The Hall of Shame 08.22.07: Dragon Ball GT - Final Bout

Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 08.22.2007

This game sucks dragon balls

It's amazing that years after Dragon Ball Z ended in America, there's still more and more video games coming out based on it. You wouldn't know it looking at the amount of games today, but there was once a time where there was barely...scratch that, there was NO Dragon Ball Z games in America, unless you count the mostly forgotten NES game based on the original Dragon Ball and the DBZ arcade fighter that somehow made it's way here. That's right: one of the most popular animes of all time that other popular animes were heavily inspired by (as in Naruto, One Piece, Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach...you know what, just about any non-sports action series in Shonen Jump) had no recognizable video games that everyone was buying. If you wanted Dragon Ball Z action, you'd have to import/get roms of the SNES fighting games.

It wouldn't be until late 2002 when we FINALLY had a Dragon Ball Z fighting game we can play on our consoles, DBZ Budokai. It was met with a mixed reaction. DBZ fans called it a great game, while non fans called it a bad game. X-Play had tons of hate mail for giving this a 2 out of 5. Looking back on it now, Budokai really was a bad game. But DBZ fans didn't care. You could say it's because they're a bunch of fanboys who like everything DBZ, but I feel it was more like we were in a desert of no DBZ games for years, and then we finally reached that oasis known as DBZ Budokai and drink every bit of water we can, even if it tasted like piss.

But there was another reason DBZ Budokai was seen so favorably. It was because compared to the last fighting game that had the words "Dragon Ball" in it, it was a huge improvement. That's because this game was a bad fighting game even if you were a fan, and it's pretty hard to be a fan of this one seeing how it's based on the worst of the Dragon Ball trilogy. This is Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout.


Trunks has no idea why he's in this crappy game

DBGT: Final Bout was released in America in 1997, where DBZ's popularity was pretty mild since Funimation had yet to take over the dubbing. In fact, by this time a lot of fans probably had no idea what the hell Dragon Ball GT was, so releasing in America at that time was a very confusing decision. So confusing that a lot of people often mistake this game for Dragon Ball Z: Final Bout. Anyways, this was your typical fighting game. Play as the characters from the show, set up a tournament mode, fight some of your friends, etc. It was a pretty bare bones game. Only this one sucked...BADLY.

First of all, this game is slow. Unless you're holding down the fly button, the characters walk up to each other at a very slow pace, so right away we already have a problem with this game. Then there's the actual fighting which is even worse. What's the most important feature of any fighting game? The controls! What's the point of having all those cool combos and Super Arts if trying to pull them off is frustrating because the characters are slow as hell?! You'll likely just be using some energy beam that the CPU will somehow counter and you'll have to constantly press buttons to overpower them. Usually that's supposed to be the best part of the game, but here it feels so lame. You fire an energy beam that makes it go to a cutscene, then the beam stops just inches before your foe like time is freezing, and they fire their energy beam. Although the CPU makes it look easy, countering is actually quite a pain in the ass that you'll be lucky to pull it off. In fact, you'll be lucky to be able to pull off anything outside of the standard punch, kick, and energy attacks.

The graphics are bad even for a Playstation game as the characters movements seem so jaggy and the backgrounds are uninspired. The sound is pretty good, but the camera...dear lord that camera is just random. For no reason sometimes the camera will suddenly zoom in and center on one of the characters getting attacked or change it's position so you almost have no idea what the hell you're doing. So really, the challenge isn't in defeating your opponent, it's trying to play the damn game with slow as hell characters, a terrible control scheme, and a camera that decides to move all around the place to the point where you can't see what you're doing!

So when this is the only Dragon Ball related fighting game that we had that wasn't a rom, Budokai just seemed so much better. But even with the slowness of this game, that wasn't even the worst part. One of the biggest complaints in DBGT Final Bout was the character roster, another big importance in a fighting game. If there's one thing that nearly every fighting game has done, it's have two characters on the roster who are clones/very similar to each other. Street Fighter has Ryu and Ken, Mortal Kombat had Scorpion and Sub-Zero in the old days, and King of Fighters has Iori and Kyo. Smash Brothers Melee has 6 characters who were basically copies of their original counterparts. So of course DBGT would have some cloned characters, but unlike the previous games mentioned, the cloning in this game was terrible. Here was the playable character roster for Final Bout. See if you notice any names pop up more then once:

1. Goku
2. SSJ Goku
3. Son Goku (DBZ Version)
4. Chibi Goku
5. SSJ Chibi Goku
6. Trunks
7. SSJ Trunks
8. Future Trunks (DBZ Version)
9. Vegeta
10. Gohan (DBZ "Mystic" Form)
11. Pan
12. Piccolo
13. Frieza (Appeared in later saga)
14. Cell (Appeared in later saga)
15. Kid Majin Buu (Never in GT)
16. Vegetto (Never in GT)
17. SSJ4 Goku (Hidden through code)

So even though there are 17 characters in this game, 6 of them are Goku! For a Dragon Ball game, this is one of the worst rosters ever. I mean, what exactly was the point in separating Goku and Trunks' Super Saiyan forms into different characters and yet not making them any different at all? Why couldn't they have just included a transformation move? Even though cloning a character isn't new, they just went completely overboard with Goku. Imagine if in Super Smash Brothers, you had Mario, Dr.Mario, Raccoon Mario, Metal Mario, Paper Mario, and Fire Flower Mario all as separate characters that did basically the same thing. Suffice to say, Smash Brothers would suck.

Another problem with this roster that I've pointed out is that some have been imported from DBZ that never appear in DBGT. What exactly is the point of calling this a Dragon Ball GT game if you're going to use characters from the other, more popular series in the first place? You might as well have called it a DBZ game rather then a DBGT game. Frieza and Cell appear in GT, but this game was based during the Baby Saga and they didn't show up yet. Some who do appear in GT are in their DBZ form rather then their GT form. This roster needs a serious fix, so based on making this a pure GT game based on the Baby Saga, here's how I would've made the roster:

1. Chibi Goku – The series had Goku turn back into a kid, he STAYS a kid!
2. Pan – GT character.
3. Trunks – GT character.
4. Uub – GT character, yet for some reason he got left out of the roster.
5. Vegeta – GT character.
6. Piccolo – GT character.
7. General Rilldo – A semi-major villian they fought before Baby.
8. Goten – GT character.
9. Gohan – GT character.
10. Fat Majin Buu – This form of Majin Buu was still around until merging with Uub to make him stronger, so he should be in.
11. Baby – He's the damn villain they faced after all! In Final Bout you only fought against his Oozaru form as the final boss, and here I'd make it so you can play as him in his second form. Probably hidden as well.
12. SSJ4 Goku – Even though it's a second Goku, this one was special because he looked and fought differently, plus he was a hidden character through code.

See? Without using DBZ guys and cloned SSJ forms, we've got a decent 12 character roster based on the show. If Bandai had waited a bit longer however, we would've had more characters to throw in like the returning villians from hell, Super Android 17, and SSJ4 Vegeta. Because after the Baby Saga, the series ended pretty quickly.

So before Budokai, this was the only game us DBZ fans had, and if we didn't get one of only 10,000 copies when it originally came out, we'd have to bid over $100 for it on eBay! But after Budokai came out and a reprint in 2004, DBGT: Final Bout's price these days is about $20. But now with other DBZ fighting games to choose that are much better then the original Budokai AND include the roster of DBGT characters, why waste your money on this piece of crap?

Personally I would try gathering the dragon balls and wish this game never existed along with Funimation's "lost" DBGT episodes, but unfortunately, the balls are inert.