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Review: Hajime no Ippo - The Fighting [GBA] |
Hajime no Ippo - The Fighting. A Critique by Hayabusa, Class Awesome.
Boxing, eh? It truly is the sport of gentlemen. After all, what could be more exhilarating than two muscular, half dressed young men getting each other in the ring and pounding on one another relentlessly until one of them falls over from the sheer pain and exhaustion suffered from his violent attack?
…
Remind me never to start a review like that ever again.
So, let’s try that again:
Boxing games, eh? The average fighting game player won’t touch the bastards with a fifty foot pole covered in every sterilising agent under the sun, and with jolly good reason. Generally speaking, they all hold several degrees in the art of sucking ass and have all passed their buttock leeching course with the sort of honours reserved for only the most dedicated of sycophants.
This small fact taken into consideration – and it is a fact – the more impetuous amongst you might be thinking that I’m somewhat of a retard to even bother reviewing a boxing game. And you know what, you’d almost be right.
Almost.
The thing is, Hajime no Ippo, a Game Boy Advance title so obscure that it never even reached America, is actually pretty bloody good. And it’s by Treasure – you know, the people behind Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga? Yeah, them.
Got your attention now, eh? Eh?
….
Stop wandering off and look at me, you bastards!
Upon starting up Ippo, you’ll be confronted by three hairy, naked men, or an ‘options menu’ as they apparently call them nowadays. It’s all in Japanese, so a smattering of Katakana / Hiragana knowledge would help immensely – there’s no Kanji, save in the win quotes.
The story mode is a bit of an anomaly, as story modes go. I don’t actually know what an anomaly is, having not gone to the same prep school as the Architect from the Matrix Reloaded, but it sounds kind of cool so I’m sticking to that description. Regardless of my having failed every English class I’ve ever taken, the story mode is very anomaly-like, or anomalyish, or however the hell you say it. You see, the story mode in this contains no story to speak of, which kind of punches the term ‘story mode’ right in the ass. It does, however, follow the general path of the anime – you only get to play as Ippo, you fight most of his opponents in the order he did during the manga, and you’re initially missing certain moves that Ippo later learns on in the series in order to take on certain opponents.
I’m also a tad unconvinced about the method required to unlock Shigeta in this mode. It’s logical, I guess, but still seems a little strange when you consider what you need to do to get him. And no, I’m not going further into it in order to avoid those horrid spoiler things you read about in all the newspapers. Don’t want those bastards hanging around here, deary me, no.
In all, story mode is a fun but rather limited introduction to the world of Hajime no Ippo. It probably won’t take you too long to latch onto the Tournament mode, however, and this is where the game really shines.
Once you select Tournament mode, you’ll be invited to choose your character from one of ten – their original version or one of your own customised death dealing boxers who fight as if they thrive on steroids and eat babies for breakfast to increase their protein intake. More on them later, though.
The customised fighters, not the babies.
Having selected your boxer – more than likely replete with all their attacks in tow – you’ll be invited to change the difficulty, the number of rounds you’ll be fighting, whether your opponents should appear at random or in a predetermined order and whether you’d like to fight in the stadium, the gym or both during your pugilistic bid for glory.
As you can probably tell from the above, there aren’t a lot of backgrounds in this game. There are, in fact, two. Added to which, you’ll see the stadium background about 400% of the time you spend playing this, which sort of bites the collective asses of each and every miscreant from every country in the whole damn world.
Anyway! Onto the game itself!
Your first impressions will probably be a touch mixed, if they’re anything like mine. After all, the initial shock of seeing a dismembered pair of hands floating around in front of you is kind of hard to ignore at the best of times. It won’t take you long to get over this scary occurrence though, and then you’ll appreciate just how stunning the game actually looks.
Viewed from the eyes of your apparently armless boxer at all times, your opponents are all wonderfully animated, detailed sprites who approach and retreat in a sort of mode-7-ish zoom which doesn’t look or feel as blocky and unnatural as it might sound. Moreover, the visual appearance and personalities of each boxer suit their character extremely well. Sendo and Mashiba look like scary bastards, Volg looks somewhat aloof and cold, and Ippo looks like an enraged domestic cow bearing down on you at all times.
I think it has something to do with his eyes.
Once battle commences, they react just as well as you’d hope them to – the feeling of impact in this game is nigh on perfect. Little clouds of dust come off your gloves with each blow landed, the opponent’s head snapping back with each jab, or folding over a nicely timed body blow. Smashing a hook into their face causes them to be knocked sideways as they’re sent reeling from the blow, and an uppercut will lift them from their feet. If they take enough damage, you can then watch on in wonder as they curl up and fall over in front of your very eyes.
