For those who are looking for a different boxing game for the PSP, this is your best bet from Japan.
Hajime no Ippo Portable: Victorious Spirits is a game developed by ESP software and Grand-Prix. For those who are not familiar with the manga, the story revolves around Ippo Makunochi and how he enters the world of boxing. After learning about boxers such as Mike Tyson, he decides to become a boxer and thus his quest for the Japanese Featherweight Title and World Title begin. The story mode covers that for the most part, though if you don't understand Japanese, you can just skip and head straight into the fights. This is the main mode you'll be playing to unlock other boxers as well as new story modes and other costumes for the boxers themselves. You also have an arcade and customize mode to create special boxers and put them in the ring in exhibition matches against the computer or in ad-hoc mode with another person who owns the game. You also have your records and replay options as well as the regular options mode to set the difficulty and control scheme, but lets get to the control scheme first.
Mechanically, you control your boxer using the D-Pad and you have four basic punches, left jab, right jab, left hook, right hook. This corresponds to the base buttons as square is left jab, triangle is right jab and so forth. Holding the R button down and pressing one of the buttons throws an uppercut instead or a body hook, and holding the L button down and moving the D-Pad has your character move and sway evasively which is pretty cool. There is a big problem though. If you've never play Boxer's Road or Victorious Boxers ( which is Hajime no Ippo related also ) you're probably going to have a hard time understanding how to move your character forward or backward or side to side. You can try to fix that by changing the degree on your D-Pad where going forward is. By degree, that means the 360 rotation, something that could be an issue for newcomers. If that problem persist, switch the camera angle to be behind your boxer and you'll be fine.
The game-play is pretty straight forward. While at times it is strategic for certain boxers, you'll be button mashing this game the majority of the time. You can play this game and win matches with no problem, but if you're playing the story mode, it does get difficult overtime that you have to find alternate methods to defeat your opponents. The characters themselves look like the manga counter-parts and although the story mode doesn't have any voice-overs, the manga-inspired storyboards should suffice enough.
This isn't to say that there are problems because they're are. It probably would have been better if the character movement was on the Analog stick because all boxers move pretty stiff. Not only that there are moments within the game that frame rate drops, and it usually drops at the most awkward of times too. This is apparent when you use characters that have special moves like the Shotgun blast. That move consists of your opponent or you throwing punches like crazy and when that occurs the frame rate drops really quick. There aren't methods to mess with the speed with this game so you'll have to do.
Overall the game is pretty good. For those who love the anime and manga, they'll pick this up begging for more Ippo. As a boxing alone its not bad either. It is certainly different from Rocky Balboa and Fight Night, and because it based on that anime, there is a good chance this game will come to the US under the Victorious Boxer's title, much like the PS2 and Wii counterparts. If you're looking for some fresh cartoon-ish boxing on the go, this will be your best bet, even if you don't understand the language.