One Piece

The One Piece video games series is published by Bandai and Banpresto, later as part of Bandai Namco Entertainment, and is based on Eiichiro Oda's shonen manga and anime series of the same name. The games take place in the fictional world of One Piece, and the stories revolve around the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat Pirates, the franchise's protagonists. The games have been released on a variety of video game and handheld consoles. The series features various genres, mostly role-playing games—the predominant type in the series' early years—and fighting games, such as the titles of the Grand Battle! sub-series. The series debuted in Japan on July 19, 2000 with One Piece: Mezase Kaizoku Ou!. The series contains 38 games, not counting appearances in crossover titles. More than five years passed after the anime series' debut, One Piece: Grand Battle! Rush, was released outside Japan on September 7, 2005. Out of thirty-eight games (not including non-Japanese games), eleven have been released in North America, two in Australia and thirteen in Europe. Japan's large demand for such games leads its companies to produce the titles with haste and thus low regard for quality. The opposite is the case with the One Piece video game, which has been produced for and exclusively released to the North American markets, and was crowned "GBA Platformer of the Year" in 2005 by GameSpy's network of game websites. The One Piece series has received a mixed reception; assessments ranged from "slightly below or slightly above average" to "a grand video-game series".