SP I'm SP from the Guinegeek.com show, a weekly geek news podcast that is part of the guinegeek.com network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other amazing geek shows@getageeknetwork.com Sam.
And welcome to Play Comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. And today, I have no idea what we've gotten ourselves into because I have Andrew from Behold. And it's. I mean, Andrew, what have we done to ourselves? Hello. Well, what we've done to ourselves, Chris has once again played a bad video game.
So I want to make sure that there's something that we have straight here. Like, I'm not forcing these on you, am I? This is all your fault. It's. I feel like I come into these with all the best intentions of going, well, surely if Chris has suggested I play this game, it must be a good game. You can't fool me twice. You should know better because I also suggested that we watch Fan Forstick. Oh, my God, you did. You are, like, the source of all my suffering.
It's true. So, Andrew, what is it that made you agree to come talk about a Dragon Ball game? It's because I love to rock the dragon, Chris. Andrew, I mean, I'm always excited to talk to you about things because you're a fun guest. And what is your history with the Dragon Ball franchise? And also, what do you call it when it gets its little sequel franchise with the extra letter at the end?
So, yeah, this is one of the weird things about it in this country is for some reason we still call it Dragon Ball Z, even though we should call it Dragon Ball Z, I assume, because the theme tune just goes, dragon, Dragon, Rock the Dragon. Dragon Ball Z. Okay, so that makes perfect sense then. And honestly, I just kind of like that other people say Zed, because it sounds much cooler than Z.
But yeah. So I feel like this kind of ties in with the Digimon in that I was a preteen in the early 2000s, so Dragon Ball Z was my absolute love life. Yeah, that tracks, because we're about the same age, and that's what it does.
You get homeschool, switch on Cartoon Network, go. Wait, no, it's not on Cartoon Network anymore. It's on Toonami now. Go to Toonami, get really excited. What's going to happen this week? Oh, boy. They're still on Namek. Is anything going to happen? Nope. But maybe tomorrow they'll get off Namek. They don't, Chris. They stay on the planet Namek for so many episodes.
Oh, God. I know, right? Okay, so when you're watching it over in England, is it like, roughly on the American release schedule because it all got translated together, or is it its own schedule or what? Yeah, I think this was back in the days where we probably got it, like about a year after you guys. But also the Internet didn't exist when we were young, so it didn't matter. There were no spoilers.
Yeah, the best I got was they'd released, like magazines in this country. I mean, I assume they probably release them in the US as well with, like, more up to date stuff. So you'd just be like, reading it like, what the hell is Imagin? Boo. I don't know what this is. This isn't Freeza. This isn't Dragon Ball Z. So kind of a weird situation then, where you get the spoilers and you're watching to see how they got there. I guess.
Yeah. I mean, it was kind of fun, to be fair, just trying to see, like, how does any of this connect to, like, the stuff. I know because as well, the fun stuff is. I know in the opening animation, Dragon Ball Z, they show you a bunch of clips, but most of the clips are from the movies they did that they then did not release in the uk. What did y' all do to deserve not getting the movies? Colonialism, probably. Yeah, that tracks. I honestly should have realized that on my own.
Yeah, we raided too many things in Egypt so we don't get to watch any of the broly movies. That's. That's fair, I think. All right, so the storage drives were already filled up, because what else can you fit inside the British Museum if it's full of Egypt and Greece? Exactly.
Okay, we're messing around a lot with this, but, I mean, part of it is because we're looking at Dragon Ball Z Taketsu, which I am actually confident in me saying Taketsu correctly. And I don't know how I learned how to pronounce at least one Japanese word. But when you come over here, I mean, we're looking at a fighter. And fighters, even if they say they're based on something, they're not really based on something because of just the nature of fighters.
Yeah, I guess with fighters, it's more just what they are based on is like the skin that you put around the basic fighting game.
Like, for some Context here. Wikipedia, you know, for as great a source, sarcastically or not, depending on what you're looking at as Wikipedia is, this doesn't even have a plot section for the Dragon Ball Z Taketsu game. And other fighting games have a plot. Other Dragon Ball based games have a plot and they're said on Wikipedia. And even if the plot is like a two sentence, hey, they're doing like this run of Dragon Ball. There's always something. This one doesn't even bother.
