Plus 9 other interesting facts to know before you buy it
Upon its upcoming release Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero will have a whopping 18 different Goku characters on its base roster, and that’s not including Goku Black or fusions featuring the franchise’s hero.
That’s just part of one of GameranxTV’s 10 important things to know before you purchase Sparking Zero, which you can watch in full below, but with how precious roster slots tend to be in modern fighting games, we feel a closer look is warranted.
Multiple versions of a single character do pop up in fighting games from time to time (Evil Ryu, Shadow Jago… kind of seeing a theme with corrupted versions of main characters) but there’s got to be good reason behind such a decision.
With how coveted fighting game roster slots are these days, the headline of this article sounds nigh preposterous, but Dragon Ball is not Street Fighter nor Mortal Kombat. Instead of maxing out somewhere between 25 and 45 characters, Bandai Namco is starting Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero with more than 180 characters and going up from there.
What’s more, Dragon Ball is a franchise that’s celebrating 40 years of ongoing development, most all of which have centered around Goku as the main protagonist. Transformations and significant evolutions are part and parcel of Dragon Ball, and to try to contain all of Goku’s within a single character would make for an all but impossible challenge.
This is why a game like Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero needs separate roster slots for Teen, GT, Base, Super Saiyan, Super Saiyan God, Super Saiyan 3, Super Saiyan 4, and plenty of additional Gokus.
While there will surely be some overlap in move sets and approaches across the majority of the Gokus, they all do represent distinct moments from the manga that colored the character with particular themes and equip him with particular abilities.
With a roster of over 180 characters to begin with, fans who aren’t looking forward to playing any of the Gokus will still surely have a few of their favorite figures available for the fight, so wasted roster slots really aren’t a thing in this game like they might be in others.
In any case, there’s a fighting game coming out with around 20 versions of the same character, and we’re all not only excited about it, but would likely be happy to hear about additional Gokus as future DLC.
Check out Gameranx’ full video below to hear more about what all Sparking Zero will have to offer.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO is slated to release on October 11th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Interested in more Sparking news? Be sure to check out the details of the game’s recently revealed season pass and various versions.