Sparking! Zero Knows What Its Fans Want

Highlights

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a loving tribute to the entire series, packed with characters from every corner of its history.
The game offers individualized abilities for each fighter, making them feel like authentic versions pulled straight from the canon.
With Episode Battle and Custom Battle modes, fans can relive scenes from Dragon Ball history and explore “what if” scenarios.

I know nothing about Dragon Ball. I can’t really tell you much about the characters, or the world, or setting, or story (I only recently discovered that they transform into giant apes from time to time) but what I can tell you is that Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero was made for the most loyal fans of the series–the people who can tell you about all those things.

In the roughly 30 minutes that I got to spend with it, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero proved to be a loving tribute to the entire Dragon Ball series with its roster packed to the brim with characters from every corner of the series’ history, its reverence for the entire Dragon Ball canon, and the interest it has in allowing fans to play with canon themselves and find answers to the “what if” questions that have sparked debate for years.

Diving Headfirst into Dragon Ball

As a Dragon Ball outsider, I understand that Sparking! Zero is a continuation of the Budokai Tenkaichi series of Dragon Ball games and leans on some of the main mechanics for the until-now dormant series. The hand-to-hand combat is smooth and varied from character to character, but the main way players deal damage to one another is by charging their Ki meter to unleash each character’s signature attacks, each one taken lovingly from the source material.

I think fans will be impressed with the sheer number of individualized abilities that are assigned to the huge cast of fighters. Most characters use relatively the same base movesets (as is the case with most fighting games) but it’s the Ki abilities where each character really shines. Despite not knowing who many of the characters are, I can tell based on the way that no two characters are given the same Ki abilities that a great deal of care has been put into making each character feel like an authentic version of themselves pulled straight from the Dragon Ball canon.

The world of Sparking! Zero is reactive to each encounter, allowing players to throw their opponents through the environment creating a feeling of being quintessentially Dragon Ball as that’s an element from the anime that even I, a complete outsider, am familiar with. More than just having impressive destruction physics, the individual levels seem to have unique hooks and gimmicks to them. For example, in the World Tournament stage, a quick cutscene played a few minutes into the fight as the destruction started ramping up where the tournament announcer told everyone to leave their seats and flee to safety. After that point, my opponent and I were free to extend our fight to the city surrounding the arena.

‘Episode Battle’ and ‘Custom Battle’

Sparking! Zero is split into two game modes: Episode Battle and Custom Battle. The latter is a way for players to create custom battle scenarios that have unique win conditions, matchups between characters who might not normally go head-to-head, and other custom options. It’s essentially a Dragon Ball sandbox that’s packed full to the brim with settings for players to granularly mess with and share online.

Episode Battle recreates scenes from a various number of Dragon Ball characters’ histories and allows players to relive them, the number of scenes available seems to be relatively large and I’m told they span from the earliest moments from Dragon Ball Z to the most recent scenes from Dragon Ball Super.

In addition to following the canonical storylines from the source material, Episode Battle also gives players the chance to make choices for the characters that are opposite of what happens in the anime/manga resulting in alternate battle scenarios. I imagine this will satisfy the most die-hard fans who’ve had questions about “what would have happened if X happened instead of Y.”

Sparking! Zero will resonate with fans looking to relive the series’ history.

Understanding the Legacy of Dragon Ball

Even as someone who doesn’t know a single thing about Dragon Ball, it’s easy to see the appeal of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. It seems to be a comprehensive history of the series lovingly put together to serve as a “Dragon Ball sandbox.” With the recent passing of series creator Akira Toriyama, I imagine that the granular details included in Sparking! Zero will resonate with fans looking to relive the series’ history and relive the days of playing the Budokai Tenkaichi series.

You can check out all of our coverage from this year’s Summer Game Fest right here.