I didn’t become a Dragon Ball fan until I was an adult. Maybe it’s an odd way to enter a series that appeals to the 11-year-old boy in all of us, but it meant I never got into the Dragon Ball Z video games I had in the mid-2000s, and the legacy of the Budokai Tenkaichi series completely I missed it. But as I watch the latest installment of the series at Summer Game Fest, I feel like I might be able to catch something I’ve been missing. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is a delightful mix of toys and destruction that gets to the heart of what has made the series so popular for so many generations.
Notably, this game is not titled Budokai Tenkaichi 4, instead returning to the original Japanese series Dragon Ball: Sparking. “Now the moment has come where games are released all over the world at the same time and under the same name,” producer Jun Furutani tells me through a translator, “and we also see the community and players interacting with each other regarding the same game and the same experience, which is why we thought it was important that these games have the same name around the world.
Either way, the concept remains the same. Line up an almost impossibly huge group of Dragon Ball characters, then pick them up and crush them like so many action figures. It’s a simple concept, but beloved by fans of the franchise. With the release of Budokai Tenkaichi 3 17 years ago, Furutani claims that the creators considered the series “finished.” However, modern technology inspired the studio to return to this concept. “Time has passed, new technology has appeared, right? New consoles. Now we thought it was truly time for us to make a new evolution of the Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi series.”
Mondo nice destruction
This new technology is most evident in the game’s environmental destruction, where you can demolish buildings and blast enemies into mountainsides with attacks that feel spectacular and are very reminiscent of Dragon Ball. While I was working, a Bandai Namco representative quickly suggested that I was fighting a battle between Broly’s most powerful transformation and the giant ape Vegeta. The resulting fight was the kind of silly fun I haven’t had since Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee back in the GameCube days.
The action felt fast and snappy, and movements were extremely intuitive thanks to the modernized control scheme. (If you prefer, you can also revert to the classic Budokai Tenkaichi controls.) I was also impressed by the game’s difficulty options, which felt less like a traditional AI modifier in a fighting game and more like the options available in a modern driving game, with numerous detailed assists that can be turn on and off. If you just want to completely turn off your brain, you can turn on full automatic combos or turn off all assists for the most hardcore experience.
During our interview, Furutani asked who my favorite character was in the demo and seemed a bit surprised when I replied, “Mr. Satan.” In a traditional fighting game, he would be a joking character - in one of his special moves, he even tries to beat up his opponent, to no avail, but ends up being crushed himself. But that’s the coolest thing about this show. It’s not about a balanced lineup of fighters, it’s a playground for dream fights between characters from across the series, regardless of whether those fights are fair.
Under 9000 modes
Sparking Zero is a modern game with modern online modes, including a ranked option. “This game is definitely not an esports game like FighterZ, we still want to keep the fights balanced,” Furutani explains. Instead, each online Ranked Battle will have a cost cap, and each fighter you bring will have a certain value. “This is how we balance the game, which means you can’t just pick the three or five most powerful characters on one team.”
Custom Battles is another big new feature that allows you to create your own story scenarios with custom intro windows and combat parameters. I haven’t had a chance to play this mode myself, but from the brief demo it looks like you’ve set up the dialogue Mad Libs style, choosing combinations of pre-made phrases to tell your story, probably a concession to avoid moderation hassles as players will could make these works available online for free. Additionally, the options are quite extensive and allow you to trigger battle events not only when a fight ends, but also when, say, a character reaches a certain HP threshold.
The core single-player content is the Battle Mode, where you can choose one of eight characters and play through the most important battles that character has participated in throughout the various Dragon Ball sagas. The big trick is that fights can have alternate outcomes depending on the choices you make during cutscenes or the goals you pursue in battle. From the beginning of DBZ, we saw a quick demo of Goku fighting Raditz, where you can reject Piccolo’s help and fight alone. You can get another alternate outcome if, instead of simply surviving Raditz in the normal objective, you actually defeat him. I asked Furutani if the overall story could branch based on these decisions, and he replied that this mode was more “created for players to relive iconic moments of the original story.” So you may see alternative takes on these moments, but you won’t see the overall plot take a radically different direction.
If I have one concern about Sparking Zero, it’s that the game may not have as extensive a set of modes as its predecessors. I asked Furutani if there are plans for additional single-player modes beyond the announcements, and he emphasized that post-launch plans focus largely on new characters. The recent announcement of a split-screen mode - much requested by fans - also has its limitations, as Furutani confirmed that local multiplayer “will only be playable on the Hyperbolic Time Chamber map.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Sparking Zero appearing in my demo, having had so little experience with its predecessors, but I was immediately blown away by its fast gameplay, intuitive controls, and toy box feel. I just hope the final game offers enough substantial content to justify the price of entry. We’ll find out for sure when Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero releases on October 11 on PS5, Xbox Series X and PC.
Check all best fighting games if you are looking for something competitive.