If you’re like any 20-something nowadays, Dragonball was probably an essential part of your childhood. The anime was already 10 years old before it made it to US airways, effectively changing the game for Saturday morning cartoons from then on. Dragonball-related games are about as old as the anime, the first debuting in 1986 on Epoch’s Cassette Vision, and appearing on almost every console since. To celebrate the franchise’s latest outing on current gen systems with Dragonball: Xenoverse, we want to assemble a list of the definitively epic, must play Dragonball games for any fan of the series.
Dragonball Z – Super Gokuden 2
A rather difficult game to find outside of emulation, this RPG puts you in Goku’s slippers, starting with his battle with Piccolo Jr., all the way up to his epic clash with Frieza. Antiquated in many ways and very poorly translated, the gameplay still shines as a unique example of doing a game based on one of the most popular and prolific action cartoons ever made without it being a fighting game.
Dragonball Z: Legacy of Goku 2
Legacy of Goku 2 is an action-RPG in the Zelda vein for the GBA. It’s awkwardness is somewhat charming, and the battles can get challenging and pretty intense towards the end. There’s also plenty of side quests to complete, and multiple characters to play as. Downside: its rather short. A play through can be as low as 5 hours.
Dragonball: Advanced Adventure
This GBA gem is a Golden Axe/Streets of Rage style beat em up set in the world of Dragonball. As young Goku, you side scroll through the events of the original manga in a truncated form of the whole story. It could be deeper and support more co-op features besides simple one-on-one versus modes, but as a beat em up, this game holds weight.
Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3
The PS2/3 Budokai formula perfected, Tenkaichi 3 excels at the back and forth combat that the series was known for, adding incomparable depth thanks to the huge roster. The big difference between Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi games was the impressively massive play spaces. Each stage had so much real estate that you could play multiple fights in it and end up in different places each time. Bashing foes into cliff sides and leaving that signature crater, or super tense and aggressive beam battles were a hallmark of this bombastic game, and may be the closest analog to Xenoverse.
Dragonball Z: Hyper Dimension
One of the few licensed games that was solid enough to be a good game regardless of Goku’s presence, Hyper Dimension was a 2D fighter made in the Golden Age of 2D fighters (post-Street Fighter II). In a time where people weren’t afraid to make big changes to the standard game play tropes, Bandai went pretty nuts. The roster was relatively small and seemingly randomly selected from the weirdest parts of the canon, but each character felt incredibly unique. It felt very much like Fatal Fury, though every character can fire projectiles from their hands. On command, players could catapult their warriors into the background, sending them charging towards the enemy while also dodging enemy ranged attacks. Each stage also had both an “on ground” and “in air” locations, to replicate those epic moments in the anime where combat hits the skies. It’s incredibly hard to find legit copies of the game now, but it really is the most impressive fighter in the series.