Yeah, which is wild because they don't even have the setup of just. Oh, it's one of the fighting tournaments that they do in Dragon Ball. Here are a bunch of characters. They are gonna do a fight now. It's literally just. This is fighting game you play now. Except you don't play now because for some reason like 90% of the game is locked when you first get it and you've got to unlock it. Which maybe wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that it's a God awful game to play.
So when you're going in here, you've got a pretty good, from my understanding, roster of characters, you've got Goku and Gohan and Piccolo and Krillin and Android 18. And all these people that you would expect to see in a Dragon Ball fighting game, you know that they can't fit Everybody because number one, there's about 27, Garrillion different dragon Ball characters that could be in here. I. Oh man. I set myself up, I put it on the tee and I still missed it because number one, there's over 9,000 Guerillian different characters there can be in here.
There we go. And you're just never going to fit them all because number two, it's a GBA cart. There's only so much space on there. Yeah, I agree to an extent. I do feel like some of the characters they've picked are like weird because I've actually got a list somewhere. Dragon Ball is weird. So you got to have. I think personally you have to have a couple weird characters in there.
Oh yeah. No, I don't mean in terms of like them being weird characters. I mean it's weird why these have been chosen over other ones. Like obviously you've got Goku and Gohan and Piccolo and Krillin and. Sure. Like they're the main characters. Trunks, Vegeta, they're big ones as well. Android 18. Yeah, she's like the one female character in Dragon Ball Z then. Obviously. Yep. Frieza, Cell Buu. They're like the big villains, broly. He's again, a big deal in the movies, I assume, because I haven't been able to see them. Thanks a lot. Distribution. But then you've got like, Android 16, who wasn't much of a character. You've got Gotenks, which is like the weird kid Goten, Goku's other son, and Trunks, but, like, when he's a kid, fused together. You've got Nap. You've got Raditz. Why do you have Raditz in this game? Because no one wants to be Raditz.
What's wrong with Raditz? I actually. I don't know. I don't even know who Raditz is. Raditz is the villain who shows up in, like, the first episode, and Piccolo kills him. But Goku also dies. But then he gets better. Yeah, I'm with you. Why do they have Raditz? He's already dead. He's presumably been dead for a while. This is. Yeah, they have him. I don't have Tien, the best Dragon Ball character. This is a hill I will die on.
You know who else they don't have is the dragon. I want to fight as the dragon. I mean, I feel like that would be fun. As like a final unlockable is you just get to play as Shenron the dragon and just one hit, kill everything. Actually, I don't think he even, like, shows up in any form in this game. The Dragon of Dragon Ball is not in this game, I don't think. Pretty sure I saw him in the intro screen, but it was after you could press start to skip the rest of it.
That's even worse than not having him in. Just makes absolutely. No, I mean, this whole game. I mean, we're kind of jumping into the game stuff early with this because there isn't really much to what this is based on. It's just, hey, this is a Dragon Ball. And actually they don't even do that because they're just assuming you know what a Dragon Ball is.
Yeah, like, again, there are character bios, but that's the thing you have to unlock. So you do not even get to start the game knowing who the characters you're playing are. As this whole whole thing is just. I know this is early in the show, but we're going to drop some promos for a few other things and then come back to really dig into this game. Because I'm trying to wrap my head around this one and its existence.
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Ever wonder what happens to those child superheroes after they grow up? Find out in Starlight, a new 186 page graphic novel from Overcast Comic book available on Kickstarter June 6th. Explore the lives of Chris and Sarah Sheridan, formerly known as Mighty Boy and the Melter. Now just two normal teenagers navigating the challenges of high school and Beyond. That's Starlight. Kickstarter.com S T A R L I T E kickstarter.com those are some great things to check out. But first, I mean, unfortunately we have to finish up here. Andrew I say unfortunately, but that's only because of the game. You being here is great and we're going to make this a great episode to listen to because hopefully these people are going to, after listening to this, realize that they do not need to go grab a 2003 release for the Game Boy Advance. Dragon Ball Z Takesu developed by Webfoot Technologies and published in North America by Atari, but in Europe as Bandai Europe. Before we get into anything else, do you notice a country missing there?
