It's not often that I get an anime licensed game that I'm interested in. Being as how I've watched through all of Hajime No Ippo on the recommendation of a series franchise a while back, I expected Victorious Boxers Revolution to be a fairly inoffensive title that followed the plotline while delivering some decent boxing action. Sadly, the game fails to deliver on both parts with lackluster presentation and abysmal controls that make it a title to avoid.

While sitting down and opening up Victorious Boxers Revolution, the first thing I noticed was the lack of anything that said “anime” on the front. Boxing gloves, a cartoony silhouette, but nothing that gave a hint as to what the topic matter is. Another look at the back shows, to the uninitiated, a striking resemblance to Punch-Out!. It's not until you look at the printed inside of the cover that it becomes apparent this is an anime game—which, apparently, wasn't the first thing anyone wanted the general audience to know about.

After popping in the disk and starting it up, a cutscene begins to provide some backstory—one problem. Every video clip of dialogue in this game is rendered with cel shading in a 4:3 aspect ratio with letterboxing. Even though the rest of the game runs in 16:9 just fine, every single bit of exposition wastes over 2/3 of the screen with huge fields of black to the left and right, and letterboxing to the top and bottom.

Getting into the actual game, it's overly apparent from the tutorials that the Wiimote controls, no matter the mode, are horrendous. The first two control modes use motion control akin to Wii Sports Boxing although far less reactive or precise in their design. The second two use a click and drag approach that has you making swipes across the screen a la the bizarre Victorian Japanese slapfighting flash game Rose & Carmellia. For the sake of reviewing, I will mention that the Classic Controller support is rather nice, but given that if I wanted to play on a traditional pad I could get essentially the same game instead on the PS2 for 25% of the price, it's irrelevant.

[Revision: A reader requested more information about the control schemes.]
Now, to put this in perspective, there are 4 separate control schemes outside of the GC/Classic Controller setting--two for motion, and two for the "click and drag" style. With both of those, you're given the option of using the chuck as a control stick. Otherwise, you're left with using both as sort of a rudder to control your character.

As stated before, one mode emulates Wii Sports Boxing rather closely, but no matter how you swing the controller about, the game seems to do whatever it wants to. While fun in the tech demo that was Wii Sports, it's mind-numbing in a serious game.

VBR's other control scheme seems to be ripped from a few trashy Flash minigames on the web, most notably the aforementioned slapfighting game--and come to think of it, that Spank The Monkey and multiple clones that spawned a few years back. You see, to fight in the second type, the game requires you to click down a button, and swipe it across the screen. As such, you're trying to drag a cursor in the right direction and gesture while dodging punches from an opponent. Needless to say, it isn't pretty.

As such, it's kind of sad that Victorious Boxers Revolution was botched so badly. Given that the series was a somewhat obscure anime contemporary to Fight Night, and the source material being one of the better cartoons I've seen, seeing the Wii title being so bad is a shame.