HIGH It’s a fine franchise choice to work out to.

LOW There’s no Japanese voiceover option, and the alternatives aren’t great.

WTF Kenshiro claiming that my punches are every bit as good as his. Uh… no.

Oh God! I’m not sure if anyone’s aware of this, but NUCLEAR WAR OCCURRED AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY AND MOST OF THE PLANET IS NOW A SCORCHED WASTELAND! Oh no!

Bandits! Pillaging! Wanton slaughter! Bad words! Survivors rummaging through the wreckage for irradiated rats to feast on! It’s horrible, and only the successor to the Divine Fist of the North Star Kenshiro and his knowledge of boxing exercise techniques can save the day for all the wafer thin, malnourished victims tottering around the ruined Earth scavenging for meagre scraps of food.

Well, sort of. It’s made clear during the introduction that players are rediscovering the lost art of pre-apocalypse exercise instead of the murderously explosive art of Hokuto Shinken, so don’t expect to be able to waltz down the street blowing up passers-by at random in real life after a few sessions on the Switch.

In gameplay terms, anyone who’s played any of the Fitness Boxing titles should be able to slide right in here. Standing upright and holding the Switch’s nunchuck controllers in each hand, players will mimic the actions of their chosen onscreen instructor as they follow an exercise routine from start to finish, optionally warming up and cooling down at the end of each session. Sessions typically last between twenty to forty minutes depending on player choice, and range from “This Isn’t Bad, Actually” to “Oh Sweet Jesus I’m Gonna Die Help Me Help Help Help” in terms of intensity.

After the workout, each instructor will give out some advice or observations on the player’s performance. Kenshiro mentioned that I had an amazing jab and he couldn’t do better himself — and considering he can punch through someone’s skull and atomize the person standing behind them, I found this to be quite a compliment. Either that or he just lied straight to my face.

Players are also graded on their performance and how well they kept up with the onscreen action and given a bunch of stats showing estimated calories burned, punch success rate and the like. It all gets jotted down into a permanent gameplay record so users can track their exercise sessions over time, and each workout also doles out a little cash for buying new music, instructors and outfits along the way. Want characters like Mamiya or Raoh to teach fitness boxing instead? Go for it.

The other, more original, half of this package revolves around battles where Kenshiro works his way through multiple rounds of bad guys to square off against enemy bosses such as Shin and Southe… sorry, Thouzer. This mode isn’t that different from standard workouts as far as gameplay goes, but there are new victory conditions attached to the workout. Perform combination instructions correctly and the bad guys get defeated, get it wrong and they stay on their feet.

Bosses are slightly different, with both Kenshiro and adversaries like Shin having a health bar as well as attacking and defending phases. Hit the combos precisely during either sequence and Kenshiro’s opponent will get smacked and whiff their attacks, fail and he’ll be the one getting hammered into the ground instead.

Like I said, it’s basically the same mechanics as in the standard workouts, but there’s definitely something more engaging about ‘winning’ the workout as enemies fall by the wayside. That said, this is an all ages title. Adversaries seem to collapse in a weird sweaty explosion when defeated as opposed to having their intestines rupturing like they accidentally scarfed down a pack of military grade semtex.

The music seems mainly comprised of original pieces, though some of the more recognizable themes such as Tough Boy and Ai wo Torimodose also make an appearance… minus their lyrics, which is slightly disappointing. Songs can be set to each individual phase of the workout, so there’s also no danger of being forced to listen to a single song on repeat for more than half an hour.

Annoyingly, there’s no option to choose the Japanese audio for dialogue and the English voiceovers are inconsistent to put it mildly. Kenshiro and Raoh sound pretty much okay, even if their line delivery lacks dynamism. Toki sounds like he’s reading entries out of a phonebook and Rin’s performance simply confuses me, like it was meant for another character entirely. There are French and Italian options, but it’d have been nice to get the original Japanese dialogue given the origins of the franchise.

Included with our review copy was a code for some DLC — essentially, a few side games which can be played to unlock music and outfits for instructors. One of these minigames involves repeatedly punching Kenshiro’s rotund adversary Heart a multitude of times to blast through his blubber, then keep doing it over successive rounds until fatigue causes failure. The other event involves taking control of Raoh and punching bandits as far into the distance as possible through a combination of correct timing and swift punch speed. They’re a neat addition to the package that add some variety, but they’re hardly vital.

In summation, Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star delivers on its given premise. It’s still an exercise program first and foremost, so don’t expect the game aspect to distract from the fact that players are working up a sweat and fatigue is setting in as continual combinations of hooks and uppercuts slowly take their toll.

Even so, there’s definitely something to be said for performing fitness routines to visuals of rambunctious post-apocalyptic punks being smacked in their stupid faces to keep players engaged. And hell, if Kenshiro himself can’t get players to burn off some excess calories, who can?

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Imagineer. It is currently available on Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to various workouts. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E (10+) and contains Mild Violence and Language.  The official description reads: This is a rhythm/fitness game in which players perform boxing exercises by following timed prompts along with music. Players match an on-screen character’s movements (e.g., jabs, uppercuts, dodges) to earn points and achieve fitness. In a Battle Mode, matching movements correctly results in players punching opponents (e.g., outlaws, rivals) until they are defeated. Players can also use special techniques to unleash a flurry of punches against an opponent. The word “bastard” appears in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. (See examples above.) The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. There are no audio cues needed to successfully play the game. This is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. There is no controller map. Most motions are performed using the player’s body to punch, with very little typical use of the controller outside of menus and the like.

