Dragon Ball Sparking Zero preview — Keys to the King Kaidom

While Dragon Ball endures in large part thanks to the genius of the late Akira Toriyama, the passion of its fans play a vital role as well. Something about Dragon Ball taps into people’s imaginations, creating a desire to see its universe(s) from every possible angle and perspective. The kingdom that is the Dragon Ball multiverse is vast and infinitely explorable – its long lineage of video game adaptations are testament to that.

I recently went hands-on with the latest fighting game interpretation of this iconic series, Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, and also had the chance to speak with the producer of the game, Jun Furutani in a group interview. After spending some time with the game, I can confidently say that Sparking Zero gives fans the keys to the kingdom. It offers a staggering amount of playable characters, what-if scenarios, and even the ability to create your own. There’s a lot to get through, so step into the Grand Tour (Grand Tour) below.

Sorry, it’s hard not to have GT on the mind. When it comes to Sparking Zero, everyone wants to know about the characters and I got the full scoop. The build of the game that I played contained not only the recently announced Dragon Ball GT characters, but everyone else in the base game. From Super Saiyan 4s to Frost to Tapion, Sparking Zero features a veritable who’s who and who’s that? across every major corner of Dragon Ball.

I spent a long time just scrolling through the giant roster to see everyone on offer. Did you know Goku is in this game? He’s in it a lot, actually – I saw every version I could think of. My personal highlight? Kid Goku from early Dragon Ball. He was one of the first characters I picked, and he didn’t disappoint. From his tiny build, to his staff, to his cloud, Kid Goku feels noticeably distinct from both his other selves and just about everyone else. As much as I appreciate everything that comes after the original era of this series, I enjoy nods to a time when things weren’t quite as standardized as they tend to be now.

Yeah, I know. All of these different characters and I’m talking about Goku. You can’t get more basic than that! Gokus aside, I toyed around with as many of the stranger inclusions as I could.

Although I wrote a seemingly endless amount of little notes about each character I tried, I’ll stick to some highlights: Babidi seems weak, and in the grand scheme of things he probably is, but he has some unconventionally powerful attacks like an explosion you don’t even seem to need to aim. Cooler’s transformation into his final form looks as awesome as you’d hope. Dr. Wheelo breaks the game’s normal rules by being both a giant character and unable to charge up his energy on command (his energy fills automatically instead). The generic Freeza Soldier fights with a vast arsenal of equally generic attacks, and, well, he does his best. He didn’t last long against Metal Cooler although that might be my fault.

I could play around for each character for hours – I should know, because that’s basically what I did. Pitting this enormously varied pantheon of warriors against each other proves entertaining enough where Sparking Zero could get by on that premise alone. Even after playing out dream fight after dream fight, such as Ultra Instinct Goku versus Chiaotzu or Master Roshi (as Jackie Chun) versus Beerus, I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of potential battles.

Amidst all the exciting matchups, you can almost forget that they’re tied to a video game that you have to play. I’ll admit upfront that I was no pro going into Sparking Zero and that didn’t change much even after a few hours. The game plays simply enough, it just has some nuances that I never fully grasped. Apologies to anyone watching my gameplay footage.

Sparking Zero focuses on delivering the type of high-speed aerial combat you’ll see in a typical Dragon Ball fight. As such, it features all the staple game mechanics: melee attacks, energy blasts, flying, super moves, and the ability to charge your energy. Mr. Furutani mentioned that one of his favorite Dragon Ball games was Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2, and I can see a lot of that game’s DNA in Sparking Zero. Whereas games like Super Butōden established the groundwork for simulating a Dragon Ball fight in the second dimension, a game like Sparking Zero fully realizes those principles in the third.

Recreating a Dragon Ball fight comes with the caveat that it can be difficult for non-Saiyans to keep up. When Goku and Freeza exchange repetitive, rapid punches in the anime, you can assume in the back of your mind that every move they make is deliberately calculated. Not so much for me. I struggled with the defensive options in particular. Often I’d find myself stuck eating long combos without knowing the proper escape option, or teleporting to avoid a blow only to find that my opponent would also teleport to avoid my counter, leaving me defenseless. Am I failing to use the proper tools to save myself or should I have avoided the situation altogether? It was hard to tell in the moment.