Awesome!
Of course, you won’t see your own reaction to getting belted solidly in the face, but a blinding red flash indicates damage and the screen sways a little to let you know you’re doing crap. It’s a cool indicator, and the only way the hits could feel any more solid is if you had a friend punching you in the face every time they got you.
As nice as the attacks are, the defensive moves are almost as cool. Opponents sway from punches, blocking both high and low to stop head and body blows. Special defenses can be initiated along with a resulting change in animation – you’ll see if they’ve begun using a cross block, or are diffusing the damage of your hits with reactive avoidance. Of course, your own gloves will help you see what you’re doing yourself if you somehow become confused mid-fight. Disembodied gloves are really quite awesome that way.
So, it’s a pretty looking title indeed. ‘But how does it play?’ I hear you all ask in voices tinged with wonder. Well, let me explain before my hesitation forces you all to crack open my head and eagerly feast upon the gooey information contained therein.
Your boxer is blessed - as most fighting game characters are – with an energy bar. It’s kind of unique in that it starts off empty and that it fills up as you fight, signifying damage taken rather than health remaining. A little cutoff point informs you at which point you will fall over and the dreaded ten count starts. Damage, however, can be soaked up far, far past the cutoff point if your opponent doesn’t stop hammering you which will seriously reduce your chances of getting up again before that bastard referee counts you out. It’s probably not a good idea to get smashed in the face by a glove or seventy, then.
There are two types of damage in the game. Yellow damage accumulates quickly, and is usually suffered from repeated blows to the head. Red damage is slower to build, usually suffered from body blows, and is a total bastard to get rid of – you can only do so between rounds, and the red section becomes the new limit of your energy bar. If half your energy bar is filled with this horrible red crap, for example, you now have half your energy bar to play around with. You won’t be able to recover more than that until the next round.
Not complex, perhaps, but worth explaining since it works very, very well.
Controls are, like myself, rather simple. One attack button. One dodge button. One ‘Special’ button, which would be the right shoulder button. That’s it.
The D-pad, however, allows for more variety than you might expect from this description of the controls. Holding up on the D-pad closes you in on the opponent, back retreats. Up and punch is an uppercut, left or right will produce hooks to the face. Down and punch is a body blow, a simple jab at punch on its lonesome produces a jab. Use the D-pad with the dodge button and you’ll be swaying about like a drunkard at a bar mitzvah sans the bottle of alcohol. Hold the Special button and a direction before tapping punch or dodge and you’ll perform specials.
Yes, Specials!
Remember, this is the noble art of boxing. Marquis of Queensbury, and all that, which means there are no fireballs or Pai-Mei-esque tearing eyeballs out of sockets, much as I’d love to see the animation for such an event.
Nope, the specials are there to confuse, confound, and hideously rape the skeletal structure of your opponent’s face through good old fashioned clashing of bone and sinew. Every fighter has their own signature moves, some more useful than others, and they can also use special defences to make the opponent look stupid – and, of course, avoid getting mauled by a barrage of punches.
For instance, are you about to die, sir? Have your ribs pierced your lungs, and your braincells all smashed themselves into a gooey pulp inside your skull? Well, fret no more! Simply activate ‘Down Avoid’ and you can take another 20 seconds of punishment without hitting the canvas! Order today and we’ll throw in a free can of ‘Cross Guard’, which allows you to recover from guard break and laugh at the feeble attempts of your opponents to topple you from your noble boxing perch!
Actually, I take that back. Down Avoid will cost you four bars of spirit, sir, and Cross Guard will cost a mere two, from your initial stack of ten! Isn’t that simply wonderful, sir? It can save your ass, and I’m not talking about sealing your buttocks away in cryogenics for the next thousand years, no sir!
Even getting off the mat when you’ve been damaged beyond repair is possible with deft use of the special bar – a simple use of ‘Ground Rise’ will see you recover from your previous mauling in a way that would make even the legendary Rocky Balboa’s eyeballs widen and fall comically from his optical sockets.
So! Specials are handy for defence, then, and certain characters have super special methods of avoiding a pounding – Date can halve the damage of suffered attacks, and Volg can automatically avoid every punch thrown at him through use of his special defences.
There are offensive attacks as well, of course – counters and punches abound through use of that wonderful special bar – but I felt I had to drive in the fact that the special bar isn’t just for attacking. Not that it’s a slouch in that category, either – Ippo’s Dempsy Roll takes a second to get started then avoids most hits while lamping the opponent eight times in the jaw, stopping for nothing, and Date’s Heartbreak Short not only whallops in a chunk of damage when he pulls it off – the bastard stuns you with it, too.