Wait. Yeah. Was this not released in Japan then? It is really looking like this was not released in Japan. And I mean, I get why.
I totally do too. You know, this is, this is kind of a weird one in the timeline because you'd had, oh God, what was it like? Dragon Ball gt I think it was one of the bad fighting games had come out. You'd had, I think, just the first legacy of Goku. So there were things going on here and Dragon Ball had gotten its little claws into the grips of the American gaming world and presumably the UK gaming world, since it was coming out over in Europe. And I know that they had actually, no, you were in a better spot than us because I know that they had super Nintendo fighters in France, but this is like the second one that we got and you at least had a chance to get those French ones because it's still the palace, the format of everything.
And yet we also built this, this one.
It's just why we've already mentioned that there is no plot. There's not even the semblance of anything. Like, it's Dragon Ball. You can very easily, and they do this multiple times, say, hey, this is a fighting game. And so you're just playing a fighting tournament. And it may or may not be one that actually happens in the Dragon Ball story, but it doesn't matter because it's a fighting tournament. And that's all the reason you need. You also have the super easy thing that a lot of Dragon Ball games do, where they say, hey, you're playing specifically these story arcs and change things up or not, depending on gameplay reasons that they need. They don't do that either. They just come in and say, hi, guess what? We're a Dragon Ball game. You should buy us and then you should fight.
But I get. I feel like the central point that we keep going back to is just. It isn't a Dragon Ball game, though, because it's. I know we speak about, you know, the plot and stuff not having any relation to it. I feel like that wouldn't be so much an issue if it was actually like a fun fighting game or if it actually felt like, you know, the moves the characters were using had some kind of relation to, like, the moves they do on the show. Because that's the thing with Dragon Ball Z is it's basically wrestling, where you're not watching it for the plot or the characters, really. You're watching it because you know all the moves. And you want to see, like, you want to see Piccolo, like, put his fingers to his forehead and do the special beam Cannon. You want to see the Kamehameha. You want to see Krillin's Destructo disk. And yet you can't do these in the game unless you, like, basically charge up and then it's just like a button press to do a special move.
And there are definitely times where I think, you know, just having a simple button press to do a special move is fine, but they are in otherwise fun games, and this one does not check that box. Yeah. Because it's just. It's very clunky, isn't it, Chris? Like, you have, I think, a handful of very basic moves, like just a chop, a kick you can fire, a generic little energy blast, but just none of it feels good to do.
I know a lot of people are going to want to come in here and just instantly blame Webfoot. Technology technologies for making a bad game. They were already working on the legacy of Goku 2. They were already a small studio and they had something else that they were working on for the PS2, Dragon Ball related. And then they had this thrown on them. So I don't want to blame the studio as much as I want to blame the specific person in the studio that decided that picking up this game for the Game Boy advance was a good idea.
Yeah, basically whoever looked at and said, yeah, yeah, we can turn that around pretty easily. Six months is ridiculous. And that's a number I've seen thrown out by multiple people on how long they had to turn around this game. And that was while also doing legacy of Goku 2.
Yeah. And you can definitely tell because there's just so many cut corners in this game. Like, from what I've read, I feel like fundamentally the problem is because they had such a short Turnaround, they used 3D models from a different game they were working on and just tried to like back engineer them into sprites. But that just works in some cases better than others. I think Goku looks okay. Piccolo kind of looks okay, but for some reason moves like a hermit crab. Vegeta, like permanently has his face stuck up in the air and is like sashaying about and then, oh my God, the sky just moved. The sky battles, Chris, did you know.
The sky is yellow? Yeah, the sky is yellow and full of people who look like they are just having seizures fighting each other.
The sky battles, I think are some of the coolest things in Dragon Ball. Whether you're looking at the anime or in any of the other fighting games, just being up there, having the freedom to go in two and a half or three dimensions, depending on what kind of game you're playing there. And this one, I mean, I want to give it some. I keep wanting to give it slack because it's on Game Boy advance and I keep. Want to give it slack because of the turnaround time. And you know that the things that they were able to get, if not right in the right direction, were good with this. You know that the people working on it cared and wanted to make something good and they just, they couldn't. And that's. It's not their fault that somebody put them in this kind of situation.
