Developed by Spike and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2009, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast is a 3D Fighting game based off of the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series, but with a noticeable difference in graphics and controls, having done away with the Blast Stock system entirely, and giving players complete freedom to customize every character's move set.
The original Japanese release of the game is notable for being the first to use the updated cast from the Dragon Ball Z Kai era, as well as the final performance of the late Daisuke Gōri as the voice of Mr. Satan. The English dub of the game is notable as well for featuring the final performances of many original cast members from the dub, including Stephanie Nadolny as Gohan, Tiffany Vollmer as Bulma, and Brice Armstrong as Captain Ginyu, before they would be replaced the following the year beginning with the English dub of Kai.
It was followed up with Raging Blast 2 in 2010 for the same systems, which included additional characters from the movies (including Vegeta's brother Tarble, the rest of Cooler's Armored Squadron and Androids 14 and 15,) a re-animated version of the OVA Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, and was noted for being the last game composer Kenji Yamamoto did the music for, before the plagiarism controversy saw him removed.
In 2011, the series got a third game known as Ultimate Tenkaichi for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Despite its English title, it is not actually a part of the Budokai Tenkaichi fighting game series (internal data shows that the game's original title was going to be Raging Blast 3, but this changed sometime in development. This is further supported by the Japanese release's title, Ultimate Blast). It had brand-new 2D animation made for its opening and story cutscenes, while dramatically altering the gameplay to incorporate an attack-defense system with rock-paper-scissors which received an overall mixed reception.
Lastly in 2012, there was Dragon Ball Z for Kinect, an Xbox 360 exclusive game that used the Kinect peripheral, which was also developed by Spike Chunsoft, using the same engine as Ultimate Tenkaichi. This unfortunately received very negative reviews due to the repetitive nature of its battles, poor story mode, and unresponsive motion controls. It was also the game brought the Dragon Ball – Episode of Bardock OVA internationally, which is a sequel to Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku. This game would mark the last time Spike Chunsoft would work on the series until Sparking! ZERO.
Tropes seen used in this series include:
- Adapted Out:
- In Raging Blast 1, the Saibamen, Great Ape Vegeta, Cell Jrs., Cui, Mecha Frieza, Super Buu's Piccolo absorption, and strangely enough Ultimate Gohan are all missing from the game and its story mode. Ultimate Gohan, the Saibamen, Cell Jr., Cui, and Mecha Frieza would later return for Raging Blast 2, but Great Ape Vegeta and Piccolo-absorbed Buu are both still MIA.
- Even if you add Super Saiyan Goku to the same team as Super Saiyan Gohan and Super Saiyan Goten, there is no option to trigger the Family Kamehameha.
- Ultimate Tenkaichi has Goku vs Metal Cooler Core from Return of Cooler... but ditches everything else involving Cooler prior to that point.
- A.I. Breaker: In Ultimate Tenkaichi, Almost all AI opponents will become completely helpless if you stay directly above them at blast range, allowing you to bombard them with Ki Manipulation at will. Most characters' shots can't hit straight up at all and the the few that can won't get too many hits in compared to you shooting down (although, some characters can't shoot down all that well, either). The AI is too stupid to fly up to you or run farther away to aim.
- Animation Bump: Comparing both games with each other, the second game as a lot more flair added to it, using dynamic camera angles when performing certain attacks, and for being more fluid in animation.
- Art Evolution: While both games are rendered via cel-shading, the second game takes more inspiration from the manga art style, as opposed to the first game's basing its art on the anime.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- For something as iconic and damaging as the Kamehameha, it has a long windup time. You're better off launching it point blank after stunning the enemy.
- Piccolo and Goku's "Full-Nelson Special Beam Cannon" may deal a lot of damage, but being a Taking You with Me attack by nature, it also puts your Goku in a critical state (unless you were smart enough to equip him with an item that regenerates his health before hand).
- Like in Budokai, you can equip Goku with the Kaioken skill in order to boost his strength mid-battle, and just like in Budokai, you can stack it up to three times to further overclock Goku's abilities. However, just like in Budokai, further stacking of the Kaioken results in a faster Ki drain, and at level 3, your Ki drains quick. It doesn't help that the Kaioken also requires a certain amount of Ki to activate, so by the time you do reach times 3, you'll be left without any energy needed to pull of some of the more flashier combos.
