By Kevin "Berserker" Hall

Victorious Boxers: Revolution is a boxing game based on the Fighting Spirit/Hajime No Ippo anime series. The story follows a young boxer by the name of Ippo Makunouchi. Ippo lacks confidence and is bullied in school until one day he is given the opportunity to train at a local boxing gym by one of its members. Ippo finds his talent for throwing punches and sets a new goal to become the Featherweight Champion and fight his way to the A-class tournament.

The main chunk of the game is the story mode. In story mode, the player takes control of Ippo and engages in several boxing matches while fighting up to the Featherweight Championship and beyond. The story mode is not exclusive to Ippo however - there are a few other boxers that will be playable as well throughout the course of this mode.

Cutscenes are plentiful before and after each match to help explain Ippo's journey. The cutscenes are quite long, but they are skippable if they become too tedious. Loading screens appear often even if the cutscenes are skipped, but thankfully there is a way to go straight to the next match without the constant loading in between cutscenes.

Characters voices are well done in English and actually match the mouth movements of each character for the most part, which is sometimes hard to find in a game that was originally Japanese. Sadly, there is no Japanese voice option for fans of the anime series that might expect one. The game has a big list of music tracks to choose from. The electric guitar music that plays during a big match really builds up the excitement of the upcoming brawl.

All the characters have a 3-D cel-shaded appearance that looks quite good and helps to give the player the feel of the anime series that it is based on. A few of the boxers look similar but each character has his own personality that helps to define him. The overall story includes tons of boxers. There are altogether 25 boxers that can be played once all of them are unlocked by completing story mode. Some of the boxers are simply there to be defeated, but there are quite a few that contribute to the overall story and will show up more than once.

The actual gameplay in the ring is presented with a transparent image of your boxer with an opponent in front. Each boxer is free to move anywhere in the ring and dodge and weave however they see fit once the bell rings. A few of the fighters have a certain weakness that can be exposed (they constantly throw hooks that can be dodged and countered, they rely on distant attacks but are weak up close), so a little bit of strategy can be used, but for the most part, matches cannot be entered with much of a planned strategy. Most of them are setup to where the opponent will act randomly and you will need to respond with whatever attack of your choosing with little thought.

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