Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension

By Spencer . September 30, 2005 . 1:46am

 

 

In general, movie to game or TV to game translations go rather poorly. Developers often lack the funds to make a quality game due to purchasing a license. Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22 is a prime example of a game that relies on the license, not on gameplay. The recent Dragon Ball Z: Budokai manages to make a relatively good fighting game, but even this pales in comparison of the Super Nintendo Dragon Ball Z games. With all of the Dragon Ball Z fans out there today, its a shame that this game never made it state side.

 

Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension was released during the last days on the Super NES. This means that this game took the hardware of the SNES to its maximum potential. You can see by the visuals that the sprites are clear and highly detailed. The characters look like they’re straight out of the cartoon. Details were meticulously added, some things you can see the little holes in Boo’s body and the wrinkles in Gohan’s clothes. The designers even added little details like glowing auras while charging and some pseudo 3D graphics. The animation runs at a very high frame rate too, which is what you would expect from a 2D game. However, minor slowdown can be caused by shooting too many ki beams, but it’s fairly unnoticeable.

 

Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension features an excellent story mode, which will be a real treat for fans of the series. The first battle in the story mode faces Piccolo against Freeza. Piccolo chooses to fight Freeza so Goku can gather enough energy for the spirit bomb attack. One of the surprises of the first battle *spoiler* is that you cannot win it (unless you cheat of course), which directly follows the Dragon Ball Z saga! This is particularly cool because it is rare for fighting games to have deep stories and even rarer for them to follow a series this closely. The story mode will continue to take the player through battling Buu. While fighting games are more fun with more people, the story mode adds something more for single players.

 

Since DBZ: Hyper Dimension is mainly a fighting game you’re probably wondering how it plays. If you’re not playing story mode you’ll have your choice of ten characters. These characters include (from top left to bottom right): Goku, Vegeta, Gotenks, Teen Gohan, Vegetto, Piccolo, Majin Buu, Buu, Freeza, Freeza, and Cell. While the roster has a good balance of heroes and villains a number of characters have been omitted. Other characters like Trunks, Android 18, Krillian, and Mr. Satan (Hercule) can’t be played in the game. These characters were in other DBZ games for the SNES so their omission doesn’t seem to have much reason. Another problem is there are only five battle arenas. Granted these stages are multi tiered, but you would expect a little more variety in the stages too. A broader selection of character and stages would prolong the game from getting stale.

 

However all of the characters present have a vast amount of moves. Each character comes equipped with a variety of punches (Y button), kicks (B button) and a standard ki blast (A button). Along with the standard ki attack each character can perform a super ki blast that has three levels depending on how long you hold A after you do the motion (down, down-back, back, forward + A). All characters can also charge their ki and regenerate life by holding down Y and B. On the end on each characters life bar is a circular meter. Activating the charge will cause the meter to fill up and each time it fills up five points of life are added. One of the really neat moves that was added to the game is the "upper bash", which can knock an enemy up in to a new "sky" stage. Once knocked into the sky characters have some new moves and also have the ability to fly. While in flight you can move in eight directions of movement and have full control of your character. You can even control the direction of you ki blast by hitting up, forward or down while you press A. If you’re sick of flying in the air you can knock your enemy down to the ground with the "ground slam" move.

 

Each character comes with their own signature moves. Goku comes with his spirit bomb attack and the classic Kamehame Ha. Vegeta comes equipped with the Big Bang and Final Flash attacks. For all of the characters their strongest move can only be performed while their on low life. This balances the game out well since you can’t start a battle using Freeza’s Spiral Head Butt attack. The comeback moves also add a new dimension of gameplay since players have the ability to turn the tables on a fight. The fighting system stays so true to the series that you feel like you’re in the Dragon Ball Z world. Anything that you’ve seen on the show you can reenact in the game.

 

Perhaps the only other gripe with the game is the poor sound effects. When you’re executing a Chou Kamehame Ha you’d expect to hear a loud clear explosion instead of a drowned out "boom" sound. The poor quality of the sound effects doesn’t represent the rest of the game’s polish and presentation. After Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, the bar for sound effects has been raised. The music isn’t too bad, after all fighting games aren’t known for having orchestral masterpieces. The songs are a blend of rock and electronic sounds, that serve the purpose of background music. While the sound effects do distract the flow of gameplay a little, they don’t do it enough to ruin the game.

 

Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Battle is one of those rare games that has quality gameplay that reflects the series. This is a game that a casual gamer and a hardcore fan of the show can both enjoy.

 

Hard to find?

You wont find Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Battle in any standard US store. You might be able snag a copy on Ebay, but for a high price. If you really want this game your best bet is to check out the bargain bin in online import video game shops.

 

+ Pros: Story mode that follows the series, lots of combo options, excellent graphics

 

- Cons: Small selection of characters and stages

 

Overall: This game is one of the best fighters on the Super NES and it just happens to include characters from the popular Dragon Ball Z series. Fans of either the series or fighting games will like this game a lot. One more redeeming factor about the game is like most fighting games, this game has seemingly unlimited replay value with a second player. 

 

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