For a while in the 2010’s it felt like the Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi (also known as Dragon Ball: Sparking) gaming series would see new releases almost as frequently as sports franchises, but after three installments in fairly quick succession (2005, 2006, & 2007) Sparking went quiet. It remained that way for nearly two decades until we got the announcement earlier this year that 2024’s Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero would become the fourth franchise entry.
Not only has a ton of Dragon Ball narrative been developed since 2007, but we’ve seen two gaming console life cycles play out. If fans were pleased with the updates in experience between the initial games that were only separated by a year each, what can we expect for 17 years worth of progress? Sparking Zero Producer Jun Furutani offers three exciting answers to this question in an interview from Bandai Namco.
Though additional bells and whistles were added onto the already incredibly potent stories originally penned by famed manga artist Akira Toriyama, playing through the same story threads with the same characters is only going to go so far.
Graphical upgrades are something, to be sure, but how do you make playing through the Cell Games or fighting Frieza on Namek feel new when you’re doing it for the fourth time?
This is something Furutani and his team want to nail as they bring Sparking Zero into fruition, and they’re aiming to do so by leaning even further into the immersion aspect of the experience in three specific ways.
The first is an update to the actual feel and flow of battle via a new mechanic. “We adapted the original battle system,” starts Furutani, “but we also kinda evolved it an put in some mechanics… for example, like in the Dragon Ball series, you can instantly move from one place to another. using a qausi-teleportation. And there are other things, like whne you are attacked, you can counter the attack and fight back. This is called a ‘revenge counter’ in the new game,” he explains.
In addition to mechanical updates, visuals and environments will more closely resemble those of the source material. Furutani goes on to describe other interactions upgraded since the days of previous Sparking entries.
“One of our main goals is to let the player experience what it is like to be a character in the Dragon Ball world,” he continues. “… For instance, when Goku starts charging his “ki” the weather and the background change… in real time… If you hit someone with a kamehameha and blow them away, when they hit a building, the building will crumple or the mountain will be destroyed! So all this interaction with the environment in real time makes the whole thing a much more immersive experience.”
Finally, you won’t be necessarily seeing the exact same stories play out as you always have. Customization through the roof, including physical placements of characters in traditional Dragon Ball stories, manipulation of events (and sometimes later consequences of altered battle outcomes), and the ability to tell the story with incredible detail.
Players can go as far as to customize character dialogue and facial expressions, but can also insert cinematic clips and special events as they curate iconic saga snippets and make them their own in Sparking Zero. On top of all this, you’re not locked into simply playing through stories with per-determined outcomes.
“If, within an episode battle, you win against an opponent that in the anime you weren’t able to beat, this may impact upcoming battles and battle scenarios,” shares Sparking Zero’s Producer. “Both the choices that the player makes and the outcomes of the battle may influence the chance that the player will experience new battle story paths.”
Furutani goes into more detail on these points and brings up a handful of others in the full interview below. Give it a watch and let us know in the comments what you’re most excited for when it comes to the upcoming Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero.
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.