Hajime No Ippo: The Fighting!

Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting was Treasure’s second game for the Game Boy Advance and was released in 2002. George Morikawa wrote and illustrated the Hajime no Ippo manga, on which the game is based. Treasure decided to make it a boxing game rather than an action-adventure game because they wanted to put more emphasis on the sport. It is a conventional one-on-one fighter that draws a few cues from Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! titles and the action is viewed from the first-person perspective, as opposed to the third-person perspective used in the Hajime no Ippo games for the PS2 and PSP platforms. The characters, much like those in many other Treasure games, have exquisite pixel artwork and top-notch animation. They remain faithful to the source material while incorporating the company’s distinctive gameplay mechanics and creative ideas. There is a fan translation of this Hajime no Ippo game that is available to read in English. However, the original Japanese version was never exported outside of Japan.