"DBZ fans are in for a treat! Everyone else wonders what's going on."

Anyone who knows a thing about anime should know about Dragonball Z, one of the most popular anime series of all time. Notorious for overdone battles, fast fights, and filled with energy blasts, DBZ is either a love it or hate it show. In the show's prime, many licensed games were made. Some of the best were card-based RPGs for the NES. Because of their popularity, a remake of the first two were made and merged into one game, then released on the Super Famicom as ''Dragonball Z: Suppa Saiyajin no Densetsu'' or ''Dragonball Z: The Legend of the Super Saiyan'' in English. While not much more popular than any other DBZ games over there, through the magic of emulation it has gained a large fanbase in the US. DBZ fans will highly enjoy it. But, the rest of the crowd playing it will toss the controller away in frustration.

The graphics are average for an SFC game. On the upside, everything from the NES games was made alot larger. The character sprites look more detailed, and on the overmap stop looking like tiny dots. The backgrounds are pretty much the same, being slightly more detailed and more colorful than before. They don't look bad at all, in fact they look pretty good for 1992. But the characters are so pixilated it really makes them not quite pleasing to look at. Most of the fights look ok, and the characters look decent. There are some exceptions, however, mainly seeing an Ozorro on-screen.

On the upside, the detailed parts look very good. During the cut-scenes the graphics are very detailed and retain a good likeness to their anime counterparts. Even more stunningly, when a character charges during battle, you see a hand-drawn image of them (transferred into pixels and sprites of course) fly towards the screen. Because they zoom up so close, they still do look pixilated, but it's still amazing to watch. Special effects are nice, and the characters really do look like the show. So, overall the graphics are fairly good.

The story is both a pro and a con. On the pro side, DBZ fans will now get to play through the Saiyajin Saga to the Frieza Saga as their favorite characters. On the downside, the game assumes you watch the show, so people who have never seen it have no idea who anyone is. A villain people have never seen before will say ''Good to see you again'', because they assumed you watch the show, and thus have seen him. For those who don't know what DBZ is, you play as Goku, a fighter on Earth who turns out to be an alien. After a fight with the most powerful of the alien-race, you resume the game as his son, Gohan. The game continues from there, with Goku appearing near the end. I can't give the story a perfect score for sticking to the show, and I can't give it a zero for making no sense to casual gamers. So, I guess a 5 works.

The gameplay, like the show, is a love it or hate it system. The battle menu consists of a physical or KI attack, all of which depending on the value of your card. A strong card will make your character do a powerful attack. A KI card will let your character to an energy blast (assuming you have enough energy). When your character chooses a card and attacks an opponent, he also chooses one to use as his defense. A medium attack vs a medium will take moderate damage, also factoring in your character's level and Power Level. A strong attack vs a weak defense will do alot of damage, and a strong KI card will do an incredible amount of damage. Likewise, a weak attack vs. a strong defense card won't do much, nor will a weak KI card do much.

When you send you character into battle, you don't control anything besides the card he uses. But, to make it more fun to watch, the two fighters actually have a short fight each time. This 3-7 second fight usually consists of some clashing limbs, a few hits here and there, and the attacker finishing it off with something to knock the other back. This can be a kick, an uppercut, or an ax-handle. All of this can additionally knock the characters further if they have enough power. If you knock them sideways with enough force they can crash into a mountain (which is done in a very cool mode-7 effect), or plunge into the ground, causing extra damage.

Whether or not the system is good is debatable. Some players would like more input in the game, and not having all of the fight depend on luck. I personally like this system alot. Watching the fights go on is entertaining, as well as quite fun. Even more fun is seeing your favorite characters duke it out with the bosses, or seeing them using their best technique and wiping out the enemies. I don't like how everyone seems to have a maximum power level they can achieve, so that some characters will always be more powerful than others, but I suppose its to stay faithful to the show.

People don't seem to realize that the series, as well as this game, is still innovative. No other series has anime style fights or attacks, or just fights that are interesting to watch. Besides strategy RPG's, this is the only RPG where a character dies and stays dead (excluding in midgame where they are wished back). No other series uses the card-fighting system quite as well as this. Anime RPGs could really take a lesson from this game.

But, the game is not without its flaws. Alot of the game you are left without a clue of what to do. No one tells you that to continue through the game you must find some stupid kid in a pot, or some other tedious task. Then there are the dungeons. All I can say is that you must be a hardcore DBZ fan to make it through those dungeons without hanging yourself, because they are a living hell. As if navigating through them wasn't enough, they don't tell you about the damn switches you're supposed to flip in each one. And if that wasn't enough, the game is hard. I can safely say the first time through I put at least 20 hours into it. And about 16 of them (probably much more) were just building up my guys. Of course, it paid off, but 16 hours of straight building makes even the most hardcore fans get sick of the battles.

Music seems fairly ok. I like the battle theme, but that's about it. Everything else seems sort of...meh. And they didn't even try to take any themes from the show to make it seem less disappointing, which sort of bugged me. But maybe I'm just being spoiled by other license-games.

There is some reason to play through it. If you do the final battle right (which you pretty much have to, to have a chance in hell of winning), Goku becomes the legendary Super Saiyajin, and it leads to a secret battle after. Thus there are 3 different endings to get. One with Goku beating Frieza, another with him beating the fight after Frieza, and one where only Gohan survives the fight.

Overall, for DBZ fans this is a great game. It has everything you would want to do, and every character you would want to play as from the Saiyajin to Frieza Saga. Unfortunately, no one else will really find much interest in it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/30/01, Updated 09/04/03