1 on 1 Government

I spent the last two days finishing the story mode of 1on1 with its entire roster, and aside from the aural attrition induced by hearing “TIP OFF!” repeated ad nauseam, it was a reasonably enjoyable experience, at least when I wasn't getting completely obliterated by KING crescent kicking me into oblivion, taking my ball and scoring two points with a completely superfluous corkscrew spinning jump whose sole purpose appeared to be making sure I understood my place.

1on1侍

1on1 is a half-court, 1-on-1 street basketball game for the original PlayStation, released on November 26, 1998 by Jorudan.[1] It's built around a single basket, two-round matches, and a win condition of 11 points. The player alternates between offense and defense; stealing the ball flips roles. I played the original version that has 8 characters, story mode, practice mode, and minigames. Gameplay-wise, the title is quite unusual due to its fighting game elements; it feels more like a fighter than a basketball sim. And as with many fighting games, you can often defeat the AI simply by spamming the most basic movements. When this doesn't work, nothing will, because the AI has activated ultra-instinct and become invincible. This state is transient; it will inscrutably regress to low competence within a few possessions. The game's difficulty curve is, I would say, erratic, or random, even. In some matches, you can steamroll the opposition as they stand passively by while you score. In others, their defense suddenly turns impregnable, and the game becomes nearly impossible to win (with KING being the apotheosis of this bullshittery).

While most people seem to regard Inoue Takehiko (井上雄彦)'s character designs as the game’s greatest strength (a point I wouldn't contest), I would posit that this isn’t his best work, considering that some of the characters, despite their eccentricity, remain somewhat unmemorable and are just kind of goofy in an insipid way. The protagonist, Kirin (麒麟, denoting both the giraffe and the qilin, the chimerical ungulate of Chinese mythology), possesses a singular identifying attribute: his orangeness. He’s orange. That’s it. As Aniota Wiki (アニヲタ Wiki) puts it: “オレンジ髪、オレンジベスト、オレンジ靴が特徴なオレンジ男。” - a man defined by orange hair, an orange vest, and orange shoes.[2] He’s even oranger than Sakuragi Hanamichi. His narrative impetus is purely hereditary, as the scion of the deceased former 1on1 KING, but nobody really cares about that, and by nobody, I mean the game itself, since it’s barely even mentioned.

And that brings us into the lore. The game is set in a country where one-on-one basketball has evolved into a nearly lawless bloodsport. The street fighters who pursue the honorific of “1on1 KING” are known as “1on1侍” - 1on1 Samurai. Being 1on1 KING comes with a royal lifestyle, but you must keep accepting challengers, or you're out. When the previous KING died, the path to the throne was sealed, and the sport descended into anarchy for a decade. Now, after a ten-year interregnum, the “帝王杯1on1バトルトーナメント” (the Imperial Cup 1on1 Battle Tournament) has returned.

Kirin's older brother, Ron (written as 龍, dragon), who began as a thug brutalizing opponents to extort money from them, is also playable, but now he fights to pay for eye surgery for a blind woman to whom he has pledged his future. He has a rather unorthodox playstyle… he plays basketball with his legs, dunking with his feet and blocking shots with head kicks. He’s essentially the Sanji of the game. Furin (虎玲), the daughter of a 1on1 dojo master, enters the tournament to fulfill her father's unrealized dream. She’s my favorite character to play as, and my second least favorite to play against. Also, she's cute. Probably that's why the 13-year-old Takeda Shota, the next character on the list, is so enamored of her. He’s less interested in becoming the 1on1 KING than he is in seeing Furin again. Despite his diminutive stature, he can dunk and hit three-pointers from virtually anywhere on the court. He’s a very annoying character to face, but at least you can pummel him into submission by playing a hulking, 200cm-plus middle-aged bruiser like the colossal Brown (a man who lost his son to illness and descended into 1on1 obsession) who’s also the game's most blatant cheater, who obstructs the basket by dropping a literal barricading squirrel on the rim.

Then there is Manbe. Manbe is a monkey. More precisely, a failed product of a military gene-modification program whose littermates were culled, now seeking vengeance against the 1on1 KING who oversaw the project. This sounds like something Kojima would’ve written if he made a basketball game. Next is Laheesha, matriarch of a biker gang. Her mother was one of the late KING's many paramours; she isn’t all that interested in palace life, she enters out of curiosity about her own origins. According to Aniota Wiki, she models her moves after Michael Jordan, and as such, she’s also capable of dunking from the free-throw line. And of course, Luka, the character that made me truly realize just how unserious the game is. Luka is a literal fallen angel, endowed with wings and spiky green hair, cast down to the mortal realm after failing in his mission to save Charles, Brown's son, who died of illness. Luka has transplanted Charles's soul into the earlier-mentioned squirrel, Chucky. Inoue's authorial alter ego, Dr. T, appears as a hidden character. In the original PS1 game, you unlock him by beating the story mode with King and then scoring a buzzer-beater. (Supposedly. I didn’t bother trying much.)