It isn't. I do feel bad for them, but at the end of the day, you can only judge it based on the finished product. And as to you, there was a point about, well, it's just on gba kind of what do you expect I do actually have the perfect counter for that, which is one of my favorite games growing up, Tekken advance, which is a very similar game in terms of kind of taking 3D models this time from the game Tekken 3, and sort of trying to make them sprites. And again, it looks kind of similar in that, you know, they're a bit blurry, but, oh, my God, it plays so much better. Chris, like, there's just. It feels fluid, it feels fast. The characters all feel very different. Like, Forest Law, who's a Bruce Lee guy, he is very, like, fast, Rapid strikes. Jack, too, who's a robot, is very big and heavy. You've got King, who's a wrestler. He's got lots of grapple moves. And, like, they all have different moves and they all have special moves that are part of just their regular move sets, not just a thing you have to charge up.
I knew that Tekken advance existed because I had seen it just like covers of it and stuff flowing through stuff. I haven't had any experience with it. I'm. I mean, I'm not much of a Tekken person, just because there's only so many different fighting game franchises you can get into, and all my slots have been filled. But I went and looked it up real quick just to see when it came out. And I was expecting to find like 2005, 2009, somewhere, like in that range. 2001, they made tech in advance and it was that much better. And they had it out two years earlier, which meant they were probably working on it at least three years earlier.
Yeah, literally, you could have just taken that game, painted Jin's hair yellow, said he's Goku, and just released that as a Dragon Ball game. And Infograms was publishing it in Europe. They published some Dragon Ball stuff. I think they had lost the license by 2003, and Namco could have just looked into the future and seen that they were going to merge with Bandai anyway. God, Namco should have just made this game.
I think the best thing about this game, which I'm saying completely seriously, was that I was trying to play it on my computer and I was trying to get the emulator situation set up. And once I got past where I could press start, I had a screen that popped up and said, this game is not compatible on this hardware. Great. Sounds like you had a much more fun time with it than I did.
I fully 1000% agree with that. And I'm going to throw. If I remember, I will throw a picture of that screen in the show notes just because I think it's hilarious that no matter what I couldn't get it to go. And I was assuming it was just a region thing. I have multiple regions of the game. None of them would work. And I have no idea why other Game Boy advance games will work. I have no idea why this one wouldn't. Unless it just knew how bad it was and refused to work because it was so disappointed in itself.
Yeah, yeah. You've got the emulator with like the built in Clippy that just says it seems like you're trying to play a terrible game. Let's not do that. That would be. I would actually love to see Clippy pop up and tell me that on this because that would be hilarious and it's about the right time frame for that to happen. This is early 2000s, prime Clippy era. I will say though, there is like one actual good thing about this game that I will give it. The music does kind of rock.
Yeah. From the videos that I was watching as I was trying to get the emulator to work, I was catching that. And the music, you know, if you're somebody who likes Game Boy advance era music and what you can do on that, because that is like video game music back then and older. It's definitely, I think, something that is either an acquired taste or you grew up with it. But if you like it, then, oh, this is so good.
It is, it's good. But it's also really bad because it means that you watch videos and you hear the music and it's so good it tricks you into thinking that the game will be good. Yeah. There is just. I don't know, the whole thing is weird. And you mentioned before that so much of the game is locked when you start playing it. That isn't inherently a bad thing, but again, you have to have a good game as the base that you're working from for that to work.
Yeah, exactly. I don't want to unlock things if the process of unlocking them is a boring slog.
Some of the things you can unlock here are just pictures of different things which. Okay, that's a pretty standard thing to be able to unlock, but you also have to unlock some of the music, which is weird to me that it isn't just unlocking a stage. Like, that's just weird. I don't know. You have to unlock different powers for people to have and different game modes. And maybe having those game modes or those powers available from the beginning could have helped save this one. I don't think so. But I'm trying to give it some glimmer of hope here.
