Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star

Genre: Boxing / Sports (Exercise) / Music-Rhythm

Players: 1-2 (Local)

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Review:

Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star, released in 2023 on Nintendo Switch, is a spin-off of the Fitness Boxing franchise featuring the world, characters, and music of the anime franchise.

Here, I need to take a moment and venture into the world of purely personal opinion and subjectivity. Developer Imagineer, you got the genuinely interesting idea of pairing this game with an anime license, and you went with Fist of the North Star? I’m no spring chicken, and this franchise was old when I was a kid, and the last anime I can find produced with this property seems to be a series of films released over a decade ago in 2012 that never made it to the US. This is the anime you think is going to excite people? And not something like My Hero Academia, One Punch Man, or even Dragon Ball Z, which is also pretty old but far more culturally-relevant? Look, I’ve got nothing against Fist of the North Star, but there’s a reason people responded to this game’s reveal with a generally-perplexed response.

Okay, getting past that rant, combining a Boxing-themed Exercise game with an anime about fighting is a pretty good idea. Play your cards right and you could maybe even venture into the same territory as Ring Fit Adventure, where it starts to feel less like exercise and more like an actual game. However, that’s assuming the game takes full advantage of that fact.

The presentation here is okay, using 3D backgrounds and character models for the various Fist of the North Star characters in roles as your fitness instructors and, in some cases, opponents, with decent detail but some pretty poor shadows. These are joined by non-voiced music from the series (along with a bunch more made to fit the same style), and voices for the characters that are… well, passable, I suppose. It’s hard not to feel like there’s a lack of effort here, as the voices are just provided by Fitness Boxing regulars rather than anyone associated with any of the North Star animes (I looked it up, and the voice of series lead Kenshiro in the original English dub, Lex Lang, is still doing voice work now, so getting him to reprise the role seems like it would have been very doable).

Unfortunately, this lack of effort extends to the rest of the game. It’s not that Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star is bad. It works, as much as earlier games in the series did. The issue is that it fails to use its license to elevate the gameplay at all. It’s exactly the same as every other game in the Fitness Boxing series, which is to say you’ll be doing the punches you’re instructed to perform in time with the beat of the music. This game does throw players a bone in the form of “fights” that have players actually punching opponents… except these fights play exactly the same as the standard workout, meaning the only difference is the presentation.

To its credit, Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star seems to have tightened up its motion controls, as I didn’t have any issues with undetected punches like I did with the first and second Fitness Boxing games. However, I’d still rather play those earlier games because even though they used unvoiced covers of pop songs, they were at least songs I liked instead of this game’s fairly unmemorable anime action music.

In the end, despite its inexplicable choice of a tired, culturally-outdated license, Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star did have the greatest opportunity yet to push the Fitness Boxing series forward into something that feels more like a genuine game than just exercise. Unfortunately, it is woefully lacking in the ambition needed to capitalize on that opportunity, and the result is an odd game that mixes more of the same tired gameplay with a license that seems like a poor fit for this series, at least in the way it’s being used here. Unless you’re a die-hard fan of the Fist of the North Star series looking for an Exercise Application wearing a skin of the series, I think you’re better off getting any of the other Fitness Boxing games (or ideally, Ring Fit Adventure).

tl;dr – Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star combines the boxing-focused Exercise Application with the classic (and let’s be honest, woefully dated) anime franchise, but does absolutely nothing to capitalize on this license, delivering the same tired gameplay, with music that’s far less enjoyable to exercise to. Unless you’re a major fan of the show, you’re better off with any of the other Fitness Boxing games, or ideally Ring Fit Adventure.

Grade: C

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