Dragon Ball Z: Buyuu Retsuden

"An above-average Dragon Ball fighter"

''Dragon Ball Z: Buyuu Retsuden'' was the only Dragon Ball game released for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It was released in 1994 in Japan. This fighting game is very similar to the Super Famicom Butouden series games. Like those games, this one makes use of a large battlefield. You are able to fly into the sky and move far away from your opponent. When you are far away from your opponent, there is a split-screen. However, this game does feature some characters not found in those games.

Graphics: 8/10
These are well-done graphics. All the characters are very detailed and look fine. However, these graphics just are not as good as the Super Famicom Butoudens (excluding the first one). The backgrounds and everything in general is not as colorful as it could be. Still, these are satisfactory graphics. This is especially true when the characters do their meteo (sort of a super combo) attacks. All in all the graphics are decent enough for a 16-bit engine.

Music/Sound: 5/10
The music is pretty poor in my opinion. There aren't even that many tunes in this game to listen to, maybe about four. The sound is a little better. They actually have some voice samples for the characters from the anime, like ''Kamehameha!''

Control: 8/10
The controls are very good for this game. It is very easy to do the special ki and meteo attacks. A flaw in this game is that the characters move pretty slow, like it was in Butouden 1. Luckily, there is a secret code for a turbo mode to speed things up. Unlike the Super Famicom, there are only 3 buttons. One each for punch, kick, and fly. Ki attack is the same button as punch. It was a little hard for me to adjust to these controls at first because I was used to the Super Famicom Dragon Ball fighter controls, but it is not a big problem.

Gameplay: 9/10
This game has some very good gameplay. There is a VS. mode (against a friend or the computer) and then there is story mode. Sorry, no Tenkaichi Budokai (tournament) mode here. The VS. mode is basic fighting game stuff. However, the story mode is great. You choose your own character and each character has a different ending when you win the game.
Speaking about the characters, this game has a very good selection indeed. You can choose from Son Goku, Son Gohan, Vegita, Kuririn, Trunks, Piccolo, Cell, Rikum, Ginyuu, Furiza, and Android 18. This is a good cast spanning the Furiza to Cell sagas.

Overall: 8/10
This game is above-average. Decent graphics and gameplay. However, good luck trying to find it. This game is pretty hard to come by. Also, if you want a 16-bit Dragon Ball fighter, I recommend you go for the Super Famicom ones instead.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/01, Updated 04/01/01