Yeah. I mean, I think, again, even if you did have all the abilities from the start, I feel like it's just not satisfying having them as just like the super attack that you charge up. If it was one of those things where, like, you could unlock the Kamehameha and just do that as a button combo. Yeah. Maybe that would redeem the game a bit. I mean, even then, it's still fundamentally just not fun to play.
You have to unlock character bios. Like, why would you have to unlock a character bio for characters that are just inherently in the game? That's just weird.
Yeah. Because it really does make sense from either side of it. Because surely either I have bought this game knowing nothing about Dragon Ball Z, and so, like, why am I supposed to care about this game when I don't know who any of these characters are? Or I am a Dragon Ball Z fan and I don't need to unlock a thing to tell me who Piccolo is. I know who Piccolo is.
I'm trying to wrap my head around so much, and one thing that I'm really wondering is, like, what are the few tiny little things that this game gets right? Comparing it to that Dragon Ball franchise that birthed it. Yeah. I think all I've got is the music and, like, the faintest of praise. Some of the character models look all right.
I would normally try. No, I will actually come up with something else. It attempts to have sky battles. So the fact that they exist, I will give it some credit for that. They do it really horribly. But you can at least know, looking at this, that not all the battles are on the ground. Sometimes they're up in the sky.
Yeah, it's. It's something. I mean, really, Maybe that's the nicest thing we can say about this game. Is it something, at least, given the fact that they only had six months, it's kind of impressive that it's just a functional game.
I will also say it is not the game that is the worst representation of the source material that I've looked at. I think that that title is going to, at least for a very long time, belong to Snoopy Tennis only because it tells you absolutely nothing about the Peanuts characters. But that's at least a good game. Dragon Ball Z characters like to fight. This is a fighting game. Good job.
Outside of any gameplay issues or graphical issues or. Yeah, just outside of any gameplay or graphical issues, what would you say that this one gets wrong about Dragon Ball?
I mean, It's a hard question, Chris, because there's not much outside the gameplay and graphics, but I guess just fundamentally, it doesn't really understand why people like Dragon Ball Z. And one of the things I'm wondering here, because I don't know how this lines up with the timeline of the manga or the anime is like, what characters do you think are really missing from this one that were a realistic choice to be in there at the time?
Well, I think because Buu is in this and he's like the villain for the final arc. So they've had bas the whole Dragon Ball manga to choose from. And I will again circle back to. I can't believe they did not include my favorite character, Tien, because he's, like, he's a pretty core character. Like, he's one of the main antagonists turned allies in original Dragon Ball. Like, he's a pretty consistent presence in Dragon Ball Z. He also probably, for something like this, has, like, very unique, memorable moves because he's a triclops, so he's got three eyes as big. Special move is the Tri Beam cannon, where, like, he puts his finger in the triangle and blasts people.
Man, that would have been so cool. But also they would have made it look not cool at all. Yeah, it would have been cool in theory. In practice, it would have been a blurry sprite firing some kind of colored laser. If you saw somebody who you knew was trying to get into Dragon Ball or it showed some interest in it and they had this game in their hand, what would your reaction be?
I mean, obviously just grab it, rip it out. The GBA insert instead the copy of Tekken advance that I carry about with me at all times. And then probably also advise that they go play one of the Budokai Tenkaichi games. Those. Those are good Dragon Ball fighting games. Those ones where, like, you actually fly into the sky and, like, smash each other across continents and blast out lasers and, like, it's what you want in a Dragon Ball game in terms of, like, fast, like, very stylish fighting.
I had to change up that question because there's. There's like, no question here. This is not part of a primer course. And even at my most, I'm going to twist things around in a positive way and say it could be. The only way that it could be is if you would say, hey, guess what? There are some bad Dragon Ball games. This is one of them. Make sure you check with people to see if it's a good Dragon Ball game or a bad Dragon Ball game. If you're trying to use it to get into Dragon Ball.
Yeah. I mean, I would still advise, like, go on YouTube and listen to the soundtrack, because it is. It is some bangers, as the kids say. Do they still say that? I don't know. We're so old. I know. I felt myself age 100 years just by uttering it.
