Super Dragon Ball Z is a rare bird within Goku’s legacy in video games. Visually it only seems to be a step ahead of what is seen in the successful saga DBZ: Budokai, of which it is contemporary. However, as a fighting game it was on another level.
Crafts & Meister’s debut feature integrated aerial combat, energy cannons and acrobatic techniques into a one-on-one that exudes character of its own , in which the huge three-dimensional (and fully destructible) stages also carry their own weight during the battle.
And the best of all is that he managed to combine everything by integrating between combat and combat those cinematic finishers that cannot be missing in a Dragon Ball Z game and that fans of the manganime want to activate at the end of the game.
In fact, Super Dragon Ball Z shines with its own light in everything in which the much loved Dragon Ball: Final Bout failed, although its passage through the arcade booths -and later Playstation 2- was tremendously discreet. Maybe too much.
To put ourselves in context, the arrival of the explosive battles of Dragon Ball Z to the arcade and consoles was a smash hit. Akira Toriyama’s work took martial arts to a cosmic scale and over decades millions of fans unleashed powerful kamehamehas featuring their favorite characters. First through the Dragon Ball Z: Butoden series and later with the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai installments.
However, both sagas had a weak point: as fighting games they lacked depth. That was what made Super Dragon Ball Z different from the rest.
Tose and DIMPS did a superb job of designing mechanics that would carry the diversity and enormous intensity of Goku, Vegeta and company fighting in the home systems, and Banpresto surprised in his own way in the arcade rooms. But – to be fair – the balanced and competitive gameplay sensations of Dragon Ball Z video games were not on par with Street Fighter or SNK’s increasingly brutal catalog.
Precisely for this reason, when legend Noritaka Funamizu (ex-producer of the series Street Fighter , Rival Schools, Marvel vs. Capcom or Capcom vs. SNK ) became independent from Capcom and announced that his first project as leader of the newly created Crafts & Meister would be a new arcade based on Dragon Ball Z, fans of the genre and the manganime exploded with joy.
Super Dragon Ball Z came to the arcade at the end of 2005 and a year later it could be played worldwide through a great conversion for PS2 that introduced several game modes. Retaining its very strong arcade spirit, but also being fully aware of what made this Dragon Ball game different from all the previous ones.
A 100% arcade game and 100% Dragon Ball
From the very first game it becomes apparent that Super Dragon Ball Z is a game designed to be played on arcade machines. Its attractive visual presentation and its simplicity when it comes to understanding how to play and what is happening on the screen give it away.
Which does not mean that, as a good fighting game, it has its own learning curve until mastering each of the selectable heroes and villains. And that they are not too many.
Crafts & Meister made a controversial decision: it reduced the number of fighters to 13 starting and five unlockables (18 in total) but, in return – and unlike Dragon Ball Z: Budokai – each character had their own play style and, by extension , your own strengths and weaknesses.
The selection of fighters enhanced that aspect , of course. While the essential Saiyans (Goku, Vegeta, Trunks and Gohan) as well as the most popular allies and villains were not lacking, risky and interesting bets were also introduced.
- We refer to a King Piccolo from the adventures of little Son Goku whose combat style reminds us of the first battles of Dragon Ball.
- But also a Chi-Chi who fought under the same conditions as the rest of the characters thanks to her outstanding technique and the use of magical objects such as the Basho fan, the magic staff or the Kinton cloud when continuing to distribute tow in the air.
- The game featured two versions of Gohan, and both were very different: unlike the young man who faced Cell, the middle-saiyan teenager who went to high school wears the clothes of the kaioshin and uses a very similar sword. the one he wore during his training days with Piccolo.
- However, the greatest rarity of this game was the character created for the occasion: Cyborg Freeza was an improved and expanded version of the galactic tyrant who arrived on earth full of implants, adding to his powerful repertoire a huge cannon and a belt with grenades explosive.
As an extra detail, in Super Dragon Ball Z the transformed fighters are not duplicated in the selectable panel (except in the case of Majin Vegeta) since it is only possible to access the Super Saiyan state for a short period of time and only during the course of the game.
A Dragon Ball fighting game that drastically limits the transformations of its fighters? The truth is that the way of doing it made them more interesting, since:
- The player really feels the effect of the transformation: each character experiences a large increase in attack strength, their blows and projectiles gain preference and volume and are even more difficult to knock down.
- But, by limiting its use, it is also achieved that the priority of the player was in the development of the combat itself , constantly maintaining the rhythm of the same. And the same applies to the corresponding techniques and changes of other fighters.
After all, the gameplay of Super Dragon Ball Z is very simple and really dynamic. We can move freely and in all directions in generous three-dimensional stages with several levels of height and multiple destructible elements. Some of them even have transitions that lead to secondary scenarios.
To which we must add that it is also possible to fly by holding the jump button. Giving a new layer of depth to the game and its mobility options.
Although the air combat system is not nearly as successful as that of the Budokai Tenkaichi or Xenoverse saga, the truth is that after a few games it is possible to get the point. Enough to dare to take our feet off the ground, make ranged attacks from above, and subsequently send our enemies into the sky to continue our chain of blows from there.
Of course, projectiles and special attacks have a special pass. In Super Dragon Ball Z they are executed with a similar naturalness (although not as fluid) to that of Street Fighter , and the best thing is that they are designed to take advantage of three-dimensional scenarios, so that Goku can divert the course of his kamehameha one once launched and Vegeta or Cell launch bursts in different directions.
In addition, several of the fighters featured cinematic finishers based on the most iconic scenes from Toriyama’s work, including Gohan’s Father and Son kamehameha, Majin Vegeta’s final explosion or the Genkidama with which Goku struck down Little Bu in the game. planet kaioshin.
However, the experience is really far from perfect: the fights lack intensity and speed. At least, the one shown on the pages of Toriyama’s manga. While it was the most technical fighting game in Dragon Ball until its release and featured great fluidity, overall a greater sense of speed is lacking in the collisions of Saiyans, Androids, and Aliens.
Which does not detract from its outstanding artistic section. While we had already seen (and continue to see) how good Cell Shading suits the characters in the manganime, what was accomplished in the Crafts & Meister game in 2005 was on a whole different level.
The fighters and the stages had unprecedented finishes and details , searching through the dark lines to emulate the touch of Toriyama ink and pencil. In fact, the most ornate points, such as the entrance to the ring of the Great Martial Arts Tournament, seemed drawn in an artisanal way.
To which we must add lots of winks and surprises . Characters running around the limits of each screen, huge onomatopoeias in each great blow and even the way in which the damages and damages are formed as the combat on the stage intensifies. Always taking as reference the illustrations and the color pages of the manga above the anime touch of the other games. And the result was remarkable.
Super Dragon Ball Z beyond the arcade
You may like the progression system in Super Dragon Ball Z more or less, but it raises the replayability through the roof. Perhaps its panel of 18 selectable characters was too tight for a fighting title in 2005 but, in return, a system of improvements and levels was introduced that asked us to constantly return to the game.
Thus, each character has its own improvement tree, so that we can always empower our favorite fighter according to our style, differentiating him from that of another player. To which must be added, of course, the extra colors and a handful of alternative outfits to unlock.
The dragonballs, the legendary dragon balls capable of granting wishes, are present in the game allowing us to unlock new aspects, techniques of characters from the world of Toriyama (such as Yamcha’s Fist of the Wolf Fangs ), new scenarios, cinematic finishers and even backgrounds and voices for the interface.
As a curious fact, when starting a fight we will see a scouter with the improvements and the level of our rival in all modes, but -as in the manga- it will explode when it is really powerful. Thanks to the dragonballs we can even improve our device so that it reaches the most exorbitant figures.
In the Arcade version of Super Dragon Ball Z it is possible to introduce some cards in which our improvements, customizations and progress are recorded and safely stored. And in the domestic version?
Well, some will not remember it and possibly others will not know it, but there was a time when gamers kept our enormous hours of play and each achievement on memory cards. And the Crafts & Meister game made the most of PS2 Memory Cards.
Not only did the PS2 version come with all the extras from the most up-to-date arcade version, it added several essential modes:
- The classic Arcade mode, here called Original mode: a succession of seven encounters against the machine that lead to the climax of the Cell Game.
- A customization mode from which we can comfortably manage the appearance and improvements of our custom fighters.
- An Invocation of the Dragon mode where we can exchange the dragonballs that we obtain in the rest of the modes to obtain new content.
- The mandatory Versus mode to play two controllers without having to go through Arcade mode.
- The ever-grateful training mode , which took us to the Capsule Corporation’s gravity chamber and allowed us to learn how to use each fighter and experience new combos.
- And a very interesting ZSurvivor , a successful survival mode with which to speed up the progress of our character and obtain dragon balls.
All spiced up with a menu that also paid tribute to the Dragon Ball color covers published in Shonen Jump.
While it is fair to say that there was not much variety of modes, everything ended up turning in one way or another in improving our fighters and perfecting our fighting style. Super Dragon Ball Z does not offer any experience that would immerse the player in the plot lines of the manga, and the truth is that it does not need it either.
A unique Dragon Ball arcade in its own way
With the exception of Super Dragon Ball Heroes, we can say that the Dragon Ball legacy in arcade games has not been as extensive or as remembered as in other systems. In fact, that legacy cannot even be said to have aged well. And the case of Super Dragon Ball Z is no exception.
The Crafts & Meister game proposal was not the first to bet on offering a fighting game of Goku and company with a competitive spirit in which each character has their own style. There we have the case of DBZ: Hyper Dimension. However, the way in which Super Dragon Ball Z takes Akira Toriyama’s pages towards the sensations of arcade games gives the whole a unique and unusual character.
Seen from the perspective of a current game, the gameplay of Super Dragon Ball Z is completely out of date and its camera system can give us more than one displeasure. Which does not mean that it surpasses Dragon Ball Final Bout on its own ground through its combat in three-dimensional settings. Battles in which the technique and skill of the player are above all else.
It is beyond doubt that Super Dragon Ball Z took ideas from previous Bandai games, but it also knew how to bring interesting news. The ability to deflect Kamehamehas with Goku to play tag is still a genius, and it is also a great solution to the problem of launching projectiles in combat on 3D scenarios.
Although, of course, its biggest problem is that it did not reach the excellence of other pologonal fighting games, such as Tekken or SoulCalibur , in which lateral movements were also taken advantage of. Nor did it get the depth of Dragon Ball Z: L’appel Du Destin , DBZ: Budokai 3 or the aforementioned Dragon Ball Final Bout.
Staying, in his own way, in nobody’s territory.
All in all, the true merit of Super Dragon Ball Z is how it managed to be that alternative to the Budokai saga. This game in which the combats are not only exciting, but also ambitioned to incorporate essential elements of the fighting titles that are not present – or are very overshadowed – in the Dimps saga.
Retaining at all times the essence of the games that were born to be played in arcades.
A rarity that reflected the desire of several generations of Dragon Ball fans to have a resounding and frantic fighting experience based on the battles of Goku, Gohan, Vegeta and Piccolo, before games like Hyper Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball FighterZ were full. our expectations.
