Dragon Ball Z: Buyuu Retsuden

"Dragon Ball Z on genesis!!!!!"

Introduction
If you are reading this, you may already know this is the only genesis game based on a famous japanese anime/manga called Dragon Ball Z, and it covers some part of the story of that series, obviously...

Gameplay
As soon as you get in touch with the main menu of this game you will notice that it doesn't have many options, only Story mode (although it doesn't have much story at all...) and the modes for 1 / 2 players. When you get into the character selection you will see that you are able to pick the one you want to control from a large set of characters, each of them with the same powers they used on the series, but most of the times you can perform them just by pressing the same buttons for almost every player, which means that Goku's Kamehameha is performed by pressing exactly the same keys that you would press in order to perform Piccolo's Makanko Sappo or Gohan's Masenko, making it easier for you to remember how to perform them all. However, there are some powerful moves which are more difficult to perform and will surely take you some time to master. You can also switch between playing on the ground or in the air by pressing a certain key, but in this game that doesn't appear to matter at all since they way of playing in both places is exactly the same. Also, some characters are picked in their ''normal'' outfits (like Trunks or his father, Vegeta) and when they start their battles they automatically turn into Super Sayan, which isn't very nice since you could want to transform them manually (which isn't possible in this game, unfortunately) or just play with them in their normal forms. Hum, and once you loose a battle on the story mode you can just continue 3 times, but maybe this can be changed in other difficulty modes. Finally, the endings appear in the form of a single static image and some text, which isn't very interesting (or nice).

Story
The story of this game, mainly the ones that appear in the ''Story Mode'', is somehow confusing, since it will change depending on the character that you picked in the beggining. Mainly it covers the story of the Dragon Ball Z series from the Namek Saga up to the end of the Cell Saga, but you won't be able to fight / play with most of the characters from those sagas.

Graphics/Sound
Concerning the graphics, I may say that they are nice, mainly since most of the characters (and their moves) really look like the ones who appeared in the series. As for the sound, it is also nice, making you feel like really playing battles which occured inside the series episodes.

Play Time/Replayability
Although this game has a lot of different endings in the story mode, it will become somehow boring after playing much time since there aren't any save functions that you could use to store the endings that you already seen or other characters / special stuff to unlock.

Final Recomendation
This game is recommended only for people who really loved the Dragon Ball Z series, since it is the only one they can get for playing in a sega genesis console.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/01/03, Updated 07/01/03