It’s the middle of E3 2017 and one of the most anticipated games from this year’s expo is Dragon Ball FighterZ, an oddly-titled candidate answering our prayers (Seriously. Was there always a [space] in DragonBall? Dragon…Ball?).

Fans of Dragon Ball have always wanted one thing; a game that captures the fury and urgency of your classic Dragon Ball Z fight. In the anime and manga, fights were always portrayed in a very particular way. Characters can fly, charge up, deploy a literal flurry of fists, launch all sorts of ki blasts. On top of that, fights in the series were often one-on-one matchups. It’s a series that very much lends itself to translation to a fighting game. That is in no way an original thought, as developers have been trying to make a good Dragon Ball Z fighter for over 20 years. It’s one of the holy grails of video games. Whoever makes a good Dragon Ball Z fighter will be rich beyond their wildest dreams. Hell, even if you make a mediocre Draon Ball Z game, you at least break even. The series was THAT popular. It was the most googled thing for a number of years straight in the early 2000′s. There’s a reason why the main character in Boyhood had Dragon Ball Z bedsheets. It was, and still hold up as, a singular anime series for multiple generations. I am naming my son Gohan, and there is nothing you can do about it.



Many attempts have been made at getting this holy grail. Each attempt told two stories; the first being the story of Goku and his friends defending Earth, and second being that of game designers trying to solve a very difficult logistical puzzle.

The first Dragon Ball Z fighters appeared on the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, in the form of the Super Butoden Series and the Buyu Tetsuden Series . They knew exactly what the fans wanted, and tried really hard to make it happen. What was delivered was a game that had great art and sound production but was held back by it’s clunky fighting system. Ki blasts could only be shot straight ahead or at 45 degree angles. Fighters could not engage in combat unless they were at the exact same altitude as each other. The game felt super slow. On top of that, it was only available in Japanese. So Americans only got their hands on this game if they downloaded a Rom and [most likely] played it on their keyboard.

A couple of years go by, and video games make the jump to 3D. Namco Bandai takes this opportunity to take a couple of cracks at the holy grail. The first was Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Fighter 22. This was basically an up-scaled version of the SNES / GENESIS titles, which was huge letdown. Still slow. Still Clunky. You got to sort of fly this time around though, by toggling your character between the ground and the air. Again. Not how Dragon Ball Z works.

The second attempt on the original PlayStation was a landmark one. Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout was the first 3D iteration and had a lot of hooks to get you on board. Fully 3D characters and backgrounds, a sick animated intro cut scene to get you hyped, and (especially for the American fan base, which was years behind Japan in the series) you got to see and control characters from the anime following Dragon Ball Z, which was Dragon Ball GT. You got to control the characters you had only heard about in forums or in image searches. My childhood was a lot of “OMG WHAT IS SSJ4?!?”

It was a truly noble attempt. In fact, it was good enough for me to save up and buy a mod kit for my PlayStation one JUST to play this game. And I remember being thoroughly disappointed. The pacing was slow. Everything operated in these odd 45 degree angles. Really stiff combos. For developers, it must have been a nightmare. 3D fighters hadn’t even found their footing in the Tekken series yet. What were the chances a Dragon Ball Z fighter would leapfrog them? Not likely.

The third attempt during the PS1 generation was Dragonball Z Legends, which focused more on scope and speed. You were able to fly up to 3 different elevations and a single press of the punch button launched a volley of 20 lightning fast punches. It was the best attempt at a fighter that generation, but it had super slow combat and crummy presentation. The fighters didn’t even have a health bar; the objective was the push the “balance-of-power” meter all the way to the right. Cause that’s was Dragon Ball Z was about, right guys? Pushing the “power-of-balance-meter” all the way….

All three games made during the PlayStation 1 generation were obscenely bad. Thankfully things start getting better during the PS2 era.

So Holiday 2002 rolls around and Dragon Ball Z Budokai hits store shelves. I bought this game within a week of release. It was the first DBZ game in a long time and I was seriously hooked on the show. I even got highlights in my hair because I wanted to be a Super Sayain so bad.

Budokai tries to solve the “clunky fights” problem by basically taking flying out of the equation. You can technically fly, but it’s not with the sense of freedom that all the games for PS1 at least had. You can launch an opponent into the air, and follow him to the skies by running towards him. While airborne, you are also slowly drifting towards the ground like rose petals. Super lame. But the presentation was otherwise very smooth. And the grounding of all flights in this game lent to a more active battle that felt like a modern day 2D fighter. The entire original title sequence was redone in 3D for this game, and it looks great. The story mode is lengthy [with full 3D renditions of landmark scenes in the series] and has great acting. At this point, it was unanimous that this was the best Dragon Ball Z game to date. But the holy grail had not yet been achieved.



The next two Budokai games for the PS2 were huge improvements over the first. The combat was relatively balanced, the characters were highly customizable, the rosters were gigantic. It seemed like the dream had been achieved. And for the causal gamer, it had. But it was only missing one thing.

…it wasn’t competitive.

It did not have the chess-match like aspect that is found in the competitive fighters you’d see in EVO every year. It was so un-conducive for competitive play in so many ways. Special moves played 20 second long cutscenes. The chase-down mechanic was resolved with a rock-paper-scissors match. Not exactly good for spectating. It would be some 12 years later until an attempt at that a competitive Dragon Ball Z fighter would be made.

But in those 12 years, the Dragon Ball Z fighting games went in a different direction. Specifically, camera direction. Starting with the Budokai Tenkaichi Series (it was smart of them to keep Budokai in the title, as it was now a trusted brand), the camera was now positioned over-the-shoulder and you chased down your opponent by running/flying straight into the screen. While this did wonders for building immersion, it did not help when it came to being a competitive fighter. This new style of DBZ game would do wonders to satisfy fans across the globe but it introduced some new problems. Mainly, every character played exactly the same.

Which brings us to the announcements in the past weeks about a new DBZ title. Dragon Ball FighterZ. A 2D fighter. The trailer they showed us blew our minds. Just when we start to think it’s all been done, a studio that you think would have no business making a DBZ game (Arc System Works) just goes out and does it. It seems balanced. It seems high energy. The animation is friggin spectacular. No really. Every special move executed is a spectacle. And it’s made by a studio that is known for their highly technical and balanced fighters.

Arc System Works dazzled the world with their trailer. The screams feel real. The power feels real. Can this really be it? Will this be a game we see at EVO every year. I sincerely hope so. Cause it has been a long time coming.