|
 Dragon Ball
Z: Shin Butoden is the closest thing there is to the ultimate
Dragon Ball Z fighting game. It begins with a long intro movie
with features of all the game’s characters, offers several
different 1-Player modes (Traditional arcade, Tournament, and
Mr. Satan Gambling), and has a massive player selection.
Unfortunately, the changes made to the battle platform from
previous Butoden titles were for the worse, and the
often-fickle play control doesn’t help matters, either.
Nevertheless, Shin Butoden is a decent fighter, and would have
been a much better translation project that the ill-fated
Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout from a few years ago.
Shin Butoden’s best feature is,
without question, the unbelievable character selection. You
can choose from over 20 different characters, each with their
own unique fighting styles and signature attacks. Nearly every
major hero and villain is playable, from Goku and Majin Buu
all the way down to Mr. Satan and Kamesenin. While some
previous games have suffered from having a million-bazillion
characters (cough [Mortal Kombat] cough), SB shines because of
it. Fans will easily be able to find their favorite character
within the ranks of the DBZ crew, and proceed to kick everyone
else’s ass.
 As
far as eye candy goes, Shin Butoden is well done. The sprites
and pre-fight portraits look like they’ve come straight from
the cartoon, and the backgrounds, while nothing fancy, are all
recognizable areas to even the most casual DBZ fan. But only
the truly dedicated can really appreciate the ear candy: all
the fighters come fully equipped with their original voices,
and the background music is comprised of jazzy, remixed tunes
from the series.
My biggest problem with SB is the
play control. Now, I’ve been throwing Hadoukens for a good 8-9
years now, and when I have to do the motion three times to get
a move to work, something’s wrong. Even though you can access
a list of your moves at any time, and know exactly what to do,
it can still take several attempts to get a move to work. And
when you have to perform a motion the three times to pull one
move off, it gets real old real fast.
The truly unique aspect of Shin
Butoden is the actual fighting platform. Most levels are more
than one screen in length, and when the two combatants
distance themselves, the screen splits, and you keep track of
your opponent’s distance via the small scale window at the top
of the screen. If you get tired of fighting from afar, certain
attacks will knock your foe into the background, rotating the
perspective and making the stage one screen long. It’s
basically like fighting in a big box and switching from the
long side to the short.
Speaking of fighting from afar,
this ability is one of Shin Butoden’s most interesting
aspects, in that in can either make for a challenging,
strategical match, or the most cheap-o-rific fights you’ll
ever have. Your blast attacks are powered by your "ki" meter,
which you can charge up at any point in the match at the cost
of leaving yourself open to attack. Once you have a decent
amount of ki, you can perform various blast attacks, with the
bigger blasts costing more ki and doing more damage. Sounds
reasonable, in theory. In theory, communism works. There are
two main problems with the blasting attacks: The powered up
blasts do ridiculous amounts of damage, so even one can decide
the outcome of a match. Two in a row will result in instant
death for all but the strongest characters. Also, when you do
one of the larger blasts, your target is given a moment to
counterattack, during which he can perform a motion to knock
away your blast or counter it with one of his own. If he
counters, you have no chance to retaliate and you get fried.
This is probably the worst aspect of SB; in every other DBZ
fighter, a countered blasts results in a frantic,
button-mashing war between the two characters, with the faster
player scoring the hit. So, what this translates into is that
if your opponent is good at countering blasts, you’ll end up
with a freshly roasted carcass where your character used to
be. This is where the perspective-changing attacks come in,
since the blast-counterblast system doesn’t come into play
during up close fighting.
Overall, Shin Butoden is an OK
game, but it couldn’t achieve its goal: to be the ultimate in
Dragon Ball Z fighters. Import copies are extremely rare, and
the few that are available can get very expensive. If you’re a
dedicated DBZ fan and have money to burn, by all means get
this game. But if you’re anything less than obsessed with the
show, you’re probably going to end up with an empty wallet and
a lot of disappointment (Homer Simpson, from some
Simpsons episode I don’t know the title to). |
|
Dragonball Z:
Shinbutoden
Bandai
Versus Fighting
  
Use the radar at the top of the
screen to keep track of your opponent when he travels off
screen.
Let's face it, a fist to the face
is understood the world over. Even if you can't read the
character names or some of the options, it won't stop you from
mixing it up with the stars of the long-running
cartoon.
Unremarkable but
inoffensive.
There was one other Dragonball Z
game on the Sega Saturn. Dragonball Z Legends combined
2D sprites with 3D backgrounds, resulting in a more frantic
and free-roaming fighter than its predecessor.
|
