Compared to the dire days of Battle of Z and Ultimate Tenkaichi, the last decade has been incredible for games. We’ve been feasting for some time thanks to , Kakarot, and especially FighterZ but, as great as those games a🍸re, something has been missing - Budokai Tenkaichi.

As great as those Dragon Ball games are, we’ve been asking for a Budokai Tenkaichi and another chance to break con𒁃trollers during Beam Clashes for as long as I can remember, and the start o൲f this year finally confirmed that our wish to Shenron was coming.

I’ve been excited about the new Budoaki Tenkaichi since it was announced, but even with my blind loyalty to anything dee bee zee, I’ve held myself back from getting too thrilled until we saw more. Sure, this new game was wearing a gussied-up version of Budokai Tenkiachi’s skin, and it certainly looked the part, but could it ever live up to all the years of hype and expec🐻tations?

It seeme﷽d impossible. Having bombastic battles and going back to the 3D arena fighter style of Budokai Tenkaichi was easy enough, considering XenoVerse was halfway there with some wonkier combat mechanics, but the big appeal of the series has always been its at-the-time record-breaking roster size of 161 characters (including transformations). That roster is made up of Dragon Ball mainstays, but the real joy was being able to play as smaller less-important characters like Android 8, Kid Goku, Mr Satan, and Arale, something that newer games haven’t allowed room for.

That herculean chonker of a roster only𒉰 happened back then because it had two other games to help build it up, something that a modern entry in the series wouldn’t have after so much time without a new game. Combine that with how expensive and time-consuming games are to make nowadays, and the fact that we 🦹had no idea who was developing it when it was first announced, and it felt like a new Budokai Tenkaichi was setting itself up to disappoint.

Curse my old age for making me cynical, as the recent gameplay reveal trailer for what is now call🏅ed Sparking Zero, and all the information we’ve heard about it since, has calmed those fears. Somehow, Spikeꦯ Chunsoft has actually pul🃏led it off - Sparking Zero looks like everything we’ve ever wanted from Budokai Tenkaichi 4.

Beyond looking on par with the series’ most beautiful game, FighterZ, instead of XenoVerse’s toy-like 3D models, Sparking Zero’s gameplay footage instantly showed that, mechanically, it’s aiming to replicate and improve upon what Budokai Tenkaichi introduced. Everything that made that game what it is, like big 3D arenas, snap vanishing behind opponents, and beam clashes, are all present ♌and accounted for and with big improvements like being able to deflect attacks and curve beams to try and meet your opponent.

Put simply, Sparking Zero looks like it actually plays like a 🅠Budokai Tenkaichi game instead of just being similar to it like Raging Blast was. That’s because Spike Chunsoft is finally back at the he🐽lm, something that I doubted would happen after the disaster that was Jump Force.

Playing like Budokai Tenkaichi is just one of Sparking Zero’s many wins. It🃏’s also aiming for a “historic” roster size, indicating that we’ll have 🌸even more characters to play as than we did in Budokai Tenkaichi 3. Considering how perfect each character looks in the trailer, I’m stunned that Spike Chunsoft has set its sights so high, let alone managed to do it, but, if done right, it shows how seriously it takes doing the series justice for its revival.

The gameplay reveal trailer for Sparking Zer♔o confirmed a number of playable characters, including Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, Broly, Krillin, Trunks, Krillin, and a whole lot more.

It would have been so easy for the team to treat Sparking Zero as a reboot of the series that doesn’t aim for such a huge roster and only has the big ones you’d expect from Dragon Ball Z and Super. But with reports that it’s including fighters from Daim𝕴a, Dragon Ball, a✨nd GT, it looks like the spirit of Budokai Tenkaichi, and the thing that everyone loved about it the most, is being kept alive. It has freaking Bergamo as a playable character for the first tim🍎e in a game, so anyone and everyone is on the table.

The glimpse we got at Sparking Zero might have only been a minute long, but it was more than enough to prove to Dragon Ball fans that their wishes over the last de🐓cade and a half have been heard. There&rsqu🥃o;s still a lot we don’t know, like whether it’ll have the series’ beloved loading-screen minigames and a ton of bonus content to mess around with, but, considering all that we know so far, my doubts have been put to rest. This could be the ultimate Dragon Ball game we’ve all been waiting for.