Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Hands-On Preview: Authentic, Nostalgic Dragon Ball

One of my first gaming memories is when I as a little kid played Karate Champ, which was available as an arcade game at some pizzeria in northern Sweden late 1984. Two fighters with white and red gi (predecessors that inspired Ryu and Ken maybe?) went at each other standing on a fallen tree log, and it was so incredibly cool.

Ever since then I've loved fighting games, with the Street Fighter II and Dreamcast era in particular leading to a lot of gaming, and even some competing. But while it's a favorite genre, I've had a hard time with gimmick fighting. Aside from games like Power Stone, Smash Bros and MultiVersus - I pretty much only play traditional titles where two characters beat the crap out of each other on the same premise as Karate Champ 40 years ago.

Therefore, the Dragon Ball fighting games have never appealed to me, even though I like both the manga and the anime, and the only Dragon Ball titles I've liked have been those in other genres such as Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. So it was with some skepticism that I recently got the chance to try Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero, which will be released for PC, PlayStation and Xbox on October 11. The game is technically Budokai Tenkaichi 4, but Bandai Namco is rebooting the concept and giving it a fresh start with its Japanese title (which is in English, oddly enough.)

Since it's a reboot after all, it feels like a great opportunity to get acquainted with Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, which seems to be something of a wet dream for all Dragon Ball enthusiasts. Like the numerous Dragon Ball fans, there are a lot of characters available and Bandai Namco has put in no less than 182 of them, which must be considered almost insane, although in fairness many are the same characters in different parts of the timeline.

To get you up to speed quickly, there is a comprehensive tutorial mode that lets you learn everything from how to give your opponent a light slap, to half-ruining the entire world with the mightiest Super Kamehameha you can imagine. Then there are things like cancelling falls through the air, counter attacks and various super moves.

There's no traditional campaign - which, to be honest, rarely makes anyone happy anyway other than in Mortal Kombat, Smash Bros and Tekken - and instead we find eight mini-campaigns that let us relive key parts of Dragon Ball history. I had the chance to try Goku, Goku Black and Frieza and can say that the setup will please many Dragon Ball fans who can now revel in sweet nostalgia.

What strikes me is how incredibly authentic everything feels, and there's a lot of dialog involved that contributes to this. The battles take place all over the huge stages, up in the clouds, down on the ground, and even underwater - and down to the point where you can demolish the surroundings to reach new locations. As I chase after my opponent in the sky as Goku, flying like Superman, I would describe Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero as a Dragon Ball simulator rather than a fighting game.

In fact, the wild setup means that versus offline isn't a priority, and despite the fact that pretty much every other fighting game is at its best one-on-one on the same console, this is something that was just added as a courtesy. It's also noticeable that it's a really deep game system and there's a lot to learn, like how to break a fall and sort of stop in mid-air, bounce off fireballs, create craters by attacking from above, move fully three-dimensionally (including up and down) or even hide from your opponent to try and attack from a blind spot.

I also got the chance to check out something Bandai Namco calls the Custom Game, which is similar in many ways to how the latest WWE games allow you to create your own matches, complete with entrances, rules, gadgets, music, arenas, and so on. So here you can create your Dragon Ball dream match and name it, and then choose pretty much anything you can think of (and things you can't think of, like designing match cards, choosing whether things trigger during battles, banning certain attacks, and much more). Of course, you can then share your dream matches online to let others play them, so there's certainly no shortage of things to do.

In the midst of all this, I also want to highlight the graphical aspects which are surprisingly good. Both in terms of appearance as well as animations. It really looks like watching an anime when the madness starts, and that's exactly what the developers wanted to achieve.

Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero is more of an action game than a fighting game, and I can't help but think that fans of Dragon Ball will enjoy this immensely. Whether the game modes hold up in the long run and how well the online mechanics work remains to be seen when the time comes for a review. But in the meantime, I am actually very positive about this.