When bringing the game in the west, publisher XSEED games was worried about releasing an Anime-based game during a time when the games had notoriously low sales and retailers were reluctant to stock them. To combat this, XSEED put a generic boxer silhouette on the box art. Fans of the series reacted negatively to this change.

To fix the error, XSEED changed the silhouette on the box to that of the main character, Ippo, on top of boxing glothes, and created a bonus reversible cover. To this day, XSEED Games tries to make reversible covers whenever possible.