After yesterday's trailer for another faux videogame, Starr Mazer - I couldn't have predicted that I'd wake up to yet another amazing mockup trailer for a game that needs to be made. Hyper Dragon Ball Z is an absolutely stunning looking fighting game concept that hopes to address the issues that the franchise has had historically with their fighting games. And it just got revealed two days ago, on Akira Toriyama's birthday.
Their main inspiration being the golden age of Capcom's fighting game arcade domination in the late 90's with their CPIII titles like Street Fighter III - Third Strike and the birth of Marvel Vs Capcom. For some reason the Dragonball franchise never got a proper 2D adaptation to the bar that Capcom set during that era, and it looks like a group of hardcore fans and artists are finally setting out to fix that.
Using the open source fighting game engine known as Mugen (Quite fun to tinker with), a group of coders and animators have been at work for a few years to reach this point, showcasing some absolutely gorgeous sprite animation and fluid, fast paced combat that feels straight out of the show. One of the main concerns that the folks at Team Z2 are trying to address is capturing the cinematic action while imbuing each character with their own distinct fighting feel, an issue that has plagued recent 3D reincarnations of the series that simply relied on simply inputting button presses repeatedly.
While there might be some legal issues regarding to the licensing of this franchise, I just have to ask: Who the hell wouldn't want this? From the looks of it it's so far along that if I were Akira Toriyama, I'd bless the ever living hell out of this project to go ahead. Team Z2 has now allowed the project to go into the wild, and they've asked the help of everyone to help this project proposal go viral and get the attention of the right people. In an ideal world and a golden age of indie development, this will result in the project getting the funding and attention to go all the way, which is our hope. Go Team Z2!
This is how we envision a perfect Dragonball game. Gone is the sensation of every character being interchangeable and having the same style of fighting. Instead, we have characters with beautiful animations, cinematic moves, skillful combos, interesting movesets, unique traits and the kind of fanservice that'd make any Dragonball fan smirk. We drew from all sources and we committed to our vision, which we share with you.
The graphics have that 2D charm that, in our opinion, have been lost in the transition to 3D games. The gameplay is intense, pulse-pounding and would look absolutely amazing in fighting game tournaments such as EVO. Counters, Air Combos, Dash Colissions, Super Projectiles, Beam Struggles, a large variety of fun character introductions and winposes... it's all in there. I can see people going insane over the intense battles that are possible.