Obviously I have plenty to learn. The AI put up a tough fight surprisingly quickly in just about every mode I played, which leads me to believe that I should be able to fight much more competently than my current level. Sparking Zero gives you more than enough strategic options, from the ability to change character forms, swap to other characters, and utilize the Sparking mechanic for devastating attacks. I just have to put the pieces together correctly. I’ll have to ask Piccolo to show me the ropes when I have more time to sit down with the game.

Or perhaps I should’ve sought some advice from Mr. Furutani? He was asked if the staff behind Sparking Zero had held any tournaments to determine the strongest player. They hadn’t, but Mr. Furutani did add that he’s pretty good at the game himself. Perhaps a subtle brag that he’s the world’s strongest? I suspect that I’ll have to do a lot of training to fight at his level.

Until then, I settled for running away, charging up my power level, and spamming beams to overwhelm my AI opponents. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. Definitely not the kind of fighting that would please Goku.

And who doesn’t want to please Goku? Sparking Zero’s loving recreation of the world and characters of Dragon Ball has an inspiring quality to it. Deep down, I wanted to recreate the Dragon Ball experience in how I played the game to match the production of the game itself. Whenever I fired off a climactic move or powered up to a new transformation at just the right time, I felt like I was playing an episode of the show. Not that I remember an episode where Yajirobe defeats Jiren, but that’s beside the point.

Of course, recreating the show properly is an option. I spent about an hour with Sparking Zero’s Episode Battle mode. Here, you select one of several characters and play through their perspective across the original plotlines of the mangas…and shows…and sometimes movies. At this particular event, I could try the stories for Goku, Freeza, and Goku Black.

Goku’s story starts exactly where you’d expect it to in a Dragon Ball game: not at the beginning. Instead, Goku’s episode threw me into the beginning of Goku’s adult years and his sudden confrontation with his evil brother, Raditz. Pretty well-trodden territory for longtime fans, yet Sparking Zero does spice things up a bit. When Piccolo offers to team up with Goku (shock!!!), you can actually turn him down and choose to confront Raditz with Krillin instead (double shock!!!!). This decision ultimately didn’t change much for me as Piccolo showed up by the end of the fight anyway to do some special beam skewering, but I suspect that was partially my fault for taking too long to defeat Raditz.

Aside from that, the rest of what I played from Goku’s route seemed fairly by the numbers, going straight into the rest of Goku’s Saiyan arc fights. The production of the cutscenes get the job done, but they are static and generally carried by the voice acting. By the way, I’m “that guy,” so the first thing I did before playing Sparking Zero proper was switch the voices from English to Japanese. Everyone sounded great!

My time with Freeza highlighted the strengths of Sparking Zero’s combat system. His story sends him into an endurance fight against Krillin, Gohan, Piccolo, and Vegeta. While the amount of fighters made this bout a bit more difficult than Goku’s, that worked to its advantage. I enjoyed slowly powering Freeza up transformation by transformation,playing out his seemingly endless strength just like how it goes in the original story. Dialogue throughout the fight acknowledged what I was doing, so clearly the developers know their audience. Sparking Zero’s battle system fits moments like these perfectly, and made me curious to try recreating Goku’s fights a little more faithfully when I next play them.

I was most excited to jump into Goku Black’s story. The DBZ-era stuff remains classic for a reason, but newer Dragon Ball additions justify games like Sparking Zero the most. As anyone familiar with the arc would expect, I spent a lot of time fighting Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks. Goku Black’s fights gave me the hardest time to complete out of what I played, but it was nice to see this storyline get some representation.

One eagle-eyed writer noted that some of the dialogue during various Episode Battle scenes differed from the anime and asked Mr. Furutani why that was the case. Mr. Furutani explained they had to make some compromises to better fit the format of the game, but that they worked hard to capture what they could. Episode Battle definitely played out like a cliffsnotes version of the original story from my perspective, but I also think the real fun of it lies in trying to recreate the iconic battles themselves rather than let the narrative aspects do the heavy lifting.

