Boxing was my favorite Wii Sports activity, even though I don’t like boxing as a sport, so I was pretty excited to try out Victorious Boxers when I received it.
The game is based on an anime series called Fighting Spirit, so it has plenty of story to go with it. You play as Ippo Makunochi, a new arrival at the Kamogawa Boxing Gym, and immediately become the hope of a new champion for the gym owner.
You begin by a quick tutorial from your coach. The Nunchuk represents your left hand, and the Wii-mote, your right, so you will get a feel for little jabs, uppercuts and other special moves in this short training session.
There are several control systems, so you choose whichever you feel more comfortable to play with. Swing Mode 1 uses both Wii-mote and Nunchuk to move around, weave and punch, like in Wii Sports Boxing. Swing Mode 2 still uses both controllers to punch, but you use the analog stick on the Nunchuk to move around instead.
Pointer Mode 1 uses the Wii-mote as a pointer and places targets on the screen for you to hit, but you still move as in Swing Mode 1, so it’s a bit confusing. Pointer Mode 2 uses the pointer and targets but you move with the analog instead.
If none of these is to your liking, you can still use the Classic Controller or the GameCube Controller and not worry about any motions controls or targets. Unfortunately, no matter what, any control system feels fairly clumsy. The one I tried to get used to was Swing Mode 1, just because I was so used to Boxing in Wii Sports, but the motion sensitiveness is so… sensitive that you end up doing all sorts of redundant movements you didn’t intend to.
With that covered, we move on to the actual story, where Ippo fights his way up to fame. For those who enjoy the anime or like story-heavy games, you will get your kicks out of this presentation. There’s intermissions for actual events, intermissions before a match, after a match, during a match… So there is quite a bit of loading too, as you can imagine. I found the whole process somewhat disruptive, since there were even intermissions during the fights.
At some point, I was interrupted to have some event happen that had nothing to do whatsoever with how the fight was turning out. I was winning, nearly had my opponent KO’d, and this cutscene comes along showing Ippo doubting he can even win. Then when I get put back in control, the fight is over and the other guy is laying on the floor without me even throwing a single punch. Wait… did I miss something? What exactly happened there, a time lapse? But no, the story goes on. It didn’t take long before I started skipping everything, but there are some scenes that you can’t skip.
The artwork is interesting, a cel-shaded look that certainly stands out. It looks fine during gameplay, but in some scenes where you get close-ups of the characters, the tracing seems a little jagged. The voice acting in the game fits the somewhat over-the-top anime “soap-opera”, and the commentators don’t do too bad of a job either. I also enjoyed the upbeat music here and there.
Victorious Boxers does offer a multiplayer option in Sparring Mode, where you can go at it against a friend in any match you have already played through in Story Mode. You can adjust the number of rounds and KOs in Sparring. There are also 25 characters to play as, each with different special moves, and you can even adjust their power, speed and strength.
Overall, Victorious Boxers: Revolution is not too bad and boxing fans will surely enjoy it. There are plenty of options for the controls, so you’re bound to find one that fits your style. The motion controls aren’t as good as I expected though, and the storyline interruptions in the middle of the fights really seemed out of place, especially when considering that the outcome had nothing to do with the scene. And it’s that fact alone that makes me want to go back and throw some punches with my Mii instead.
Special thanks to Jimmy Soga and XSEED for providing a copy of this title.