Dragon Ball Z - Budokai Tenkaichi and the Golden Era of Anime Fighting Games
The Playstation 2 released back in 2000 and managed to sell over 155 Million consoles,
making it the best-selling game console of all time.
Many gamers call this time period from 2000-2010 the ‘Golden Era’ of gaming due to the release of many critically acclaimed masterpieces like the Silent Hill & Metal Gear Solid series.
The fighting game genre especially had lots of popular entries from series like Tekken, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw, Mortal Kombat, the list of giant franchises goes on and on.
However there’s one subgenre that stood out and claimed the crown as fan favorite: Anime fighting games. Particularly the ‘Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi’ series took the player base in a storm making it one of the most beloved anime game series of all time.
The game series created every fan's ultimate dream letting them either play the ‘story mode’ reliving and taking part in the series historical fights such as Goku vs. Frieza or Goku vs. Vegeta, or play custom matches with a list of over 100 characters spreading over the first three entries and thus birthing the ultimate local multiplayer experience.
Another dominant feature that differentiates this series from classical fighting games was the ability to roam around relatively big maps, switching from the usually known 2.5D plane to actual 3D, where the player could even decide to flee from the enemy for a bit.
Other anime franchises also had their impact on this genre like Naruto with the ‘Ultimate Ninja series’ or even JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure with multiple entries, however none had the same impact as ‘Budokai Tenkaichi’. The memories and amount of hours players would spend dueling each other even in real life tournaments lead to these games being a once in a lifetime experience.