- Background Boss: In Ultimate Tenkaichi, The giant boss battles function like this. You either have to throw Ki blasts at them when they are far away, or wait for them to do a melee attack so you can attack them directly.
- The Battle Didn't Count: In Ultimate Tenkaichi's Hero Mode The first fight against Omega Shenron is supposed to be a Hopeless Boss Fight. He's got a ton of health and hits like a ton of bricks. However, for whatever reason they decided to make it possible to beat him (possibly due to gameplay limitations, or maybe just laziness). The following scene still plays out the same way regardless of if he curbstomped you or vice-versa.
- Battle Intro: Which can change depending on the match up.
- Boring, but Practical:
- Like in the Tenkaichi series, the Full Power Energy Wave. Not as powerful as the Kamehameha or Galick Gun, but it charges fast.
- Goten's "Here We Go!" Super Attack has him throwing a rock at his opponent. It may have a pathetically short range and does little to no damage, but Goten launches the attack immediately when commanded, and should it hit, it can instantly knock his opponent down, making it a perfect combo breaker.
- Calling Your Attacks: Zig-zagged, as some moves are named after a quote the user has said in the anime/manga. This includes Super Buu (Gohan Absorbed)'s "Destroy Everything!" and Raditz's "I Am A Top-Class Warrior!". But in a more straightforward aversion, Trunks doesn't say "Burning Attack" whenever he launches it, he just says "It's over!"
- Character Customization:
- Aside from editing an item deck which can improve a character's stats, you can also freely edit their move set, allowing you to suit each character towards your playstyle.
- Before Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Ultimate Tenkaichi is the first Dragon Ball Z fighting game to feature a original character customization, allowing players to create their own characters (albeit limited to Saiyan males of three body types).
- Combination Attack: In team battles, having certain teammates when performing a certain Super/Ultimate Attack will have the boost prompt be replaced with an Assist prompt. Inputting it before the attack launches will grant you a new move to use, such as Piccolo and Goku's "Full-Nelson Special Beam Cannon" or 17 and 18's "Non-Stop Violence".
- Goku is a bit of an odd case. If Krillin is alive and Goku falls in battle, then pressing the Assist prompt will trigger the "Fusion Spirit Bomb", in which Krillin launches the Spirit Bomb ultimate at the enemy. If Kid Gohan is also on the team, inputting the Assist prompt again will transform it into "Spirit Bomb Push Back", where Gohan deflects it back at the enemy after Krillin's initial shot misses.
- Continuity Cameo:
- Even though you can't play as him, Ultimate Gohan does appear briefly in the first game when activating Super Buu's Gohan transformation. However, he's rendered as The Faceless, so all you see is a crop of him struggling before Buu takes full possession of him.
- Hercule also appears with Jimmy Firecracker as Combat Commentators if you play though the Cell Games with the Fight Commentary on. Hercule even refers to the winning player as his "top apprentice" (Yes, this even applies if you win as Cell).
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The Tenkaichi games had ki charge being mapped to L2, with R1 and R2 being used to fly and descend, circle was guard and the right stick was for camera control, transforming, fusing and character switching. Raging Blast placed Ki charging on the down D-Pad, camera control was mapped to the left and right D-Pad, R2 is now used for transforming and character switching, L1 and L2 now controls your elevation, circle was now used for performing signature skills, R1 is used for guarding and super attacks went from pressing L2+Triangle while moving in a certain direction to being entirely placed on the right stick.
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: In Ultimate Tenkaichi's Hero Mode, After defeating Omega Shenron, no matter how badly you beat him and no matter how high your stats are, he'll strip you of the Dragonballs you've gathered, re-scatter them, then vanish, forcing you re-find the Dragonballs and re-fight most of the missions. Witness Lanipator's Angrish filled reaction to this here.
- HP to One: As with all games, Majin Vegeta's "Final Explosion" and Super Buu's "Revenge Bomber" can instantly leave you with 1 HP left to spare, making them Awesome, but Impractical. They're better off being used as a flashy finisher instead.
- It Amused Me: In Ultimate Tenkaichi's "Hero Mode", the reason the Earth gets thrown into chaos with the Black Star Dragon Balls is because Omega Shenron thinks, quote, "peace is boring". Finding out that all of this destruction and suffering is for such a frivolous reason is what pushes the custom character to his Rage Breaking Point and allows him to turn Super Saiyan.
