Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s Furious Fighting Packs A Nostalgic Punch
The Dragon Ball franchise has seen its share of video games throughout its history, but none make players pine for the past more than the Budokai Tenkaichi series of fighters. Despite robust story-based adventures like Kakarot and the frantic 2D madness of Dragon Ball FighterZ, fans still long for the behind-the-back, go-anywhere feeling of the PS2 era. Later this year, Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is finally answering the call, and we recently visited Bandai Namco at Summer Game Fest to get our hands on the future of Tenkaichi.
Our hands-on session allotted us about 30 minutes of Versus Battle gameplay, where we could choose a team of up to three warriors–for both ourselves and the CPU–and a stage to fight in. The available roster for our demo included more than 50 characters, with the selection ranging from multiple forms of Goku and Vegeta to others with just one form, like Majin Buu and Hercule Satan.
One notable wrinkle in roster selection from past Tenkaichi games has returned: Unlike in Dragon Ball FighterZ, where no restrictions exist, Sparking Zero will disable all forms of a selected character after they’ve been chosen. For example, if you choose Super Saiyan God Goku, you can’t then select Super Saiyan Blue Goku as your next character. This is because Sparking Zero, like Tenkaichi games of the past, allows you to shift forms up or down in the heat of battle, so once you select one form of a character, you technically select them all. The game is careful to separate eras from one another, however, as you can pair Super Saiyan God Goku from Dragon Ball Super with Super Saiyan 3 Goku from the Buu Saga.