Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension

"The best of the best in 16-bit, Dragon Ball fighting games...not that there's many to speak of.."

Rating:

Graphics: 10/10
Sound Effects: 10/10
Music: 5/10
Originality: 6/10
Play Control: 10/10
Group Enjoyment: 10/10
Individual Enjoyment: 7/10
Ending: 5/10
Challenge: 5/10
Overall: 8/10

Hyper Dimension was the final Dragon Ball fighter for the Super Nintendo, and it demonstrated the system's capabilites quite nicely. Featuring well animated characters, rotating backgrounds, and lots of huge attacks, this game aims to please more than just your die-hard Dragon Ball fan. So, does Hyper Dimension make the grade, or does it fail, and have to take the class again next year?

Good Points of the Game:

Hyper Dimension is exactly what we wanted in a 16-bit Dragon Ball game. It had 10 characters, which while not massive, was a good number of fighters, considering the depth each character got. The sounds were also good, and the gameplay was very user-friendly.


Bad Points of the Game:

Well, I wish there had been more characters. I mean, there were 4 blond fighters, 4 villains (or 3, if you want to get technical), and the Namekian with his student. Come on! Where's Kuririn, TenShinHan, Yamcha, and Chao-Zu? What about Kamesennin, or Yajirobee? Or Kami and Mr. Popo? Ok, now I'm just throwing out names to make people think I'm an even bigger nerd.


General Ratings:

Graphics: Wow. The characters were well drawn and animated, and their attacks were very nice as well. I mean, Vegita constantly has a golden aura around him, and Gokuu has electricity periodically flow across his body. Now that's neat. And just look at the backgrounds in the Flying Namek stage, or the ''Above Earth'' battlegrounds. Those are really nice. The other backgrounds are really well-drawn, too, such as the trashed Boudokai grounds, or Kami's lookout.

Sound Effects: Each character has a good assortment of yells, cries, and thuds. They say the name of their individual attacks, along with the traditional sounds of them being hurled. Very nice. They even got the 2 voices-sync of Gotenks and Vegitto right on. Now that's nice!

Music: Well, for Dragon Ball games, this game had rather bland music. It was catchy, but sounded a little technological rather than musical. In other words, some of the music sounded like computer-generated sounds with a melody (which is not to say I don't like that sort of thing, it's just that here it wasn't very well executed).

Originality: Well, we've seen Dragon Ball fighters before, but this one changed several things. Gone is the split-screen format of previous games, using the more traditional format of 2 characters on 1 screen, shared. In other words, both characters stay on the main screen all the time. Then you have the idea of combining the life bar with the energy bar, so battles could go forever, or not. It's all VERY nice, but it doesn't score THAT much higher than average.

Play Control: The play control is great. Regular moves and special moves are a breeze to figure out and pull off, while the harder moves, combos, juggles, and desperations are more difficult, but the rewards always outweight the effort, now don't they?

Enjoyment: If you've got more than 1 person playing, then you're going to have some fun in tournaments. If you're playing solo, though, then you always have the Story Mode, the practice mode, and the single-player mode.

Challenge: The challenge is average. If you have a human player, it's good, but the computer is either way too easy or way too hard. For me, though, it was all too easy.

Ending: Well, it's strictly average. You have pretty much exactly what you'd expect...unless you were expecting in-depth endings for every character.



Overall:
Overall, this is the best of the best when it comes to 16-bit Dragon Ball fighters. It didn't have the most characters, nor did it have the rarest characters (it was the only 16-bit one to feature Gotenks or Vegitto), but it DID have the best graphics and play control. The graphics were great, as were the sounds. This is a game to get, not just rent.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/28/00, Updated 04/28/00