‘Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’ Is the King of Anime Arena Fighters

Bandai Namco just released what might not only be the greatest Dragon Ball Z video game in history but also the ultimate anime arena fighter with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. While the argument over what constitutes an exceptional Dragon Ball Z game is debatable, what’s undeniable is the enduring popularity of the franchise in the gaming zeitgeist. With Sparking! Zero, producer Bandai Namco and developer Spike Chunsoft are poised to let their proverbial crown jewels hang as the undisputed king of the anime gaming industry.

The enduring popularity of Dragon Ball Z’s everlasting finger prints in the realm of video games goes well beyond the Midas touch of its late creator, Akira Toriyama. In musical terms, Dragon Ball Z is to pop culture what the three magic chords are to rock n’ roll. Its cultural influence has permeated professional wrestling, competitive sports, and hip-hop, just to name a few. These achievements barely scratch the surface on Toriyama’s significant influence on the “big three” of anime series: Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece.

DBZ‘s influence in anime and manga is only paralleled by its four-decade-long supremacy in the gaming world, gracing a multitude of consoles from the Super NES to the Steam Deck. The franchise’s standout being the mega-popular 3D arena fighter series, Budokai Tenkaichi, with the last release, Budokai Tenkaichi 3, in 2007. Its spiritual successor, Sparking! Zero, seeks to bridge this 16-year gap by reclaiming its crown as the pinnacle of anime games and ushering in a paradigm shift in the genre by elevating it to dizzying new heights with its ambitious more is more philosophy.

Arena fighters, by and large, are the de facto gaming genre for anime. In it, players have free range to let their imaginations run wild in a deceptively simple sandbox with in-vogue battle anime of today like Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia, or Jujutsu Kaisen. While serving as an SparkNotes encyclopedia of an anime’s mythos, arena fighters also allow players to veer off course from a show’s storyline and steer full throttle in fanfiction territory by having heroes and villains duke it out in custom battles. In short, arena fighters are a tried and true — if not complacent — plug-and-go formula to capitalize off of an up-and-coming anime series. That is, so long as it follows the four core tenets Budokai Tenkaichi and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm established for their predecessors: polished graphics, a diverse and distinctive roster of characters, engaging gameplay, and substantial replayability.

Yet, modern anime arena fighters haven’t been living up to their side of the bargain. If anything, they’ve felt more like a derivative attempt to replicate Budokai Tenkaichi’s winning formula than a revolutionary step forward in the genre. With Sparking! Zero’s announcement came with the nagging fear that it too would fail to live up to fans’ lofty expectations to save the gaming genre’s noticeable decline in quality. Fortunately, Sparking! Zero has become the pinnacle of what anime arena fighters can be and then some. 

As far as the first two tenets of anime arena fighters go, Sparking! Zero is the Ayatollah of the medium with breathtakingly accurate 3D modeled character designs and stages lifted right out of its decades spanning mythos. What’s more, the game bolsters the series largest roster with 182 characters spanning from OG Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super, and the upcoming Dragon Ball Daima anime with three waves of character DLC (downloadable content).

Whereas other run of the mill arena fighters fail to maintain players attention beyond an initial session with shallow gameplay mechanics that can easily suss out a winning strategy, Sparking! Zero is dense in both its difficulty and combat complexity. As far as battle mechanic complexity goes, Sparking! Zero is as challenging as the deepest fighting game. Chief among its design is its challenging AI that seems impervious to previous game exploits like charging your chi from a safe distance and cheesing damage by unleashing raw supers. If anything, Sparking! Zero’s base difficulty AI knows all the tricks in the book, including spam teleportation, and will throw them back in your face if you’re not careful. 

Unlike traditional fighters, Sparking! Zero maintains that its characters’ power levels stay true to the anime, meaning heroes become increasingly unbalanced the closer they get to modern Dragon Ball anime. This not only brings authenticity to the anime’s proclivity of power levels, it also makes the game more challenging. 

For example, online ranked battles see the return of Budokai Tenkaichi 3’s Destruction Point Battle system. In it, teams compositions are capped at 15 DP, meaning players are incentivised to not crowd their team with heavy hitters like Super Saiyan 4 Goku (10 DP) and instead start out small with mid-range/weaker DP level characters like Base Cabba (5 DP) or Hercule (1DP) and slowly work their way up to the super saiyan powered characters. If online battles aren’t your thing, Sparking! Zero is teeming with just as much complexity and replayability in its Episode Battles. As its name would suggest, Episode Battles has folks step in a character’s shoes (quite literally with a toggle on first-person perspective) and play through their story. What’s more, players can make choices both through dialogue options and their own gameplay proficiency that alter canon events. 

For instance, in Goku’s episode, successfully defeating Raditz unlocks a new story branch where Goku not only survives, he trains Gohan himself for their upcoming battle against Vegeta and Nappa. These Episode Battle story branches not only challenges players to break through series canon by overcoming its difficult combat mechanics, it also makes its alternative routes rewarding to achieve. 

By far, Sparking! Zero’s shiniest accomplishment is in its replayability. Sparking! Zero does what no anime arena fighter — let alone a Dragon Ball game — has ever done: it allows players to sit in the director’s chair and make their years’ worth of dream scenarios come to life through its Custom and Bonus Battle modes. Taking a page out of  underappreciated hits like the Game Boy’s Dragon Ball Super Sonic Warriors playbook, Bonus Battles task players with completing numerous unique what-if battles in a set amount of time. These can range from running a gauntlet as Great Saiyaman defending a city against the series’ giant kaiju, Perfect Cell tag teaming with Goku against Buu-era baddies, or proving once and for all that Hercule is the strongest warrior under the heavens. Whether you win or lose these intense battles, players are incentivized to become completionists by increasing their proficiency with various DBZ characters.

Custom Battles ramps things up to a whole other level by letting players create their own playable episode of Dragon Ball Z. This includes creating customizable episode title cards, staging cutscenes and dialogue from the game’s 500 adjustable nouns. What’s more, players can score scenes with the accompanying music, choose a narrator, apply distinctive camera filters, and preordain post-fight cutscenes. As an added cherry on top, players can upload their custom battles online and let other fans play out their dream Dragon Ball episodes. 

Sparking! Zero stands out as a unique gem in the realm of video games, where the philosophy of ‘more is more’ actually enhances the experience. Far from being just another installment in a series steeped in nostalgia, Sparking! Zero boldly transcends mere reenactment of familiar scenes. It empowers players to shape their own narratives, transforming fanfiction dreams into reality across various gameplay modes. While it might be decades before a similar anime arena fighter emerges, Sparking! Zero has reclaimed its throne in the gaming world. May its reign be long and celebrated. 

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is set to launch on Oct. 11 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Steam, with early access for Ultimate Edition pre-orders starting October 7.

From Rolling Stone US.