Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has exactly 182 characters in the launch lineup, a roster that’s impressive for a number of reasons. For one, having 182 fighters means Sparking! Zero has more characters to start with than any Dragon Ball game in history, and it’ll already have more characters than any of the Budokai Tenkaichi games ever got in the past. But in addition to that already notably milestone, Dragon Ball fans are now realizing that the number of characters wasn’t a coincidence at all and that it seems to be one big Dragon Ball Easter egg decades in the making.
If the 182-character roster stirred something in your Dragon Ball memories, that’s because it appears to be a callback to one of the episodes from the original Dragon Ball series. More specifically, you have to venture back to Dragon Ball Episode 84 which was titled “Rivals and Arrivals” in the English version of the show and helped kick off the Tien Saga. Krillin, Yamcha, and more arrive for the World Martial Arts Tournament and encounter Tien, Chiatzu, and Master Shen, but it’s actually from an otherwise unmemorable character that we get the Dragon Ball reference.
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Towards the very end of the episode, the announcer who welcomed everyone to the World Martial Arts Tournament thanked them for their attendance and laid out the schedule for what the tournament will look like moving forward. The announcer also said that that specific World Martial Arts Tournament would be the biggest one yet with — you guessed it — 182 fighters in attendance.
“This one promises to be the biggest yet, with a record-high attendance of one hundred eighty-two fighters,” the announcer said in the episode.
Twitter user BigMeruemFan shared a screenshot of the find to show the scene in question for those who don’t have easy access to streaming Dragon Ball. The dialogue is heard in the recap in Episode 85, but you can also hear it at the very end of Episode 84.
It’s pretty much impossible for this to be a coincidence, so we can pretty safely assume that this was the intention all along while Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero‘s roster was being finalized. You’ll see some posts from Bandai Namco saying that the game has 181 fighters at launch, but that’s only because the version of Goku from Dragon Ball Daima is considered to be the “surprise” character that’s part of the preorder bonus.
While it’s unclear when this 182-fighter goal was established, it’s likely the devs had to dig deep to make the launch roster into the Easter egg that it seems to be. We can see that through characters like Dr. Wheelo and the Frieza Force Soldier which aren’t exactly fan-favorites but apparently made the cut to make the Dragon Ball nod possible.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero will be out on October 11th, so expect to see all these 182 characters then with even more on the way afterwards as DLCs.
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