What We Know About My Hero Academia’s Upcoming Free-To-Play Battle Royale Game So Far

Spoilers for My Hero Academia up to season 5

Yesterday, Bandai Namco announced a free-to-play battle royale game for My Hero Academia called My Hero Academia: Ultra Rumble. The news came courtesy of the latest issue of Weekly Jump Magazine.

While details for the game are scarce at the moment (there’s no release date yet, for example), there are a few things that we know for sure. For the stuff we don’t know I’m gonna make a couple of My Hero Fangirl guesses based on the content that’s available for My Hero Academia so far.

What we know so far

According to Gematsu, My Hero Academia: Ultra Rumble will be available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. The battles will go up to 24 players, and while we don’t know who the available characters will be, the images do show us the usual suspects, namely Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, All Might (pre-retirement), and Shigaraki.

While we can see that there are battles going on, it also looks like there are civilians in need of saving, hinting that there might be more to do than engage in an all-out brawl. This lines up perfectly with the series which often has the heroes-in-training learning how to save people from disastrous situations. With Shigaraki being seen in the pictures of the game, I’m wondering if that means you get to play as him and terrorize civilians and heroes, or if you’re fighting against him and the League of Villains (or even the Meta Liberation Army, but more on this theory in a bit).

There will be a closed beta that fans can sign up for via the official website once it launches.

What I think we can expect

via GIPHY

I don’t think this will be limited to “heroes versus villains” scenarios, though I do think those will definitely happen. I would love, for example, to be able to have a battle royale where we get to storm the Shie Hassaikai base and go against the likes of Chisaki Kai (which I would only survive in a video game).

My Hero Academia is a series that delights in having moments where the heroes have to face off against each other for the sake of training. The Provisional License Exam in season 3, for example, had students from multiple schools going up against each other, leading to the remaining participants working together to save civilians while dealing with a pro hero acting as a villain. Something like this is perfect for a battle royale-style game. You can easily have the students at UA going up against each other and call it a training exercise. You can also, very easily, have villains interrupting those training sessions, as that’s happened as early as the first season of the series.

Since the video games typically follow the anime and not the manga, I think we can expect, at the very least, content up to season 5. This actually gives us a lot to work with character-wise and in regards to the plot. There are plenty of scenarios that would work with the battle royale format, from ones I’ve already mentioned, to moments like the League of Villains going up against the Meta Liberation Army.

This game could potentially have heroes vs heroes, heroes vs villains, and villains vs villains. I hope it has all three.

If by chance this is a game that comes out in time for season 6 (or comes out earlier and adds more content after release), we could very well be able to play through an all-out war (if my theory is right about how that season will play out).

With there being up to 24 player matches, I’m assuming there will be a lot of characters to choose from. I’m expecting a good portion of Class 1A (or all of them) but hoping, for the sake of variety, that we get some of the kids from 1B and students from other schools. That’s happened before (Inasa is in My Hero Academia: One’s Justice), but I’m hoping that bigger battles mean more characters that haven’t been in any of the video games before.

What are your thoughts on this announcement? Are you excited for a My Hero Academia battle royale game? More importantly, who do you want to see on the character roster? My “realm of possibility” pick is Mirko, my “should’ve been available in a game by now” pick is Sero (I really wanna zip around like Marvel vs Capcom Spider-Man with his tape quirk), and my “it probably won’t happen but a fangirl can dream” pick is Rody Soul.

(Image: © K. Horikoshi/Shueisha, My Hero Academia Project)

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