HIGH The perfect use of slight controller vibration during the Thouzer fight.

LOW The sheer amount of grinding required for high-level parts.

WTF Devil Rebirth acting as a human construction crane.

I’m not sure there could possibly be a better developer to create a Fist of the North Star game than Yakuza Studio. The devs were already famous for making a dramatic series about struggling to be an honorable person in a completely corrupt world — moving that same premise to a Mad Max-themed post-apocalyptic hellscape doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. The accompanying gameplay of 1-on-20 brawler battles with occasional boss fights is also well within their wheelhouse. If they didn’t manage to knock this one out of the park, it would have been quite a shock.

Of course, they didn’t just knock it out of the park — they smashed it into the stratosphere like a punk motorcyclist hit by an I-beam swung by the strongest man on earth. Which, naturally, is one of the minigames featured in FotNS. And as a bonus, they even created a skin that makes the protagonist look just like Kiryu…

From the jumping-off point, the developers make it clear they’re going to make this adaptation their own, rather than just retelling the classic Buronson and Hara manga from 1983. I won’t spoil story details, but the plot is going to be significantly different than what series fans might expect. While the manga’s Kenshiro was a man with nothing to live for but the knowledge that justice must be served, FotNS’ version has been transformed into something far closer to Yakuza’s Kazuma Kiryu — a man who’s out of step with the world, struggling to relate to the regular people around him, and willing to risk it all to do the right thing.

They accomplish this new approach to the material by massively altering the setting. To put it mildly, the world of Fist of the North Star was always thinly-sketched. There was a nuclear war, Japan was rendered a suspiciously non-radioactive desert, and feudalism returned. The core was seeing legendary martial artists battling in a world of stick figures.

In contrast, the FotNS developers have gone out of their way to humanize the game’s world. Centering on a single town completely changes the story’s focus, and instead of a wandering ronin killing some local thugs and continuing on his way, Ken is transformed into a member of a community — a man rising from being a prisoner to a pillar of a society as he touches the lives of those around him. There are also themes about exactly how a society should function – the town of Lost Paradise is essentially an Eden, as it’s one of the few bastions left offering fresh water and electricity. At the game’s outset its citizens hide behind its walls, watching with regretful eyes as would-be refugees starve just meters away. Obviously this cannot stand, and there’s a man who makes heads explode ready to weigh in.

Speaking of exploding heads, the game is full of them. Almost pornographically violent, FotNS takes the basic Yakuza fighting system and adds hypergore. Kenshiro is the master of a martial arts style that uses acupressure to manipulate the human body — on one hand, it can cure almost any illness. On the other, it can cause the human head to explode like an overripe melon blasted by a shotgun, and Ken does a lot more of the latter than he does the former. Even during the doctor-themed minigame he takes time out from fixing bodies to murder some goons.

The Yakuza fighting system was already exceptionally well-balanced, but the improvements here are simply stunning. Kenshiro is incredibly strong, but instead of shying away from that and finding a plot device to cripple him in some way, the developers have leaned into it. The player starts out OP, and just gets stronger from there. To unleash power attacks, all the player has to do is hit an enemy enough times to weaken their resolve, then a single button press can put them into ‘shock’ state where they’re vulnerable to instant-kill attacks. Bosses are still a challenge, of course, but the game does an exquisite job of making it feel like Ken is a terrifying monster in combat.

Fist of the North Star does falter in one respect – the wasteland buggy sections. Outside the city walls is a huge open area, and a few chapters into the game, the player earns a vehicle to traverse it. There are special items to find, random encounters to get into, and settlements with their own substories to complete. The problem is one of size — the wasteland is just too big, with too little to do within it. It takes forever to drive anywhere with the starting buggy, and the only way to make it faster is to drive around picking up wasteland junk for hours on end. There are interesting stories out there in the sand and the racing minigame can be solid if players are willing to invest the hours necessary to get their buggy into tip-top shape, but I can’t see anyone but the most die-hard devoting the necessary time.

I said that this is a perfect match of developer and IP, and that’s not an exaggeration. The Yakuza Studio has not only produced the best Fist of the North Star game ever, but also one of their best overall. This is a setting more raw and  gloriously over-the-top than their usual, but they never tamp down the humanistic streak that defines the entire series. Wipe away the blood and guts, and underneath is a beautiful story about the importance of working together, and how selflessness is the ultimate virtue. Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Hokuto Ga Gotoku Studio and published by SEGA. It is currently available on PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 60 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, and Suggestive Themes. Keep the kids so far from this one. There’s no nudity or drugs, but there’s constant swearing, intensely brutal violence, and quite a bit of sexual innuendo in conversation. Also, I’m not sure how they missed the ‘alcohol’ warning. Ken works as a bartender in the game, and numerous characters become drunk as part of that plotline.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played most of the game with the sound off, and encountered no difficulties. The game has both English and Japanese audio tracks, and all dialogue is subtitled. Those subtitles cannot be resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. There’s no diagram for the controls, but it uses a fairly traditional 3D melee control system with the left stick controlling movement, right stick handling camera positioning, and face buttons employed to attack, block, and perform special moves.