Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Officially Revealed

After being announced back in March, Bandai Namco’s new Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichigame officially has a name. It’s called Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, a name which was spotted not long ago via trademarks that were shared online. This reflects the way that the Budokai Tenkaichi games have been titled in Japan over the years, and for those who were waiting on Budokai Tenkaichi 4 which would’ve been the next game in the series if it’d followed those naming conventions. Unfortunately, the game itself does not yet have a release date, but the Steam page says that it’s “coming soon.”

Considering how the initial reveal of the game offered barely anything to go off of with only confirmation of a new Budokai Tenkaichi game given at the time, this reveal at The Game Awards offers us our best look at the game yet. It also confirmed a number of fighters from across the Dragon Ball franchise who’ll be making appearances in the games including Goku, Vegeta, Broly, Piccolo, Krillin, Gohan, Android 18, Majin Buu, Jiren, Android 17, Trunks, Cell, Bergamo, and more. Of course, different variants of them like Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan Blue were revealed throughout the trailer, too, though it’s unclear if those will be totally separate characters like they were in Dragon Ball FighterZ or if they’ll be transformations for characters during a match, but it’ll likely be a mix of both.

“Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero takes the legendary gameplay of the Budokai Tenkaichi series and raises it to whole new levels,” a preview of the new Dragon Ball game teased. “Learn and master an incredible roster of playable characters, each with signature abilities, transformations, and techniques. Unleash the fighting spirit within you and take the fight to arenas that crumble and react to your power as the battle rages on. Shake the earth. Break the heavens. Make yours the destructive power of the strongest fighters ever to appear in Dragon Ball!”

Because the game has technically just now been fully revealed, we don’t know much yet about specifics in terms of how the mechanics of this fighting game will differ from other Dragon Ball games. The Steam page that’s live for it now teases things like dash attacks, beams and projectiles, and “planet-razing ultimate attacks” which does sound a lot like other Dragon Ball games, but the Budokai Tenkaichi name will carry a lot of weight here in getting eyes on the game even if the name’s been redone now. It’s developed by Spike Chunsoft, the same studio that worked on other fighting games like Jump Force and One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero does not yet have a release date, but the game is scheduled to release for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC platforms.