The best Dragonball game you’ve never played.

If there was one game that should be re-released, it’s Dragonball Z: Hyper Dimension. It’s a game released only in Japan back in 1996 towards the end of the Super Nintendo’s lifetime, so this was overlooked by many while the Nintendo 64 was around.

Imagine Street Fighter II, mixed with the super combo finishes of X-Men vs. Street Fighter, mixed with Dragonball Z, and you have something close to this game.

I’m going to explain why you should find it immediately, and dedicate a weekend to it.

I first came across it back when Geocities was a thing, around 2003. Most of the sites were Dragonball fan sites, with their banners featuring many neon fonts and animated gifs ripped from other Dragonball games.

They also naively hosted SNES games to download and play on emulators of that time.

This is where I tried games such as the three ‘Super Butoden’ games, and a bizarre RPG.

But from this list I came across Hyper Dimension. Expecting it to just be another slow, awful fighting game, it was the total opposite.

It’s a game like Jedi Academy that I always come back to, if I just need to waste an hour away.

The special attacks are similar to Ryu and Akuma, with ‘desperation’ attacks ready to be used when the health bar is under 150 and flashing.

Every fight is fast paced and you can achieve attacks that will have both characters flying, either above the Earth, or to another stage. You can teleport to the background and come back with an attack, while with Goku, you can teleport to another place in the stage.

Vegitto is the most powerful, which is a fusion of Goku and Vegeta, the main characters of Dragonball Z.

You can play through story mode which mirrors the series, but you can lose fights which match the story too, which won’t result in a game over. If you win all the matches, you can face Vegitto at the end of the mode, which is a very fun time.

You can also have a ‘Team Battle’ mode, a VS mode which could be between the CPU or another player. The modes and characters are scarce, but it’s the gameplay that keeps you coming back.

Some rate Dragonball Z Budokai 3 and Xenoverse 2 as the best games to come out of the series since it’s inception as a japanese comic (manga) in the mid-eighties.

But for me, it’s Hyper Dimension that wins out.

Lots of unique combos, fast-paced rounds with challenging matches as well. It makes for an incredibly fun game which deserves to be much more well-known than it has been for the last twenty years.

Find it in any way you can, and enjoy.