Super FamiComplete #60- Dragon Ball Z- Chou Saiya Densetsu (Redux)

 

Title: Dragon Ball Z: Chou Saiya Densetsu

Release Date: 1/25/1992 (Japan Only)

Developer: TOSE

Publisher: Bandai

This blog's first Dragon Ball Z game, though certainly not the last one we will see. Dragon Ball (and its many subsequent iterations of Z, GT, and Super) is a series that has maintained popularity up until present day, and there have been a multitude of tie-in games made for most every console created. Many of these games are fighting games, which following the story of the show, makes the most sense. For this entry, though, it is an RPG instead. 

Background

Dragon Ball Z, for even the anime neophytes, is easily one of the most well-known anime properties to ever exist. It is one of those rare pieces of media whose popularity transcends genre conventions, and it became one of the staple animated programs to American kids and teens in the late 90's and early 2000's. I first became aware of it through Cartoon Network's Toonami block, which originally played the old Hanna-Barbera action cartoons (Space Ghost, Bird Man, or The Herculoids); this shifted in the late 90s with a more anime focused block with Dragon Ball Z leading as the flagship. 

Dragon Ball Z follows Akira Toriyama's manga of the same name, and is a sequel to the series known as Dragonball. Dragonball followed Son Goku, a rambunctious little scamp who mirrors the Chinese monkey god Sun Wukong from Journey to the West; he flies around on a Nimbus Cloud, fights with a bo-staff, and has a monkey tail. The manga/anime follows his adventures to protect the seven Dragon Balls, seven precious orbs which, when gathered in one place, can summon the Dragon God Shenron to grant any wish. It is a cute adventure style shonen anime, with a good deal of martial arts action mixed in (there is the grand martial arts tournament mixed in intermittently, which are always satisfying arcs), and it is definitely targeted to a younger audience. The anime ends with Goku growing up from a kid to a young adult, and with a satisfying fight against the evil Piccolo. 

Dragon Ball Z comes along and changes the formula quite a bit; what preceded was a cutesy adventure anime for kids, now caters to those kids who've grown up to be teenagers. Z focuses on the now adult (and new father) Goku as he protects the Earth from more massive, world-ending threats, and still protects the Dragon Balls from those who would use them for nefarious means. It is a pure battle oriented fighting anime, though it moves less from martial arts battles to more fantastical flying-around, huge ki-explosions, smacking people across the world style fights. It is visually striking, super goofy at times, and the fights are oh-so-satisfying. In pure shonen style, the arcs are long, drawn out, and some of the fights could take up to 30 episodes. This was the series that seemed to create the "little did you know I was only using 5% of my power this whole time" cliché, or the "haha, little did you know this is only my second of four forms" trope. Overall, it is a lot of fun. 

 

Now this game is a card-based rpg, one of the first we have encountered so far in this series, but a genre that certainly survives up until today (usually as a good spin-off to other popular RPG series, such as Kingdom Hearts with Chain of Memories). This RPG follows the very beginning of the series with the Saiyan Saga, up through the Namek/Frieza Saga, roughly the first third of the anime/manga. 

What is a card RPG you may ask? Well, ostensibly, it plays like a normal RPG of this era; you travel around an overworld, going from dungeon to dungeon, talking to NPCs, and progressing the story. This changes, though, once you enter a battle. Each battle, you have a deck of cards which replaces your action commands. For example, say you choose attack; you may choose from a Ki Blast, a couple normal attack cards, or some other special ability, and once these attacks are used, they are replaced by another random card. Your cards, overall, are generated by situation (they tend to follow the story beats), and completely at random. You can, of course, gain new cards, build out your decks, and generally make it so that your little Z fighters are tough cookies through proper planning. As far as card RPGs go, this one is actually pretty simple to pick up and play. 

