The fighting game the took over the PlayStation 2 in the early 2006 which had a similar TV series going on at the same time is this Dragon Ball Z... Back in those days when we think of fighting games we get Tekken in our minds but here's another game that has many possibilities than 2D fighting games. This game is a 3D fighting game where you can fly, swim, fight your way through the destructible environment and even destroy the area you are fighting... Sounds interesting right, read along to find out more about this game that I even play when ever I get time....
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi
This game is released for PlayStation 2 at that time and now after many emulators being developed that are quite stable and allow the game to be run smoothly instead of sluttering and lagging, we can enjoy this game on PC with decent graphics card and sufficient CPU power. This game has the same story of Dragon Ball Z TV series, which was my childhood favourite and till now. You can go through the story mode of this game where you play with the main characters of the real story in Dragon Ball Z from the begining where Goku (The Hero here) starts as a kid and without any super powers, the game progresses as the story moves forward. 
This game didn't make it to PC but there are emulators that will allow you to run this game on PC on Windows and Linux for sure with minimum effort depending on the PC hardware you own.You can either watch the TV series first or just play the Story mode of this game to get to know the story of the game, both are 100% same but here in the game you'll find that there are MOVIES included on the same story, which is a big advantage. While in the TV series we get to watch the movies at certain times regardless of the regular episodes. So, in this game you'll make your story mode look even more appealing with the embedded movie characters that pop up during certain period of time...
About the Game:
Like I mentioned that this game has a Story mode and there is a versus mode for your pals using Split screen, which is quite fun if you have 2 controllers on PS2 or a keyboard and one gamepad is enough to make this work if you're playing this game on an emulator on PC. Here are some of the main aspects of the game:
- The game has 129 Characters to choose from, of them some have various transformations including super sayajin 1,2,3, and fusions
- There are some special characters which will be unlocked once you fuse some items together in the item shop, which will be quite fun and predictable, like Hiradragons left half and right half make a character... its quite obvious, well for the rest of it you can google to find out everything
- Developer: Spike, Bandai Namco guys
- In the Japanese version of the game, there are 135 characters for some reason
- This game was released on PlayStation 2 and Wii on 2006 3rd and 4th quarters respectively
- There are 16 arenas where you'll be able to choose to fight, in story mode you'll be directed to fight in the arena where the real story takes place... You'll have to option to end the game in the way the story goes or by your imagination, that's just up to you
- There are various combos and some of them are quite similar for all characters where as there are some character specific attacks that are restricted to only some characters like the spirit bomb and special attacks which are only performed by the main characters in the real story
The in game map provides the main location of the main battle while the side quests complete the story line of the real story going on. Did I mention that there are Dragon Balls where you can wish to increase the xp of the players by wishing. It is pretty realistic that if you go to Namek Planet and find a way to get those 7 Dragon Balls you'll be able to summon that dragon and get 3 wishes as it is in the story line but the catch here is that the Namek Dragon won't grant you the same wishes as the Earth's Shenron, while Shenron will give you more xp if you're able to get those ear rings perfect. You can always swap those xp rings to the players you're fighting to get a boost in health but the xp gained while you completed a fight on a particular level will be reset if you change that item. Be aware of that...
Verdict:
This is a pretty cool and fun fighting game which has the complete attire of the Dragon Ball Z TV series and you'll get to play with all the characters from the TV series along with the side kicks that appear in the show. In this game there are even some special items obtained in the Ultimate Battle Z tournaments which on difficulty level 3 will grant you extraordinary items which once equipped will have special abilities...
More over a fantastic game which is slightly paced near Tekken but with more and extra features for the extensivity of the arena. If you're a fan of Dragon Ball Z then you'll definitely want to check out this game, it will be worth it.
10/10 for this game on Play Station 2
Thanks :)
One of my most played games. Amazing
I played this game on PS2, my favorite character was Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan. Good article.