- Guide Dang It!: Due to the open ended nature of Galaxy Mode, unless you have a guide on hand, you'll be going back and forth on a lot of maps in order to try and find that one character, move, or item missing for 100% Completion sake. The "Negate Near-Death" items are the worst, as there are three different items that are all functionally similar, but can only be used on certain challenges, and they're spread out across three different Galaxy Maps. The game never tells you this, by the way.
- Joke Item: The "Seal Breaker" item description says "Equip this and something may happen..." All it just does is remove the scouter and hats from the characters that has them. To make it even worse, this item is one of the choices you can wish from Shenron...
- I Just Want to Be Free: The entire base for the What If fight "Freedom", where Broly fights Dr. Gero to break out of his mind control to regain his sense of self. Gero, naturally, thinks he can take Broly in a fight.
- Limit Break: Hi-Tension mode.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: Zig-Zagged. If you select any character/transformation/fusion, then you have to sit through a small transition before getting what you wanted. If you choose a character/Transformation that's blinking, however, then the switch/transformation is instant, not breaking up the pace of the fight.
- Luck-Based Mission:
- Unintentionally, certain fights in the first game's story mode can fall under this. There will be times where after a cutscene, the game will transition to you activating a Super or Ultimate attack. However, unless the scripted event has the opponent to do the same for a beam struggle, then be prepared for the AI to straight up dodge the attack with no warning, especially on higher difficulties.
- Perfect Action commands are optional, but certain Mission Objectives requires all of them to be successfully pulled off just to complete it. These prompts can show up without prior warning and can disappear in an instant, so if you don't have the Ki to pull it off right away, then you'll have to restart the fight all over again.
- Mondegreen Gag: Like in the other games, Goten will mistake Broly's "KAKAROT" shouting as "Carrot".
- Market-Based Title: Ultimate Tenkaichi is known as Ultimate Blast in Japan.
- Multi-Slot Character: Both games attempted to circumvent this by giving characters like Goku the ability to customize their skills to use ones that span across the entire series. That said, this is still present.
- Gohan is again split between Kid, Pre-Teen, and his Teenaged selves, but oddly his Ultimate transformation wasn't included anywhere in the first game. The sequel would add Ultimate Gohan and Future Gohan from Trunks' timeline as separate playable characters.
- Vegeta is split between his Saiyan-Namek Saga self, Cell-Buu Saga self, and Majin Vegeta.
- Future Trunks is split as two characters again, classified by whether he uses a sword or not.
- Unlike BT3, only Fat, Super, and Kid Buu are present in Raging Blast.
- The games includes two What If? forms, where both Vegeta and Broly achieved Super Saiyan 3; in canon, they never unlocked this form, and perhaps to reflect this, Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta and Broly are treated as their own characters rather than transformations.
- Raging Blast 2 would make Frieza and Cooler playable alongside their cybernetic counterparts, who are given seperate character slots.
- Mundane Made Awesome: One What If in the first game had Goku and Goten fighting against Vegeta and Trunks because Trunks took some of Goten's candy without asking, and the ending dialogue after the later family apologizes to the former has the narrator state that "the future of Goku and Vegeta's family picnics have been secured".
- Mythology Gag: Quite a few in these games, much like its predecessors.
- If by chance, one of the match ups in the World Tournament is Goku vs. Piccolo, then the World Tournament Announcer will be given extra lines detailing his excitement over Goku and Piccolo Jr.'s fight.
- Raditz's "I Am A Top Class Warrior!" Super Move has him appearing behind his opponent to strike them down with his elbows, the same way Raditz knocked out Goku and Krillin in his initial appearance.
- If Goku's "Angry Kamehameha" connects, then his opponent will react the same way Frieza did when he was caught in the blast.
- Final Form Frieza's "I Won't Let You Escape With Your Life!" Super Attack is in fact the same move Frieza used to kill Krillin.
- Majin Vegeta's Final Impact will cause anyone caught by the beam to slowly spin out before the screen fades to black, similar to how Majin Buu reacted when he was hit by it.
- Many team attacks fall under this trope, which include Goku grabbing the opponent in an arm lock as Piccolo fires his Special Beam Cannon ("Full-Nelson Special Beam Cannon"), 18 and 17 obliterating their opponent with the Dead End Rain ("Sadistic Dance"), Goten or Gohan backing up their brother with their Super Kamehameha ("Bros. Kamehameha") and even completely replicating the scene where Goku gives Krillin the Spirit Bomb to toss when he gets critically injured ("Fusion Spirit Bomb").
