The Dragon Ball franchise is one of the biggest cash cows in gaming. Thanks to its acceptance among both starter otaku and young kids, as well as long-time devotees, most of the games based on the popular anime series have given Atari a license to print money, if not at least keep them afloat during tough financial times. The series has come a long way for Americans from the days of importing 16-bit versions from the land of the rising sun to the short print run (and subsequent eBay price gouging) of Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout during the PlayStation days to the success of the Budokai series in current gen. As Budokai manages to evolve more and more like a Saiyan, some of the team's original developers decided to take things back to the essentials. And that's where the PS2-exclusive Super DBZ comes into play.

Rather than playing like Budokai, which has transformed more into re-living and re-creating the highly cinematic experiences out of the great battles from DBZ episodes, Super DBZ gets down to the essence and is all about fighting. In fact, rather than work with the Dimps team, who has been tweaking all of the current-gen games, Bandai went to Crafts & Meister, a team headed by Noritaka Funamizu, creator of Street Fighter II. The result is more of a game in which players will take on the personality of fewer characters. In essence, it feels more Street Fighter than purely button-mashing beat 'em up. Make no mistake, however: there are some lightning-quick combos that can be unleashed.

During the time we talked with lead designer Daisuke Uchiyama, he mentioned that a big part of why he wanted to create a new Dragon Ball Z fighter stemmed from the age of the Budokai series. Since the pre-teens who were playing the first game some four or five years ago (depending on what side of the Pacific those gamers were on) have now hit their teens, he wanted to make a more pure fighter that was darker and more mature to grow up with them. It didn't seem too much darker than other DBZ titles, but the influence of Funamizu on the product feels undeniable, especially when yours truly, who can't play Budokai to save his life, but who spent his adolescence at arcades playing Street Fighter II, took out Uchiyama for two consecutive matches.

If anything, the play style definitely has an old school feel to it, not quite like Tekken, but certainly not with the complexity of, say, Virtua Fighter. Players can also steal an opponent's special move and store it to a memory card, where they can load either the character's move, or the stolen special. This means that hypothetically, Frieza could steal Goku's Kamehameha and use it against him, or any opponent. In addition, Super DBZ will boast destructible environments in which few things cannot be broken by a flung opponent.

The roster will boast eighteen characters, most of whom will be unlockable, including Goku, Vegeta, and Frieza. Speaking of Frieza, as part of the hidden roster, DBZ artist Akira Torayama specially designed a Mecha Frieza outfit just for the game. In spite of the fact that he was immediately killed by Trunks on the show, the costume has been made upon the hypothesis that this character would fight the way Mecha Frieza would. Also, for the first time in any DBZ title, Chi-Chi, Goku's wife, is a playable character. While we didn't try her out personally (possibly due to desperate attempts to continue a winning streak against Uchiyama-san), she will be part of the roster.

All around, Super DBZ feels like it will be a solid fighter. If it's got anything working against it, the question of whether it will alienate both Budokai fans and old school fighting game fans who aren't into DBZ remains to be seen. Past that, the game looks visually solid, the presentation has an authentic feel to it, and the controls are fairly intuitive for any fighting game fan. The public will have its say when Super DBZ releases in July.