I Have A Complicated Relationship With Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero (2025)

I’ve been a grumpy old man about all things Dragon Ball for far too long. As your typical non-manga-reading, mainstream-anime-watching child of Toonami, I drew a line in the sand a few episodes into Dragon Ball Super when I first gave it a chance. I wasn’t going to continue watching because its earliest episodes didn’t feel like the action anime I’d grown up with. Likewise, before Sparking! Zero, I hadn’t played any Dragon Ball video games since Budokai Tenkaichi 3 because none of the titles released in between lived up to what I considered the IP’s quintessential fighting games.

Luckily, time is a flat circle in a culture hopped up on nostalgia, and today, I have a new Tenkaichi game in my life. But with the benefit of maturity and hindsight, I’m wondering how much good shit I’ve missed out on by being too loyal to the anime and fighting games of my childhood. Will this growth and clarity compel me to finally play Kakorot or FighterZ? (*Late Dragon Ball narrator voice*) No, probably not. But I have since powered through the somewhat juvenile opening Beerus arc in Dragon Ball Super and am mostly enjoying the rest of the show (only Master Zunō himself knows what the future holds for me and DAIMA).

While I fall deeper into the rabbit holes of both Super and Sparking! Zero, check out some of the Kotaku coverage that’s made my time with the latter that much more enjoyable.

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Yajirobe is a samurai who loves running away from fights and is generally useless except for when he’s giving Goku health-restoring Senzu beans or slicing off Vegeta’s tail. Now the “bean daddy” (not that guy) is destroying players in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero and being accused of breaking the meta in ranked matches. — Ethan Gach

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The Bean Daddy had a good run. After a week of terrorizing Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero players through his infinite bag of health-restoring Senzu beans, Yajirobe will have his stats evaluated in an upcoming balance patch, Bandai Namco confirmed. That suggests an all-but-certain nerf for the cowardly samurai currently dominating in ranked matches. — Ethan Gach

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Today, Bandai Namco has revealed the full roster for the next entry in the Budokai Tenkaichi series, Sparking Zero. And folks, there are a lot of characters in this game. A lot! There’s at least a 19 Gokus running around this arena fighter. — Zack Zwiezen

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Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero features a massive roster, with over 180 playable characters. But just like some other entries in this series, you don’t have access to them all at the start. There’s a bunch of ways to unlock them in the game, and we’ve broken them all down. — Samuel Moreno

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We recently told you about Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s wish-granting dragons, and what you might best wish from them. But what about how best to farm the dragon balls from which they appear?Getting any set of Dragon Balls can be challenging if you’re playing through the game naturally, so here’s everything you need to know about obtaining each set as easily as possible. — Luis Joshua Gutierrez

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Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero perfectly encapsulates what people love about the series: the giant energy beams, passionate screaming, and even the comedy is intact, with characters like Yajirobe creating an online meta with appropriate antics. And of course there are the eponymous mystical Dragon Balls, and the various dragons they can summon. — Samuel Moreno

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Dragon Ball Sparking Zero officially comes out later this week, but thanks to an early access period, a slew of players have been jumping into the game ahead of time. From the sounds of it, the newest DBZ title, which returns to the long-dormant Budokai Tenkaichi sub-series of arena fighters, is a (ki-)blast. It turns out that folks have missed letting loose on huge destructible stages and fully embodying the fantasy of being one of the Z-Fighters—including 19 different Gokus—as well as the rest of the series’ supporting cast. However, many players seem to be having trouble overcoming one of Sparking Zero’s comically huge hurdles, and the game’s deeply funny community is already making light of the whole affair. — Moises Taveras

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Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is a lovingly crafted tribute to the iconic franchise, its myriad of characters, and exciting attacks whose names need to be shouted. It’s a tribute so accurate that seemingly every player has been quickly stumped by Great Ape Vegeta, the most threatening villain during the series’ Saiyan Saga. It’s quite a wake-up call when the first boss-like fight in the game has you questioning how difficult things are going to get. But it can be done. — Samuel Moreno

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Flying through the sky at high speeds to lay the smackdown on an opponent is an essential part of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero. Even more so when it’s to punch a giant ape. It’s something you’ll often do between regular dashes and “rush supers.” Unfortunately, there is a notable lack of consistency when it comes to the latter, and we want to put that right. — Samuel Moreno

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The passing of legendary mangaka Akira Toriyama earlier this year forced me to weigh the importance of his work in my life. After all, my older brother had all but forced Saturday morning cartoons on me, including anime like Dragon Ball and its successors, Z and GT. But it goes beyond even the shows. For nearly as long as I’ve been consciously playing video games, Dragon Ball has followed me there too. I played the Legacy of Goku games on the Game Boy Advance back in the day, as well as the overlooked Dragon Ball Origins franchise on the Nintendo DS. And of course, like many of you, I played a number of the arena-fighting games that were released on home consoles throughout the 2000s, like the Budokai Tenkaichi subseries. — Moises Taveras

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