Dragon Ball Z Super Gokuden: Kakusei-Hen

"A DBZ Action/RPG game for semi-literate 4 year olds."

Thankfully, I read the DBZ manga back in the early nineties when I was an impressionable child. Each frame breathed with fresh life, blinding action, and raw emotion. It is only by the nostalgia of my carefree childhood that I could play through the repetitious bore called DBZ Super Gokuden: Kakusei-Hen.

I neglected friends and family to play this game on an SNES emulator with the Ginryu English patch (a subpar translation job, btw.). I beat the game in one day, but have little to show for it, aside from a sore backside, bloated thumbs, and this meager review.

1. Story - 5/5
What can I say, the story was penned by the great Akira Toriyama. Criticize the story, I cannot. This is the only redeeming feature of the game, however. For although the story is pure genius, every aspect of its delivery in electronic form is abysmal.

2. Presentation - 2/5
The epic story (from the Piccolo saga to the Freeza saga) is told through static portraits of the various characters and scrolling text. The portraits move about to signify combat or action, but are so limited in their affectations that you wonder why the game makers even bothered to reduce Toriyama's zen-like simplicity to such austerity when they could have portrayed so much more by reproducing the manga frames. So there you are, the gamer, stuck with advancing hour upon hour of portrait conversations with the A button. Oh my thumb aches with the thought. The few fight scenes have you looking at tiny isometric representations of the characters that harken back to the NES days. Aside from the somewhat richer color palette, the graphics here are not much better than the NES DBZ RPG's. The music is very nondescript and repeats over and over throughout the dialogue. Nothing to write home about.

3. Gameplay - 1/5

I already mentioned that most of the game is advancing dialogue. That took some serious A button mashing to get through. Tired of that? Well, the game makers decided to switch that up by offering the joys of hitting X repeatedly to help Gohan evade the dinosaur. And they make you do it again to help him catch the dinosaur. And again to help Goku catch Bubbles. And just when you think your thumb is developing gangrene, you get to train Goku in his ship by hitting X 50 times, in three sessions, each at 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100g's!!!

Wait a minute, the game makers mused, perhaps the gamer would like something more cerebral? They then give you the opportunity to enjoy some interaction through "fight scenes." Isn't this what DBZ is all about? Well, as another reviewer put it, they're nothing but a glorified version of rock-paper-scissors, or really, just rock and paper. You see, all you need to do is raise your Ki (similar to mana, mp, action points, etc.) with L+R and then unleash the Super Attack (kamehameha, masenko, etc.), which beats every other attack save one. Since the CPU flashes its intended attack for a few seconds beforehand, you can always choose the Super Attack when appropriate. Lather, rinse, repeat. There are more elements to this, but they really are unnecessary and will only slow your progress through a tediously long game.

Lastly, there are little quizzes that require you to recall the EXACT wording of the dialogue in the manga. Some affect the storyline in minor ways, some end the game. What? You forgot to make a save state before choosing the option that gives Piccolo reign over the earth, or Vegeta immortality? Too bad sucker. Wade through the dialogue again and make the right choice this time! Such is the punishment that I have not endured since grade school. Which is appropriate considering the obvious target audience.

Overall: 2/5. It fails as a story teller unless you are actively recalling the manga or anime in your mind's eye as the portraits slide, wiggle, and bump into each other through hours of scrolling text. It fails as an action/strategy game because there is no downside to executing the Super Attack every time. It fails as an RPG because there are no stats of consequence and no character building of consequence. However, I give it 2 stars instead of 1 because despite the poor trappings, the story underneath exudes Toriyama's unrivaled genius that cannot be suppressed.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/06