Of course, you don’t need to let the game do any narrative lifting at all if you’d rather do it yourself. Sparking Zero features a Custom Battle mode that is surprisingly extensive. Basically, this mode lets you customize, intros, outros, dialogue, and even battle conditions. You can even give your battles a start of the episode title card! The dialogue and the titles involve a somewhat quirky twist: you can’t just type it yourself, and instead need to pick from a list of pre-selected phrases. It works in an awkward kind of way, but if I’m being honest it’s not an ideal compromise.

The battle conditions stand out as the most interesting part of the mode. By setting various conditions, you can essentially build your own Dragon Ball narrative through Sparking Zero’s battle mechanics. You can set win conditions for certain events or program enemies to react in certain ways that make the progression of the fight akin to natural plot developments rather than arbitrary video game goals. Given the limited time I had for the preview, I didn’t dig too deep into crafting my own masterpiece, but I can see myself doing so in the near future.

Bonus Battles demonstrate the power of the Custom Battle system. One of the first battles I tried set me during the recruitment phase of Dragon Ball Super’s Universe Survival arc. I don’t know about you, but the time Goku spends recruiting and having heart-to-hearts with his allies for the upcoming Tournament of Power is one of my favorite stretches of the show. This Bonus Battle asks a simple question: what if instead of enlisting some of the more, let’s say power-level challenged fighters like Krillin or Master Roshi, Goku decided to go to Hell to find some real heavy hitters?

Everything about this battle from the concept to the recruits to Goku’s sheer enthusiasm to be reuniting with all of these monstrous villains screamed ridiculousness. Janemba? Sure. Hirudegarn? Why not. Cell? Apparently he’s up for it! When Goku and Freeza started talking about how much they missed each other, things crossed into the kind of fanfiction territory that was shocking to see in an official Dragon Ball product. I had to ask Mr. Furutani about the insanity I had just witnessed.

Mr. Furutani explained that the Sparking Zero team intended for Custom Battles to provide players the means to create dream Dragon Ball scenarios, and the Bonus Battle mode is their way of showing its potential off. Apparently the scenarios go through the same approval process that everything else in the game does. Naturally, however, the standards are a little more lax to accommodate the fact that the team is specifically aiming to create insane situations. Mr. Furutani also notes that scenarios like the ones I played can be used as templates to work from and share in the online mode. So if you find yourself wishing that Goku had recruited Garlic Jr. for the Tournament of Power, you can make it happen.

So much of the game can be customized that it’s only natural that Sparking Zero allows you to customize the characters as well. Each character can be tweaked with various items, costumes, accessories and more. Seeing Master Roshi’s Jackie Chun costume available made for an instant pick. While the amount of costumes on display impressed me, there was one omission I don’t think I can forgive. It pains me to say it, but…Krillin’s “Tacos” shirt didn’t make it.

Sparking Zero clearly has a bright future ahead of it, with or without taco shirts. With a massive roster and so much potential for customization, I can see it keeping me and like-minded fans busy for a long time. On top of that, DLC is on the way. As future additions to the roster go, one writer asked whether Arale, a character from Mr. Toriyama’s Dr. Slump (although she’s made a few appearances in Dragon Ball proper, too) could potentially join the battle. While Mr. Furutani couldn’t talk about any future additions, he did note that they would be looking at player feedback for what people want to see from Sparking Zero in the future.

I’m a player and I have feedback of my own, so I figured I should relay it to Mr. Furutanti. For the good of humanity, I brought Sparking Zero’s lack of Krillin’s “Tacos” shirt to his attention. Rather than leaving the fate of the Tacos shirt up to further feedback, Mr. Furutani directly stated that he’d “think about” adding it to Sparking Zero. Sounds like a sure thing to me! If the Tacos shirt gets in over your favorite missing character, you know who to thank! (Mr. Furutani and the team at Bandai Namco, not me.)

Jokes aside, the one thing I can tell you for sure about Sparking Zero is that it will be released on October 10, 2024. I enjoyed my time playing around with the keys to the Dragon Ball kingdom, and I’m looking forward to getting them back soon.

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: