Thursday, April 10, 2014

Dragonball Z Super Butoden 3 (Super Famicom, 1994)

Time for the weakest game in the trilogy. It's kinda fitting, given that the Buu Saga itself is weaker than the rest of DBZ.



 We get a rad image of Vegeta at the beginning of the game. He's in Majin form here; this game takes place during the first half of the Buu Saga rather than the second. Majin Vegeta is in effect, Gohan hasn't gone mystical, and Buu hasn't yet lost weight.

Whoa! 3D Gokou! This is the only such shot in the game. A portent of the future, perhaps.

Also known as Gokou Vs. Vegeta - Tournament Fighter.

Indeed, one can set up a tournament and fight through it against the CPU or a friend. Or, alternatively...

 ...there's regular one-on-one mode where you choose your character and an opponent and have at it.

Selectable characters include SSJ2 Gohan (seen here), Goten and Trunks, the useless Kaioshin, Buu and Dabura, the perky-breasted Android #18, the oddly-SSJ1 Gokou, and Vegeta (who is likely in SSJ2 but it's hard to tell). 

Can also set the parameters for the fight and the music, as well as the stage/background.

And...that's the game. No story mode here. Just one-on-one fights with the CPU or another player until you get bored.

 The actual battle system is nearly identical to the previous game, but there are a few control improvements. It's a little bit less stiff.

 POWER UP!

Gokou lets loose with a deadly Kamehameha...

 ...and Vegeta makes it poof before it gets to him? How the hell?

Joke's on Vegeta, though, because Gokou still has a much longer reach.

Here's something you couldn't do in the previous game: Chibi Battle!

Look at the little tykes go!

 Mini-Hameha!

Meanwhile, Vegeta gets into a brutal slap-fight with Android #18.

 The animations are pretty good in this game. Just wish it had... a point. There's no real way to beat the game, unless you count fighting all the other characters.

NICE electricity crackling as...

 ...Vegeta finally does a proper Final Flash in one of these games.

Kaioshin takes on Dabura in a war of the new characters that don't really have any heat with the audience.

Gohan battles Buu, as is tradition. This would be the final battle, if the game had a story mode...

For being the final boss of the series, Buu is such an unappealing villain. He's about as threatening as Kirby.

Rather than doing a Kamehameha like in the previous games, Gohan now dishes out his real signature move, the Masenko.

For some reason it's smaller than most of the other character specials.

And...that's about it for this game. Tomorrow I'll be covering a much more substantial DBZ fighter. 

Thoughts? Leave a comment below.




3 comments:

  1. Weird how this one doesn't have a arcade mode.

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  2. Maybe they wanted to do a story mode but, like us, realized the Buu-era story doesn't make sense.
    Reach being an underrated important element reminds me of the NBA.

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  3. Fuck this game. The second game did everything better than this and that's not even including the story mode.

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