumulation Glitch is a weird system mechanic that's the result of poor programming. Basically, every time a character is put into a combo, their Aura, Boost and dizzy meters begin increasing at a faster rate with each hit. Normally, the meter gain is reset when the combo'd character returns to a neutral state. However, for some reason, reversals and blocking do not count as neutral states and thus extend the meter gain past the point where they are supposed to stop. Players can end a long combo, go for a mixup or meaty, and if they time it before the opponent recovers to neutral, then they gain all the meter gain benefits of the combo they just ended. This results in the attacking character getting full Boost and Aura, allowing them to almost instantly earn back any resources they spent on the previous combo. Worst of all, opponents who have a guard gauge will have it maxed out instantly on contact with the opponent, spelling doom for them and forcing them to rely on Guard Cancels or reversals to get out.
  • For some reason, all of Mr. Heart's attacks deal more hitstun if he's Player 2. This makes many of his combos (particularly his Kick Throw loops) easier to land, and even opens up new ones.
  • In the original arcade release, Grave Installing Shin's Nanto Senjuzan, then using the B version of Nanto Gokutoken exactly one frame before landing will result in him becoming immune to all strikes. Unless Shin either lands a throw or gets thrown, gets hit by certain counter moves, or uses another move with invincibility frames, this lasts for the entire round.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Jagi is considered by far the worst character in the game, to the point of bordering on Joke Character, due to his awful normals, weak traps, a low block that can break and stun him if he gets hit too much, and several borderline useless moves, including a Fatal KO that can miss even if you land the initial hit. About half his matchups are considered 2-8 or even 1-9 in tournament play, with his only even one being a Mirror Match. That said, this is also the main reason he has a following—not only is it in line with his Memetic Loser status in the series, but, as the Super Combo wiki puts it, "using Jagi is like the opposite of using Toki: everyone will like you and think you are cool." Additionally, being the worst character in Fist of the North Star still leaves you with multiple infinite combos and some very nasty tricks, so while Jagi may be undeniably outclassed, he still has enough tools to pull off upset victories.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Most players of this game consider their victories tainted if they fail to land their Deadly Fist Blow (Fatal KO) as the finishing blow.

---