- Non-Dubbed Grunts: Ultimate Tenkaichi's US version only dubbed new dialogue, but recycled voice clips for the grunts from previous games. This is actually normal, but it was jarring here since it was right after
some voices had changed, meaning some characters (such as Gohan, Frieza, Android 18, Ginyu, Burter, Jeice, etc) have separate voice actors for dialogue and grunts/screaming/attack calls. - No Fair Cheating: If you are doing a team challenge where your team's total Power Points must be lower than the limit provided, then the game will remove the option to edit a character's deck when selecting a custom slot.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Unlike with the first game, Raging Blast 2 doesn't have a story mode whatsoever, instead containing a "Galaxy Mode", which are a series of fight to complete, some with certain conditions (defeating the enemy team under a timer, your health constantly draining, etc.), all tailored to each character.
- Power Creep, Power Seep: With the right items, you could have someone like Yamcha go up against Broly and win.
- Press X to Not Die: Ultimate Tenkaichi has this as its main mechanic, combined with Luck-Based Mission and Overly Long Fighting Animation.
- Purposely Overpowered: The Downloadable Content for the games are not extra characters, but are in fact overpowered versions of the base game's characters, having their Battle Points cap out at 99!. In fact, one of the Super Saiyan 3 Broly can even one-shot every character in the game should any of his Super/Ultimate Attacks connect!
- Re-Release Soundtrack: Raging Blast 2. Following Kenji Yamamoto's termination, future copies of the game were reprinted to replace the entire soundtrack with the one from Budokai Tenkaichi 2.
- Signature Move: Every fighter has a Signature Skill (activated with the Circle/B button) that may sometimes not be as flashy as their Super Moves, but can help out with chaining combos.
- Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Surprisingly for a Dragon Ball game, not a single Ultimate Attack is capable of destroying the arena, at all. Which makes moves like Frieza's "Destroy the Planet!" false advertising.
- SNK Boss: Good lord, the enemies you fight in Extreme Battle mode are single-handedly frustrating, but bonus point goes to Goku, the last enemy you face. His basic Ki attacks deal enough damage to shave off two-thirds of a health bar, he dodges every attack even when stunned, charges fast, his Super Attacks all hit like Saiyan Pods to the face, has nearly 7 Health Bars, and he starts the match off in Hi-Tension Mode, meaning if you don't get out of the way as soon as the fight starts, chances are he'll nuke you to HIFL with a Super Spirit Bomb.
- Spectral Weapon Copy: Custom characters in Ultimate Tenkaichi don a spectral sword in order to use Future Trunks', Janemba's, and Dabura's special attacks. Oddly, this is even the case if they have a physical sword equipped.
- Super Mode: Raging Blast 2 has the Raging Soul mode, activated by pressing R1/RB right as you charge your Ki to the max. You lose access to your Super/Ultimate Attacks, but your melee strength skyrockets in exchange.
- Theme Music Power-Up: Activating Raging Soul mode in 2 will stop whatever song is playing at the moment and replace it with "Battle of Omega" ("Gatebreaker" in the reissue copies) for as long as the mode lasts.
- To Create a Playground for Evil: The Big Bad of Ultimate Tenkaichi's "Hero Mode" used the Dragon Balls to make the world a hellhole, purely for his own amusement. At one point, your character meets the Androids, who like the world as a hellhole and in fact are looking for the Dragon Balls so they can make it even worse.
- Unblockable Attack: You can invoke this by equipping the "#18's Kiss" item, which makes that character's Ultimate Attack this trope.
- Both Sword Trunks and Fighter Trunks have this for their signature skill, with the former being a 5-hit sword combo and the latter being a single chargable punch.
- What If?: Like in BT3, there is a whole saga dedicated to these scenarios in the first game, such as "What if Videl became one of Piccolo's students?", "What if Trunks went back in time to train with his child self?" and "What if Vegeta and Broly achieved Super Saiyan 3?"
- Wolverine Publicity: Broly in the first game, being on the box art right next to Goku, and for being the only movie adapted for this game.
- Likewise, Gogeta gets this treatment in the first game as well, being part of the roster despite Fusion Reborn not being adapted. He even has two What If? scenarios involving him squaring off against Vegito.