Oh, so what? I guess what I'm really wondering now is not even webfoot, because they get let off the hook here. But Bandai has to go and make a press conference apology just for this game's existence. And they do about as good a job of picking who's going to deliver that apology as they did for quality control on this game. Which Muppet are they picking to give that apology? I feel like it has to be. San Diego is going to be the most confused by just the existence of Dragon Ball.
Yeah, I'm imagining him just starting to get through it and like, wait, what am I saying? Is this real, son? The eagle is the reason that they did dubs of anime in the 90s where people would, like, hold up a rice ball and go, mmm, this is a delicious hamburger. See, there's another positive thing we got out of this game's existence. All thanks to the Muppets. Yes. Yes. The idea of Sam the Eagle watching Dragon Ball Z has greatly amused me. Some good has come from this episode. Chris. Thank you.
Well, Andrew, if people want to hear you talk about more good things or not so good things as some horrible guests of your podcast have forced you to endure, where else can they hear you around the Internet?
Yes, you can find me on the podcast. Behold. Available wherever you get your podcasts. We talk all things kind of comic book movies and TV shows. We watch them, we rate them. Sometimes Chris comes on and makes me watch Fanfostic. We have a bad time and then a good time talking about it. I mean, I say I inflicted mad and wear on myself, so I can't really blame you for anything anymore. Yeah, but I had already broken the seal on you watching horrible things, so it's still my fault.
That's true. It's. It's one of those things where it's like, well, I've seen fanfopstick. Now there's no more horrors left to surprise me. Challenge accepted. If you want to find out for yourself, then at some point in the future, you'll be able to check out a link down in the show notes. Because clicking links is so much easier than trying to remember how to spell things. Or if you have picked a Very common word for the name of your podcast.
Yes. As someone who works in search engine optimization, I did not optimize the name of my show for search engines. Well, at least you make a good show. Yes, we made a good show, which is not, and I repeat not about like Christianity and saints and things. That is a different podcast. Don't listen to that one, army do listen to that one if you want, but also listen to my one, please.
Like I said, links down in the show notes. Clicking links easier than spelling. Yay. As always, if you want to hear more from me, the best place to do that is over on playcomics.com where there's links to all the social media things, which is pretty much just blue sky because I'm picking my one and I'm sticking with it. If you want to be like Andrew and be on the show yourself, then there's a list of things that I'm looking to get booked the soonest. You can find a link to that down in the show notes or you can also find it on the website on the be a guest page, you know, but you know, show notes. Actually look at them maybe, please, and see if there's something on there that catches your eye or maybe reminds you that you have a friend that really likes this old manga thing that I'm still trying to find a guest for. That would be really great and I would love you forever in the most non creepy way ever. If you want to help support the show, then you can, you know, do those things or you can give the show money because it does cost money to run a podcast. Could be like, oh, no lit class and Dan McMahon if you want to do that. Or you can just share the show with other people and, you know, make sure that it gets more listeners and stuff because that makes me feel better about myself. And really that's what we're all here for, is to make me feel better about myself and not about any of the topics or the guests that I have at all. I cannot believe I got through that without cracking myself up. Don't forget, the Play Comics is a part of the Gun of Geek network, home to such wonderful shows as Legends of SHIELD where we are continuing to go look at things released in the greater market Marvel Universe. And you know, it's a fun time, so you should go check it out. Plus, I'm on it. If the big draw for you to listen to that is me, then first off, what is wrong with you? Because the other hosts on that show are great too, but you can hear more from me. When Carrington and I actually get sugar spite and everything is fine going, we run into some real life timing difficulties. So we're holding off on releasing like the one episode that we have ready to go. But it's going to be happening. It's just a matter of when. Right now. If you like the music that I'm rudely talking on top of right now, then head on over to BackingTrack GG and check out all the great music over there that you can use for your own project. I'm gonna selfishly say don't use this song, but you really could because there's nothing stopping you besides the fact that I'm saying please. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics and go find yourself a new favorite character. So, Andrew, what is it that made you agree to come talk about a dragon ball game?
It's. It's because I love to rock the dragon, Chris. That is so cool. Because dragons are cool and balls are good. That's not staying in. But it'll go at the end. No, that's. That's going in a direction we don't want to set things in. We're not gonna go there.