Full roster to be unveiled, but just how many characters will it contain?
We are less than a month away from Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s October 11 launch, and though some 154 characters have thus been revealed for the larger than life Dragon Ball experience, we still do not know the full launch roster.
According to the giant hexagonal mural featuring character portraits that gets further filled in with each new reveal trailer that drops for Sparking Zero, we’re only waiting on ten more characters to be unveiled. There is already contention about whether or not to believe 164 is the correct starting roster count, but Sparking Zero Producer Jun Futurani has clarified in an interview that fans will have their answer before launch.
Bandai Namco asked Furutani to clarify a bit more about the roster, to which the Producer had two-pronged response. The first was to correct some erroneous information that apparently stemmed from a non-official source but garnered momentum across gaming social media.
“I want to address some misinformation regarding the Red Ribbon and Tao Pai Pai characters that was shared in an interview by someone not connected to Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero and without qualified information about the game,” he starts. “Our focus has been on revealing characters with our fans in mind, featuring them in assets such as trailers, screenshots, and even through hands-on play, and hopefully surprising and exciting them with how their favorites appear and play in the game,” notes Furutani.
Developers have been revealing characters in handfuls widely according to the sagas from within the manga/anime they appeared. For instance, we most recently learned about the likes of GT Goku, Omega Shenron, and Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta (among others) via last week’s GT trailer reveal.
Tao Pai Pai (also known as Mercenary Tao) and other members of the Red Ribbon army hail from the earliest chapters of Dragon Ball, a part of the narrative from which Sparking Zero has yet to sample much from.
Mercenary Tao is one of the most famous characters from the original Dragon Ball anime, perhaps best recognized for his meme-worthy means of travel as he famously decided to throw a wooden pillar and then leap up onto and ride it as opposed to using an aircraft.
What has given fans reason to question the validity of a 164 character starting roster? A recent alleged leak popped up early back on Friday, September 13 when Japanese media company Dengeki Online reportedly posted in-game footage of DBSZ’s character select screen highlighting more than 10 characters who’ve been yet to be officially revealed.
While some characters were only shown via thumbnail portraits, the footage showed full character models of others, such as kid Goku, (distinct from the GT version) the main protagonist with whom Mercenary Tao battled in early Dragon Ball.
The majority of the leaked characters actually come from Dragon Ball spinoff films such as Dead Zone and Tree of Might, and Mercenary Tao is conspicuously absent from the list.
With only about three weeks before Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s launch date, fans are sitting forward in their seats with anticipation for final answers surrounding the roster. Furutani does offer some solace in this department with the second part of his response.
“We can promise one thing,” he says, “fans will know every playable character at launch before the game comes out. Please stay tuned for our official announcement to come!”
We’ll be keeping an ear to the ground and an eye on the internet for when these answers finally do manifest, so be sure to check back here on EventHubs regularly to stay up to date.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is set to release on October 11, 2024 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and those who pre-order the Deluxe or higher editions will get three days of early access.