Hajime no Ippo: THE FIGHTING.

Talk about your other favorite games like Barbie Adventures.
Post Reply
User avatar
Haelstrom
Bomb Poring
Bomb Poring
Posts: 257
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2009 2:49 pm
Location: Indiana.
Contact:

Hajime no Ippo: THE FIGHTING.

Post by Haelstrom »

Game Boy Advance game that plays like a fleshed-out Punch-Out! and is based on the anime of the same name. Overall, pretty fun, especially with the English translation patch from romhacking.

Image

The upsides are pretty abundant to the game. First, there's the Story Mode, which takes you through Ippo's rise to glory in the first anime series.(with two paths you can take, one where you beat Sendo at the end, one where you beat Date.)

Image

The sprites are very well detailed. You can move forward and back, which is majorly kickass because attacks work differently and some people excel at mid-range better than short-range and vice versa. Only problem is, the CPU comes right towards you right off the bat, so you don't get much mileage out of this until you can get the hang of swooping back as some hooks are thrown.

A button is your weave/dodge button, you can go up/down/left/right. Do not rely on just blocking, you will get destroyed.

Image

See the red gloves? Normally, they're blue. Red means his hands are in bad shape and I need to dodge / throw some hits before they can recover. Get red, and the enemy can break through your guard. If they break through your guard, they can land some really nasty finishers on you that can easily KO you (Vorg's Wolf Fang Strike and the second Sendo fight's Smash comes to mind.) Each fight flows differently; Mashiba guards with his elbow and giggles like a dick, and that-which-was-eaten-by-Sendo post-Date fight can land some vicious counters if you're not paying attention.

The difficulty might get to you at first, but once you learn how to properly alternate attacks & defense as well as loop combos, you'll destroy face.

Image

Now, B punches - left and right do hooks [you can alternate them, great way to break an enemy's guard which you can finish up with a special move, but be warned that some boxers are good at throwing counters to this], up does an uppercut, down does a gut shot.

The trick is to keep your yellow bar from going over the "down limit" marks on your health bar, and of course the red from doing the same. You want to get a feel for your opponent's rhythm, dodge a shot- then retaliate and as soon as you break their guard, do a special move.

Image

You do special moves with the R trigger + (various buttons/directions.) You can see a full list in the start menu, but note a number of moves won't be available until you unlock them. You'll start with a real basic upper {R+Up+B) and a dodge booster (R+Down+A), but you'll unlock more as the story progresses with scenes like this between matches.

Image

Special moves use Spirit. There's two ways to recover Spirit: hit your opponent a good number of times, or after a round is over, select SP UP for your coach to say "GET BACK IN THERE, KID!" and give you a SPIRIT BOOSTING SLAP ACROSS THE BACK.

Image

Image

Here, you can choose Recover Damage (lowers the red bar), SP Increase UP (the coach slap), and Down Limit UP (moves the two red diamonds on the health bar more to the right. Always select this at least - you don't want to get downed with something weak.)

You either down an opponent 3x in one round, or beat them so mercilessly they can't get up to win a match. Note I love to, once an opponent is falling down, continue chaining combos on them - but that the clock is still ticking and I can't confirm if it affects their down meter or not, so do be wary. You might save your opponent from defeat.

Image

Once you win a match, Ippo says something as he usually does (usually something like "Is this what it means to be strong?" or "Coach, I did it! I REALLY DID IT!") and you get points. I'll cover those in just a second.

Depending on which path you took, you'll either fight Sendo a second time (heavily revamped) or Date. If you beat Date the first time, you win and get a lot of points- but I'll warn you: you need to be good at punching his face in with specials once he's open. Otherwise, he will eat you. Sendo, you get more of an arsenal to use on him, but note he's still very powerful - one mistake and you could be on your back.

Once you beat either one, you get the ending credits.

Image

You also get all your gained points, usually 300-600, depending on how gangster you are.

Now, you can take those points, go into Custom Mode, take one of the many boxers in the game, and level their stats up / learn their skills. Then you can use this custom super-mode version of the boxer in tournament and versus mode.

Image

It's a pretty neat feature really. To top it, the game's sound effects are quite good ("SeeeeeEEENDDO-SAAAAAAAAN~~~~~!!!!!!").
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now, for the bad.

Image
  • While Story Mode is indeed difficult at first, once you get the hang of combos, it really isn't difficult except one or two enemies. Wish there was a "hard mode."

    Bright side to that, though.
  • You can only play as Ippo in the story mode. That's it. For those not aware of Hajime no Ippo, it's honestly a very engaging anime and has such a pulling plot with so many endearing characters through various weights, that it feels a shame you can't play as Aoki, Kimura, Takamura.. but furthermore, the fact you can't play as other boxers in the Featherweight Division (where Ippo is) for alternate path scenarios really makes the Story Mode a one trick pony, and the fact you can't even use your custom version of Ippo in Story Mode is regretful.

    To top it, there is no story. That's a huge flaw in this game- someone not familiar with Hajime no Ippo could hop into this, and not have a damned clue what is going on. The series, especially for a sports anime, had a great plot with some of the most dynamic characters I've ever seen, and there's just so much back-story; so to not even give a few picture stills with a bare-bone summary of what's going on really hurts the game. I know it's a Game Boy Advance title, but that's no excuse. The other boxers are awesome, too. Example.
  • Obviously, the fact it wasn't translated into English officially. HUHR, IT'S BASED IN JAPAN, THE WEST WOULD HATES IT. Dumbasses, that's why JRPG(s) sell like hot cakes.
  • Unless you use an emulator, you're not going to get to do versus mode too often because obviously - few people have the game.
  • Custom Mode's limitations. Besides the fact it has few applications, you can't customize the looks of your boxer [I mean at least let us customize their gloves/trunks.] In fact, you can't even name your custom build - it's named "Custom 0" or "Custom 1," etc.
  • While the sound effects are good, the music's kinda bland. There's about.. three.. three total, unless we want to include the credits and the (sorta) title tune? And they couldn't get any of the music from the series into this; I mean the music from the series kicked so much ass, they even have OST(s) out for it. Hell, they whom worked on Trigun wrote music for it, the fact they couldn't be assed to try and get at least one song from the anime again kills it, because they were part of the appeal.
Overall though, it's a game I recommend getting one way or another, regardless. I hope future Hajime no Ippo titles stop the lackluster treatment, but these days, unless you're Final Fantasy / Halo / Call of Duty, you rarely get the big budget approach.

Still, pretty American, even for a Japanese translated into English Game Boy Advance game based in Japanese boxing.
Image
Post Reply