Gamers of all stripes have taken to DBFZ – not only for the exquisite anime style and fluid mechanics, but because it brings back the fun and community of early-90s fighting titles

As a teenager in the early 90s, there was only one real threat to my academic future. It wasn’t drugs or alcohol and it certainly wasn’t a doomed love affair (if only!). It was Street Fighter II.

Capcom’s superlative fighting game arrived in 1991, revolutionising the genre with its flamboyant characters and elaborate special moves. I’d played martial arts sims for years, blowing all my pocket money on formative titles such as Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Way of the Exploding Fist and International Karate, but this was something different: a brilliant, frenzied combination of magical warriors and super-precise control systems that used joystick rotations and button combinations to produce eye-popping attacks and counters.

Me and my friends were obsessed. When it came out on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, we’d gather in someone’s front room, play all night, sleep for a few hours, then start again. When we weren’t playing Street Fighter II we were talking about it: teaching each other special moves we’d learned from video game magazines; discussing the pros and cons of Ryu, Dhalsim and Guile; openly mocking anyone who played with Blanka. We hoovered up the game’s lore, later poring over the manga and anime translations.

The Street Fighter series has remained hugely popular ever since, spawning a vast range of spin-offs and sequels – more than 40m games have been sold across a wide array of consoles. It’s still a mainstay of the fighting-game community. But last month, an intriguing challenger leaped into the arena. Published by Bandai Namco and developed by Japanese fighting game stalwart Arc System Works, Dragon Ball FighterZ is a bold, visually arresting tie-in with the long-running manga series Dragon Ball. It boasts a range of outlandish characters, a thrilling tag system that lets you swap between three fighters during a bout, and incredibly smooth, detailed anime visuals. The screen ignites with fireballs and speed lines as characters leap, blast and pummel; a fight may start on a tropical island, but a massive hit can launch the fighters into a whole new location.



The game is a success, having shifted 2m copies within a week of its launch, and pro players are pulling in big audiences on Twitch and YouTube. And there is something about the way people are responding to DBFZ that reminds me of the Street Fighter II era. Watching my sons play with their friends, it seems to have created the same sense of discovery, excitement and shared enthusiasm in a whole new generation. They talk about the game, draw the characters, and are now charging through a DVD of the Dragon Ball Z anime series. So why has this happened?

Inspired by the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, Dragon Ball is one of the three giants of kids’ manga (alongside Naruto and One Piece). Filled with offbeat characters and combat, it has sold 250m volumes worldwide and spawned a hit anime series and a multi-billion-dollar merchandising industry. There have been several video game translations, but they previously received limited releases in the west and only really reached hardcore fans. DBFZ is a much bigger deal, arriving at a time when the popularity of manga and anime is booming, thanks to lively fan sites, Reddit forums and streaming services such as CrunchyRoll and Netflix.

Furthermore, Arc System Works – creator of the admired Guilty Gear and BlazBlue fighting games – has developed an intricate animation system for DBFZ that uses detailed 3D character models painstakingly textured to resemble 2D anime models. It’s like participating in an interactive Dragon Ball movie and, for young fans, that’s a dream come true.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dragon Ball FighterZ looks and feels like an interactive anime. New character Android 21 was designed by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. Photograph: Bandai Namco

“Dragon Ball is one of the all time great manga/anime licenses, and for many of us, it was our introduction to Japanese animation,” says pro player Jonathan Parkes, who competes under the handle Tyrant and runs a YouTube channel for DBFZ beginners. “As someone who played many casual Dragon Ball games growing up, I can honestly say this is the first time I feel the developer has really captured the feel and look of the series. I never get bored of the beautiful animations, and every time I play it I notice something new.”



Samad Abdessadki, another pro player who grew up on Street Fighter and anime, agrees. “The level of precision and care Arc System Works put into the game is incredible,” he says. “The characters are animated at 24 images per second to match the original anime format, and every move in the game is a direct reference to a panel in the manga or a scene in the anime. It is beyond anything we could have hoped for.” Abdessadki also enthuses over the fact that if you manage to combine the right fighters in the right locations with the right moves, you can trigger famous sequences from the anime, providing a huge nostalgia boost to fans.

The fighting system builds on the technical nature of Arc’s previous titles while remaining approachable to newcomers. As in many 2D fighters, there are light, medium and heavy attacks, accessed with quick button presses, and they can also be mashed to create sequenced attacks. Quarter turns of the joystick followed by button presses give access to special moves, and there are throws and rushes to add range and volume, yet there isn’t a vast array of arcane combos, counters and supers it would take months to unearth.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The game’s special moves employ lavish special effects, lending incredible kinetic energy to each fight. Photograph: Bandai Namco

“The biggest thing, I think, is how accessible the game is, while still having depth for competition,” agrees pro player Derek “Nakkiel” Bruscas. “So many potential players have been turned off by the seemingly huge mountain you have to climb to get started in a lot of fighting games. DBFZ gives these players a better gateway. The special move inputs are all highly simplified, the game mechanics function in a very obvious way, which leads to quick understanding, allowing players to get on equal footing more quickly.”

Before long, you can be pulling off Piccolo’s Hellzone Grenade, which surrounds an opponent with balls of Ki energy that rocket in like homing missiles, or Majin Buu’s hilarious You’re My Snack Now, a move that transforms his enemy into a cookie that he then eats. But there are always counters and deflects, so canny players are able to adapt to your strategies.

It sounds like Street Fighter, but it works in a very different way. In Capcom’s game, you only have a basic jump ability and you can’t block when you’re in the air, so fights happen mostly on the ground. In Dragon Ball Z, you have a variety of jumps and double jumps, you can fly in towards your opponent at any time, you can even teleport – and most importantly, you can block while in flight. “This results in a much more active and mobile game, where players have to control the air as much as the ground,” explains Abdessadki. “Combine this with the fact that it is played in a 3 v 3 team format, and you get fights that are much more active and hectic than Street Fighter. While we can compare Street Fighter to boxing, Dragon Ball FighterZ is closer to Royal Rumble-style wrestling.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Competitors take part in a bout at the Dragon Ball FighterZ launch event. Photograph: Bandai Namco

There is something else about Dragon Ball FighterZ: it feels like common ground, a fun place to be, no matter what your usual gaming preferences are. My sons have never fallen for a fighting game before, but they’ll happily dip into this one, and their friends will too. Similarly to how the Nintendo Switch has traded on its easy sociability to become everyone’s favourite second console, DBFZ has developed into a meeting place for disparate fanbases.

“The best part about the DBFZ community is that it is in fact a culmination of all of the smaller communities from different fighting games,” says Parkes. “At the launch party, we had players from Street Fighter, Tekken, Injustice, Marvel vs Capcom. It isn’t often we get a game that all of us can play together, and learn how to play from each other. It’s interesting to see different traits that players from each scene use in the game. For example, a Street Fighter player might wait and look for one opening to get their offence going, whereas a Mortal Kombat or Injustice player might try to prevent the opponent from even getting started. Things like this keep the game interesting to watch and I’m looking forward to see how it evolves.”