Dragon Ball Z Budokai Review
June 16, 2024
Back in the late 90s and early 2000s Dragon Ball Z dominated the airwaves on Cartoon Network's Toonami block. The story, characters and larger than life fight scenes captivated the hearts of children and lit a fire that for many still burns to this very day. Unfortunately since Dragon Ball Z had come to America after both the manga and anime series had ended in Japan, we missed the boat on many of the tie-in games. For a long time the only Dragon Ball game to grace US shores was Dragon Ball GT Final Bout, an awful 3D successor to the 16-bit Butoden games that had such a low print run it ironically became a sought after collectors item being sold for hundreds of dollars second hand. But thanks to the series popularity in the states we were eventually treated to a couple of western developed GBA titles and a console fighting game made in Japan. Dragon Ball Z Budokai would set the stage for how console DBZ games were seen in America.
Budokai is a one on one fighting game, the mechanics are pretty simple compared to other fighting games of the time. You have punch, kick, ki blast and guard buttons along with an unblockable charging attack performed by hitting punch and kick. If both players hit each other with the same move at the same time it will trigger "burst mode", a small mini-game where you rotate the stick while the characters on screen punch and block each other meant to simulate the faster moments in the series. Special moves are performed with button combinations rather than directional inputs (for example doing a Kamehameha is P + P + P + P + E) with some moves having multiple input methods.
The game feels alright to play, if a bit stiff in some places. Non-fans who were accustomed to the more fluid Tekken and Dead or Alive games at the time roasted the game upon release but for us DBZ fanatics it was more than enough. Me and my friends would play vs mode for hours, trying to gather enough ki to transform and end every match with a big final attack that destroyed the field around our characters. Nothing was more crushing than missing your timing, using all your ki and getting knocked down and back to your base state. The custom capsule system kept the game engaging, letting you customize your character with a selection of different moves and buffs. Should you dump all the transformation skills in despite taking up space, add 3 kamekameha capsule for buffed damage or put in an armor skill to take less damage? It really helps add a layer of depth to an otherwise straightforward game.
The biggest draw for fans was absolutely the story mode. The game's story covers the Saiyan, Freeza and Android story arcs. The Buu arc was presumably not included due to a combination of development deadlines and the US still airing the arc on TV at the time. Each chapter of the story mode features cut scenes complete with recaps and title cards that do a great job of capturing the feeling of watching an episode. This was especially valuable before watching the show on your own time was really feasible without money for DVDs, which in turn made the story infinitely replayable to us at the time. Your initial playthrough will mostly consist of Goku's fights with a lot of unlockable chapters filling in the gaps. I'm not sure why they didn't just have them all together to begin with, but it's not really an issue. The most memorable part of the story mode was the what-if chapters. Taking parts of the story and turning it on it's head. Vegeta going SSJ in the Saiyan saga, Freeza winning on Namek and Cell accidentally absorbing Krillin ending up with an exclusive form only ever seen in this game. It's easy to see why these would become a main stay in future games.
Aside from Story mode, you'll most likely be spending a lot of time in the Tournament mode. This is where you'll climb the tournament rankings in order to win Zenni to buy skill capsule's from Popo's shop. Every fight takes place on the world tournament arena stage where you can get knocked out of the ring and lose if you're too close. This adds some variety as it forces you to switch up your tactics from normal fights. Yamcha is an absolute beast in this mode, easily knocking opponents out with his Wolf Fang Fist. Beating the higher levels of the world tournament will unlock Great Saiyaman and Mr. Satan himself along with his mini-campaign Legend of Hercule that tells the absolutely true story of Satan mopping the floor with everyone at the Cell games.
Budokai features both the American and Japanese voice casts lending their voices depending on which region you're in. In fact Budokai would be the first time we heard some of Funimation's voices for some of the earlier characters as this game predates Funimation redubbing the Ocean Studios episodes. Aside from the opening theme (Rock the Dragon in US and Cha-La-Head-Cha-La in EUR/JP) most of the game's music is original featuring some kick ass rocking copyright infringing tunes that were scrubbed from the HD port of the game later on. The game's music is ingrained in my mind, it's just too bad some of it was blatantly stolen from other artists (check out Kanzenshuu's article on Kenji Yamamoto for more information). The version of the Japanese theme Cha-La-Head-Cha-La made for the ending credits was kept in the US version and was my first introduction to the Japanese side of Dragon Ball.
Dragon Ball Z Budokai has some rough edges to be sure. The weird tsudo realistic art style almost makes all the characters resemble their Bandai action figures more than their anime/manga counterparts and is strung with little oddities like Goku's Kamehameha being yellow instead of blue and weird translations like Kaioken being called King Kai Fist. But despite everything, despite having much better options now than we did back in 2002 I can't help but find Budokai endearingly charming. No matter how many new Dragon Ball games come out in the future with the flashiest graphics, I'll always end up coming back to this silly simple PS2 game.
