Beyblade: Let It Rip!, known in Japan as Bakuten Shoot Beyblade: Beyblade Battle Tournament, is a 2002 fighting game developed by Wavedge and published by Crave Entertainment for the original PlayStation. Based on the original Beyblade anime series, the game let fans of the spinning-top phenomenon step into the shoes of their favorite characters and compete in head-to-head Beyblade battles. In this article, we’ll look at its gameplay, modes, and place within the broader Beyblade video game library.
Riding the Wave of a Global Anime Craze
Beyblade exploded into a worldwide phenomenon in the early 2000s, combining a popular anime series with physical spinning-top toys that kids battled against each other in real life. Naturally, that popularity made it an appealing target for video game adaptations, and Let It Rip! was one of several Beyblade titles released around this period to capitalize on the franchise’s momentum.
The game first released in Japan in December 2001, followed by a North American release on December 5, 2002, and a European release the following August. Despite the regional staggering, all versions stuck closely to adapting the original Beyblade anime rather than any of its later sequel series.
A Straightforward Tournament Experience
Unlike many anime tie-in games of the era that leaned heavily into role-playing or adventure elements, Let It Rip! takes a much more streamlined approach, focusing almost entirely on tournament-style Beyblade battles with very little narrative or exploration in between. The game is built around two core modes:
- Tournament Mode — The game’s primary story-driven mode, consisting of eleven matches that players battle through in sequence.
- Free Battle — A more flexible mode that lets players battle as or against characters straight from the Beyblade anime, or create entirely custom characters of their own.
Custom characters created in Free Battle can be saved directly to a PlayStation Memory Card, allowing players to build and preserve their own original Beyblade fighters across multiple play sessions.
Customizing Your Own Beyblade
Beyond just choosing a character, Let It Rip! includes a dedicated Customize Mode that lets players adjust their custom character’s Beyblade directly, tying into the toy line’s own core appeal of building and tweaking your own spinning top for competitive advantage. This customization layer gave the game a small but meaningful hook for fans who enjoyed that same process with the physical Beyblade toys.
One notable omission, however, is the complete lack of hidden or unlockable characters, a contrast to some other Beyblade games released around the same time, which offered extra characters as rewards for progressing through their modes.
How It Compares to Its GameCube Counterpart
Around the same period, a separate Beyblade game, Beyblade: V-Force: Super Tournament Battle, released on the Nintendo GameCube. According to fan and community resources, the core gameplay between the two titles is quite similar, suggesting that Beyblade’s video game adaptations during this era leaned on a fairly consistent battle formula across different consoles, even when based on different points in the anime’s ongoing story.
Part of a Much Larger Beyblade Game Library
Let It Rip! was far from the only Beyblade game released during the franchise’s early peak. Around the same general period, the series saw releases like BeyBlade: Fighting Tournament on Game Boy Color and BeyBlade VForce: Super Tournament Battle on GameCube, with the franchise continuing to expand into later games such as Metal Fight Beyblade on Nintendo DS in subsequent years. This steady stream of releases reflects just how aggressively publishers leaned into adapting the Beyblade brand across virtually every popular platform of the time.
Final Thoughts
Beyblade: Let It Rip! isn’t a game remembered for groundbreaking mechanics or critical acclaim, but rather as a straightforward, tournament-focused adaptation that gave PlayStation-owning fans of the anime a way to battle as their favorite characters and build their own custom Beyblade. For collectors and fans of early-2000s anime tie-in games, it remains a notable piece of Beyblade’s expansive video game history.