Some of these special attacks are awesome for destroying an opponent’s guard, and others are best used to smack the twat in front of you clean in the face, since merely breaking the guard with it will waste the damage potential. One of them, however, is so horrendously overpowered that I’m giving it its own section later on.
So! Plenty of moves, the gameplay’s fine… how’s the AI, then?
Bastardish, at least for a start. My initial befuddlement with my boxer’s phantom gloves paled into insignificance as the enemy beat me hideously around the face and shoulders while calling me a gay sissy boy who dresses funny and screws dogs with reckless abandon.
If they break your guard, they will never fall into some weird AI loophole that causes them to run away or start taunting or whatever, therefore foolishly allowing you to regain your guard.
Nope, they will simply punch you repeatedly in the head until the bone structure from the front of your face collapses, the resultant nasty, jaggy splinters caving inwards instantly and swiftly piercing your brain so that you die in a horrifically painful fashion.
Now, let me declare one thing. I’m not a pansy gamer: I look on Rugal and the like as challenges to be faced and subsequently beaten down, and I never – ever – get that prickly, uneasy feeling setting in during the Resident Evil Series. In fact, I laugh at those who do just because I’m such a tough, upright bastard.
That declaration of my utter manhood said and done, I have to admit to one small thing. When there’s a level nine Ippo standing on the other side of the ring bearing down on me, and my guard is shattered beyond repair, and I hear that bloodcurdling ‘SENDO SAAAAAAANNNNNNNN’ war cry as the lovable little bastard prepares his world famous Liver Blow… I promptly develop what can only be described as a very nasty case of spontaneous anal leakage.
If I had to describe fighting Ippo at the end of the tournament mode in just two words, they would be ‘Insanely’ and ‘hard’. Since I have a little more leeway, however, I’m going to put it across to you in another fashion.
Imagine you’re fighting Igniz from King of Fighters 2000, and you’re only granted a single pixel of health. You have to beat him fifty rounds to one in order to win, added to which is the pressure of knowing that your family, who have been captured by crazed terrorists, will only come out alive if you manage to do so first time. Before you even get to start playing, however, someone jabs you in the eyes with a red hot poker, and deftly removes your thumbs with a garden shears. Right at the very second the round begins one of their accomplices holds an industrial strength sander firmly against your head - and that’s when you find out that they’ve handed you a broken controller.
Seriously. Watch this video of me playing here. Good, eh?
Now, I’ll break it down into manageable pieces for you just in case the brevity of it shocks and stuns you into insensibility.
1. Sendo, also known in this instance as ‘me’, walks confidently into the ring.
2. Ippo kills me.
3. The end.
Now, I’m not the kind of player (the type with half a brain) who knows when something verges on the very lip of impossibility. I fought against Ippo for more than three hours straight before I beat him, and that final victory was only won because the AI started letting up for some reason, coupled with a shitload of luck on my side.
During these three hours of pain and humiliation, I could feel the frustration and anger building up inside of me like some vast supernatural force that couldn’t possibly be controlled by a peon such as I. So set on Ippo’s untimely demise was I that I didn’t even flinch when a large, throbbing vein in my forehead exploded halfway through the session and showered the surrounding walls with several gallons of my very own blood.
In fact, I’m so scared of Ippo these days that it’s shining through into my private life as well. To properly illustrate my fear of him, pull up a seat, prepare yourself a coffee and let me tell you a story from a few weeks back.
I woke up in the middle of the night one time at around three in the morning to the accompanying noise of someone breaking down my front door with what sounded like – and was later found to be - a sledgehammer. Out of bed like a shot (and grabbing a nearby shoe for potential use as a club) I was shocked, dismayed and horrified to find that Ippo had escaped the game and was fully intent on breaking my face in real life too! Furthermore, he was now hairy and naked for seemingly no rational reason, and upon entry into my house promptly started chasing me around my living room for the next twenty minutes or so, screaming, rather loudly, that he was going to ‘rape me in the ass’ and ‘kill me’.
Fortunately for me, the cops arrived right about then and dragged him away before he could fulfil his sordid promise. And you can imagine how I laughed when they later informed me that it wasn’t actually Ippo coming at me from beyond the game, but merely an escaped convict from a nearby prison facility! Boy, was my face red!
Ah, just joshing about that, friends.
The cops didn’t actually arrive in time to save me.
Special mention must go out to the referee in this game, too. Once a character partakes too much of his opponent’s leather glove, he’ll fall to the canvas and the referee will strike! Leaping majestically in from the right side of the screen with nary a frame of animation, our underpaid wonder will yell ‘NEUTRO COHNAH!’, which I think is supposed to mean ‘Neutral Corner’, and begin the ten count. A single paragraph cannot describe his greatness – and it’s a crying shame that none of the endings involve him stealing the trophy and becoming emperor of the world.
In two player it’s great fun as well, though heavily reliant on the power characters – Ippo and Sendo can do so much more damage than Mashiba and Saeki that it makes the matches a little bit unfair, unless there’s something I’m missing.
And then there’s captain death himself. Miyata has what is undoubtedly the most overpowered move in human history. Ryu’s Shin Shoryuken from CvS 1 is as nothing to this mighty beast. Igniz’ attacks are swept aside from this technique as chaff before wheat. The standard jab in Tekken 4 trembles before its glory.
It’s known as the Jolt Counter, and it can kill you. One single punch that takes 4 spirit bars to perform can put your head clean through your ass and fill a whole frigging bar up with that unrecoverable red damage shit.
It really is great!
And remember, no matter how deadly a character is, training can always make them better – which comes in the form of points in this game. Win a match and collect 50 points, win a game mode and get an extra 200 on top. Then, having saved up all these wonderful points, you can go and start making customised fighting machines of death.
You can’t buy any moves that they don’t have (No Dempsey Roll for Date, for instance) in tournament mode, but with a little patience and care, you can build their attacks, defence and guard way past what they normally start out with. While they begin at level 1 (weaker than they should be), once they’re at level 9 (much, much harder) they can walk through earlier opponents without taking a scratch from even the most prolonged and vicious assaults.
Problems with Ippo, you say?
Well, I guess it is all kind of samey. Addictive, but samey. Also, your mobility in the ring is limited to forwards and backwards movement for the vast majority of the time – only Saeki and Miyata can sidestep, and it seems to be completely useless.
It’s also a shame that boxers in other weight classes weren’t allowed into the game – Takamura, Aoki and Kimura would have been nice inclusions, but since they’re in a heavier weight class they’ve been cut from the roster. Ippo’s a featherweight, and the game is based on the opponents in his class he meets during the anime.
Also, I’d love to have seen Gero-michi make an appearance as a hidden fighter or something. That said, I can’t imagine fighting him without hideous bursts of laughter escaping in great, frothy splurts from my mouth as I imagine his sad, dejected countenance taking repeated hits to the face. He’d be something like Dan, only more malleable.
Other than that though, there’s not much to complain about other than the fact that it won’t appeal to everyone – though it’s likely to appeal to a great many people.
There’s always the danger when reviewing a game based on a series you like that you’ll become less critical, more inclined to pass gloss over small details like the fact that there’s several billion infinites in the game, that the sound could be done on a Vectra, that the characters limbs morph in and out of reality whenever they start their basic walking animations and other such trivialities that everyone cares about. After all, it’s based on *THAT* series, which you love, and must therefore be awesome even if it was made for a fiver and a curry - with the sole programmer being a farmyard animal walking randomly over the keys of Visual Basic all day long.
Fortunately, I feel that I can recommend Ippo as a significantly awesome title with very little fear of the above farmyard scenario having ever happened. Indeed, people I’ve given a shot of it to have, without exception, been impressed by it despite never having watched the series.
One guy went a bit further – he got himself addicted to the game, gave it to me back after escaping into another room and playing it until the batteries on my Gameboy died and swore that he’d both buy the game and a GBA for it alone and get a hold of the anime series as soon as he possibly could. Which he did.
He’s a little scary though, so don’t take his reaction as standard.
That all said and…well, said, I am a fan of the series, so why not grab the Rom first and see how you like it? Not that I expect anyone to rush out and buy the game on my word alone, but I seriously advise at least giving the game a try – it’s that damn good, and seriously addictive for some reason I’m still trying to figure out. A game this repetitive shouldn’t be this addictive unless it’s Tetris or something.
About the only thing that the game needs now is Vanessa from King of Fighters. And let’s be honest, every game needs her. And Tina, of course. Getting both of them in the Ring would be so very wonderful, though it would, of course, bring Rocky 3’s fight with Hulk Hogan’s ‘Thunderlips’ character to mind and have nothing to do with the series the game is based on, but hey – I love those two characters with a passion that borders on the inhuman..
Ah, and here’s a little amendment to the review for you – with the actual game cartridge in hand (some of the review was written before I had the real copy), coupled with lots of body blows, beating Ippo with Sendo actually becomes somewhat possible. He’s still a tough son of a bitch, but it seems a lot fairer than when I was using a keyboard to fight him with, especially since the special moves seem to work better in the ‘real’ version.