Now the developer of this game, TOSE, we have seen twice before with Super Bases Loaded and Super Tennis; TOSE seemed to have the lock on Dragonball Z related video games, as they would develop almost every game from this franchise for the Super Famicom. TOSE had a very close working relationship with the "Big N" as they were allowed to work as a close second party developer, even getting to eventually handle the sacred Game & Watch brand with a slew of Gameboy games. They are still around today, but they mainly support as a "ghost developer" working clean-up or support for a lot of games without actually putting their name on it; they even worked on Breath of the Wild and helped port it to the Switch. This sentiment can be summed up by the president of TOSE saying "As a company, we have no vision of our own. We follow the customer's vision." 

Gameplay

When the game starts, you are on Master Roshi's island, with Goku's son, Gohan, being kidnapped by the evil Radditz (every name in Z is based off of food; Gohan is Japanese for rice, Radditz for Radish, etc). You then are given a Dragon Ball radar to find Gohan (as he has one on his hat), which you then use to fly to the first encounter with Radditz. On the way, you fight different types of Saibamen (little vegetable men that the main antagonists of this arc, the Saiyans, employ as grunt soldiers). Thus, the main gameplay loop of the game is set-up. Fly to find a Dragon Ball, fight little grunts on the way, and then fight a main boss; rinse and repeat. Half-way and at the end of the game, you fight a mega boss or series of bosses, following, roughly, the main story of the anime. For the first half of the game, this is the main Saiyan Prince himself, Vegeta, who you fight in his normal and Great Ape form, and the end of the game you fight Emperor Frieza himself in all his many different forms. 

Goku is not alone on his quest; you get to fight with the whole regular cast at various points: members of the main cast like Krillin, Piccolo, Gohan, and Vegeta, and even the second and third stringers such as Tien, Yamcha, or Dende. Now as far as adversaries, pretty much every major or minor villain from these arcs makes an appearance: Dodoria, Zarbon, the Ginyu Force in its entirely, and even barely memorable characters like Banan and Appule. 

Now the gameplay is pretty simple (as long as you play a good translation that is). Now I am heavily citing from this games post on the DBZ wikia, as it does a great job of summarizing the battle system. Every character in battle starts with 5 cards; these cards are of four different colors (white for normal attacks, yellow for strong,  and blue for Ki attacks), a dragon ball for attack (going from 1-Z in terms of strength) and a defense dragon ball (symbolized by dashes from 1-Z in terms of defense). For each attack turn, it plays kind of like the card game War; if you choose a card with a higher attack value than your opponent, then you win the turn. If you choose a type of card that is more powerful than the type your opponent chooses, then you win as well (ie. a strong attack vs. a normal attack). You also have character cards which can boost the attack power of the cards in your arsenal, or grant items to use. Attack order is determined by the overall power of the card.

 

Now the neat thing is that certain battles follow story or character traits. For example, Vegeta the well-known hot-head, will interrupt others attacks to get his attack first. Piccolo, after he fuses with other characters like Nail (a trait used by his race of people), gets a major boost in his attack strength. The best is Captain Ginyu, who can swap bodies, and thus decks with the enemy. OH! Another great little story gimmick is that cards for the Scouters will literally "explode" if you try to use them to scan an enemy that is too powerful (a callback to a memorable moment the show). 

Presentation

 Well the world design is very bland and boring. The world's are sparsely populated, the environments are all the right hue to evoke that nostalgia, yet they are empty and samey, and the character sprites are really crunched and small (like they don't look like the characters sometimes).
 
On the other hand, the battles are pretty well done. The fights are animated well, the game uses Mode 7 to great effect, and the battle sprites are well rendered. I would only knock it with the fact that many enemies, even Frieza at one point, are sprite rips of other characters; like after you beat the Ginyu force, the individual members become normal enemies of different colors and names.
 

Music

Here are some quality tunes for you...

Overall Impressions

The game is a bit of a slog. The flying and movement around the world map is super duper slow, and the gameplay loop, for such an exciting source material, is very plodding. You pretty much just fly around a map, with no proper guiding of the player; you just follow a radar until you hit the next goal. 
 
Now I stuck this one out because I do love the story of the anime, and it was neat to play through it in an RPG format. It was boring, but pretty easy overall. Most battles I tended to just pick cards at random and I did just fine.

Bottom line, for fans of DBZ? It's worth checking out. RPG fans? This is a very bare bones affair. Overall, this is one you can most probably miss.