Though the story of Hajime no Ippo isn’t the most complex one out there, it definitely makes up with intense, badass boxing matches, and awesome characters. When I saw the DS game was released, I had to try it out. What I got was… a mixed bag really.

Is this game a knockdown or a letdown? Well, that’s what I’m here to tell you. Or at least as much as I can considering my complete lack of japanese knowledge.
 
Graphics
I must say the graphics are really good by DS standards. In battle, in Super Punchout! style, the camera is behind the character you control, and your character is transparent so you can see what your opponent does. The characters themselves look a lot like they do in the anime/manga, they really are nicely replicated. If there is 1 problem I have with the game, it’s the fact that the characters look scrawny and weak in comparison to the anime/manga. They’re all really thin and don’t look really muscular. That’s mostly due to DS limitations and not being able to push enough polygons to make believable muscle structures and such. Also, during training mini-games, the only character you see is Ippo, no matter which character you’ll be using in the next story fight, I think they could at least have made a few extra sprites for that. But overall the characters look like they should and and animation is smooth, as is needed in a game of the sort.

Gameplay
Training mini-games
In story mode(as well as the mini-game mode), you have the option to play a mini-game before fights. Those range from cutting logs to catching leaves, to a Beatmania style combo mini-game, to doing certain punches, to hitting that… ball thing i don’t know how it’s called, to evading rocks. The mini-games are pretty much all about timing. When you miss, you lose points, when you get it right you get points, and when your timing is perfect you get more points. At the end you are graded for you performance, depending on how many points you got. If you’re in story mode, getting good grades in the mini-games (which is relatively hard) gives you slight bonuses in battle. The Beatmania-like game fills up your special bar, the leaf game let’s you predict what hand the opponent will use to punch next and… I don’t know for the rest. Some might be power ups, some might make you dodging more effective, but I can’t be 100% sure.

The mini-games are relatively short and aren’t bad, just a bit of an annoyance, and if you don’t want to do them you can decide not to. The bonus they give can be useful for the following battle. Kinda fun, but ultimately you’ll just do them to get bonuses in battle.

Fighting
The fighting is relatively good. I’ll try to explain it the best I can.
Your boxer is always centered on the screen. The game is fully controlled by touch screen(I think there’s a button mode, but I didn’t want to screw around with the options too much). The screen shows 4 boxes of equal height and width, at different parts of the screen. The 2 top parts are green. I call those the “attack zone”, which is where you input your punches. The bottom part is yellow. This would be the “Dodge and movement zone”. By holding the stylus on a character and moving it around on him you’ll move his upper body to dodge punches. Moving on outer parts of the yellow sections will make you move around, and touching your character then dragging forward in the green section will make you dash.

You have a full arsenal of punches. Hooks with both sides, uppercuts, jabs and special moves. Jabs require tapping the screen, hooks require making a horizontal line, uppercuts require making vertical lines and specials use various “motions” that vary from going back and forth in some parts, or making big lines from the yellow to green zone. Special punches require you to have your special bar full. It fills up when you hit your opponent and goes down if you get hit too much.

Basically you’ll be trying to dodge attacks and attack at the right time to deal damage to your opponent. You each have an endurance bar, and when it’s empty you get knocked down. Hitting in the face might damage the eyes, making it more difficult to see, making your screen darker at certain areas, depending on where you were punched. As for knock downs, it’s all a matter of how much abuse you’ve taken as to whether you get up or not. So when you’re knocked down you just have to hope getting up before the count reaches 10, there’s nothing you can do otherwise.

In-between rounds, you have 3 options. You can heal your eyes if you can’t see, use your fighting spirit(I think…) to get some health back(heals the eyes just a bit) and get slapped in th back which I’m pretty sure makes your punches stronger. It’s all a matter of situation and strategy to decide which of the 3 you choose.

Overall the fighting works okay. I find it kinda annoying that you can’t properly dodge and attack at the same time, or at least as smoothly as you’d like, and the computer-controlled enemies are just a bit too good at the game at times with their near perfect timing.

Things that bug me in the game
1. The countdown
Other than the super annoying voice doing the countdown, the system itself is flawed. Even if you get up and in fighting stance within 2 seconds, the countdown will still wait up to 8 for the fight to start again. It can save you at times, but others it will make oyu lose precious seconds you could have been breaking your opponent’s face. Also, sometimes it’s just not working. I found myself in fighting stance just fractions of a second before the 10-count, but lost the match anyways. It doesn’t really work well at times.

2. Computers are too good
While some opponents are stupidly weak, sometimes they’re just too good. They can see exactly what you’re going to do in the first few frames of animation and have the perfect counter ready already, and their dodging skills are just a bit too good, makingthem way too hard to hit.

3. Winning is a matter of luck sometimes
That’s right. I found myself winning a lot of matches but doing the touch screen equivalent of  button mashing. Sometimes I destroyed the opponent, sometimes I got destroyed in seconds. But the strategy works and is valid. 

4. Some important fights are skipped in the story mode
Not asking to have ALL the fights of course, I mean, there’s 30 characters to choose from which is really good. But some really important fights are just skipped over completely, making the story mode feel a bit incomplete. And the “cutscenes” are merely the coach talking to you, which is kinda boring.

Overall 
The game isn’t bad. An Ippo fan such as I will definitely find enjoyment in this. The flaws though are quite annoying, and the fighting system might have needed a bit more polish. But for what it is, it’s a very nice game.
If you like Ippo, check it out, otherwise skip this.

jobocan Anime, Games, Review