The roster includes three unlockable bosses: Oscar, whose physiognomy is strikingly similar to Trevor from GTA V; Mash, a large brute, who’s inexplicably always depicted with his mouth agape at full width; and KING, the nation's young ruler who revived the tournament and is an absolute menace on the court. He bested me countless times, but his silly, shadowboxing victory dance never failed to make me chuckle.

Beating my Buzzer

The gameplay loop is pretty fun at first, but can get repetitive fast. While I just mentioned spamming the same move to win, my boredom set in even before resorting to that. The characters do have differences, but those differences aren’t substantial enough to significantly change the experience. The title presumably benefits considerably from playing it together with someone, but unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to try that.

Inoue, who is credited with both character design and the original story concept, was in an odd position in 1998. He had just come off the biggest sports manga of the decade, was in the process of pivoting toward a painstaking historical epic, Vagabond, and yet somehow also lent his name and artwork to a half-court PS1 basketball brawler. Slam Dunk had concluded in 1996 after 31 volumes; Buzzer Beater, his sci-fi basketball story about an Earth team competing in an intergalactic tournament, was published from May 1996 to 1997. This appears to be his only contribution to an original (non-licensed) video game, and even here, it is a little unclear. The in-game staff roll lists him for キャラクターデザイン＆ストーリーコンセプト (character design and story concept). His own works page only says character design.[3] There is a dedicated Inoue interview in 1on1公式設定資料集,[4] but that book isn’t digitized in any useful form I could find, and I’m too broke to purchase it.

The arcade version, ported by Tecmo in 1999 to their PS-compatible TPS arcade board, was given the subtitle "1 on 1 Government,"[5] which sounds absurd at first, but given that you’re literally competing to become a monarch, it’s oddly fitting. A year later came SIMPLE 1500 Series Vol. 30: THE BASKET 1on1 Plus (SIMPLE1500シリーズ Vol.30 ～THE バスケット 1on1プラス～), released on May 2, 2000,[6] as part of D3 Publisher's budget line priced at 1,500 yen plus tax. It brings the arcade version's 2v2 mode back to the PlayStation, but at the cost of both story mode and practice mode. Then there was a PS3 / PSP (2009) digital re-release via the PlayStation Store as a Game Archives title too, but the game remains relatively unknown. I wasn't able to find any substantial contemporary reviews. The retrospective sentiment appears to be fairly positive, at least according to sources like Gavas.jp[7] and Aniota Wiki. A Joypad article indexed on MobyGames[8] assigns it a 0/10, describing it as "à deux balles," [9] but that's arguably just an issue of the writer being French. While the game can be monotonous and at times frustrating, it’s really not that bad.

Footnotes

[1] “1on1(PS),” おきらくゲームソフト事典, accessed August 24, 2026, https://gamesoft.ukariko.jp/gps_1533.htm.

[2] “1on1(ゲーム),” アニヲタWiki(仮), atwiki, accessed August 24, 2026, https://w.atwiki.jp/aniwotawiki/pages/32330.html.

[3] “Works,” I.T. Planning, accessed August 24, 2026, https://itplanning.co.jp/works/.

[4] ジョルダン監修, オメガ社編, 『1on1公式設定資料集』 (丸山学芸図書, 1998), ISBN 9784895421607.

[5] “One on One Government,” The Arcade Flyer Archive, Tecmo, 1999, https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/videogames/show/5385.

[6] “SIMPLE1500シリーズ Vol.30 THE バスケット～1on1プラス～,” コンシューマーゲーム大辞典, accessed August 24, 2026, https://consoledictionary.com/games/23397.

[7] “ワン・オン・ワン,” ピコピコ大百科 (Gavas.jp), accessed August 24, 2026, https://www.gavas.jp/products/detail.php?product_id=10217.

[8] “1 on 1,” MobyGames, accessed August 24, 2026, https://www.mobygames.com/game/42536/1-on-1/.

[9] “1 on 1,” Joypad, no. 82 (January 1999): 83, https://download.abandonware.org/magazines/Joypad/joypad_numero082/JOYPAD%2082%20janvier%201999%20083.jpg.