Victorious Boxers: Revolution Review

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.

One problem that I found with the overall gameplay is that once the story mode is completed, there is not much else to do for a single player. The game offers a sparring mode where you can set up a match between your boxer and a CPU or human controlled opponent, but that is about it. The story mode has three modes of difficulty and this game is quite tough so you may wind up starting with the lowest difficulty. Boxers are quite a challenge on just the normal mode and some of them will put up a really good fight on easy mode while others will fall fast to whatever you throw at them. The difficulty of each boxer mainly depends on their personal aggressiveness. Once story mode is finished, any match can be chosen from that mode, so you can rematch any fight that you might have had problems with in order to prepare for a harder difficulty.

You punch with the Wii-mote and/or Nunchuk depending on the control setup that is chosen. Controls are the main area where this game truly excels. It offers a total of 6 methods of control. Four of those are with the Wii-mote and Nunchuk setup, one is the classic controller, and the other is the Gamecube controller. Let's have a look at each control types and their ups and downs.

Swing Mode 1

Hold both the Wii-mote and the Nunchuk in a neutral position in front of your body. Tilt both of them in any direction to move in that direction. Hold the Z or B button to sway while tilting. From neutral position, swing the Wii-mote and Nunchuk forward to throw punches with the right and left hand respectively. Down, up motions with each control perform uppercuts and side swing motions with each control perform hooks.

This control setup takes some major getting used to. Both the Wii-mote and Nunchuk must be kept in a neutral position (in front of the player's chest - slightly raised) in order to stand still. Start punching wildly with little control and your boxer will be bouncing around like crazy. This mode can be perfected somewhat, but it takes much more determination than with the others since you need to get a feel for the movement and swinging.

Swing Mode 2

This control type allows the player to move with the analog stick on the Nunchuk. Punches are still controlled by the Wii-mote and Nunchuk. Swing Mode 2 is a good ice breaker for getting more familiar with Swing Mode 1 - it helps a player to get more familiar with how to throw punches, which is one of the hardest control techniques to learn.

Pointer Mode 1

While moving the Wii-mote, a fist pointer will be displayed on the screen. Swing the pointer across the screen (like tracing a line) then press the A or B button to perform a punch. Up and down traces will perform uppercuts, right to left will perform straight punches, diagonal movements will perform hooks, and normal A and B presses will perform jabs.

It takes less effort to throw punches in this mode, but the moving is quite chaotic if the pointer manages to move off the screen easily. Moving the pointer off of the screen in any direction will cause the controlled boxer to move in that direction so the pointer must stay in the center of the screen to remain in a neutral position.

Pointer Mode 2

Punches are still controlled by tracing lines on the screen and tapping the A or B button but movement is controlled by the analog on the Nunchuk. This is my personal favorite setup since it is much more precise while controlling the movement of your character and punches can be thrown pretty easily.

The other two control setups allow movement with the analog of the controller and punches can be thrown by tapping the different buttons as one might expect. As you can see, Revolution allows the player to pick from a variety of controls.