Dragon Ball Z

When you cross Manga animation with action-packed martial arts, you get a super cool game like Dragon Ball Z. A classic arcade-style fighting game, Dragon Ball Z uses the retro MUGEN graphics engine, and that appeals to anyone who loved classic games like Double Dragon or Street Fighter. Once you hit the Dragon Ball Z start menu, you will be given several modes to choose from. If you select Arcade, that means that you will match up in 1 vs 1 combat. Choose VS mode and that means that you will fight against your friend. Team VS means that you will team up against a team of your friends.

In Team Arcade, you will play against both the computer and Team Co-op, which means that you can stomp the computer in a tag team match up. There are options that let you configure things like the time limit, the difficulty, the sound features, and the controls as well. The cool thing about Dragon Ball Z is how you can play up to 30 different characters like:

• Maijin Buu
• Future Trunks
• Normal Trunks
• Chibi Trunks
• Gohan
• Goku

As a beginner, you may want to go straight to training mode because it lets you practice the special moves that will range from "Fist of Death" to simple karate chops. Anyone who ever played on the old Atari games will remember the special moves that involved a snap of the joystick. In addition, you can customize your own Dragon Ball Z character, but that will be limited to name and color changes.

For the most part, Dragon Ball Z works off the basis of what is called Battle Points. That means that the more you beat up your opponents, the more you win the matches. The points will let you access the "Skill Tree." When you enter into the screen, you can give your character new moves and you also collect the dragon balls. After you have collected all seven, it lets you summon the "Dragon of Shenron," known as the master of storms. Shenron will grant you one wish, and that ranges from learning new moves to designing new characters. Because of the MUGEN graphics engine, the gameplay remains classic arcade style, and the sound in Dragon Ball Z is quite excellent. You have rich sound effects like punches, retro kicks, and fireball throws.

The one negative of Dragon Ball Z is how the combat feels somewhat limited when compared with other classics like Tekken or Street Fighter. Nevertheless, for a download size of 30 MB, most gamers will get their fill. While the game developers do claim that Dragon Ball Z will work on all platforms of the Windows, some gamers have reported that anything higher than Windows 98 will start to give you problems.

Pros

• 30 Characters to choose from
• Rich sound effects
• MUGEN graphics engine

Cons

• Combat not as good as classics like Street Fighter or Tekken