Dragon Ball‘s kung-fu action lends itself well to fighting games, and so the lion’s share of the numerous Dragon Ball games over the years have been in that genre. The series’ constant emphasis on training and getting stronger also lends itself to Role Playing Games (RPGs), and so there have been a number of RPGs based on Dragon Ball over the years, as well. Several of these games have adopted the series’ battle power numbers in one way or another to make their game play system feel authentic to the series. Some of these, like the Famicom RPGs, use battle power (typically abbreviated as BP in-game) as an actual stat which directly affects the game’s battles. Others, like Attack of the Saiyans on the Nintendo DS, just use BP as a convenient label to give a suggestion for how strong characters are, while the actual stats that the game’s RPG system operates on are something else entirely. In either case, the game makers typically use the battle power numbers given in the series wherever applicable, and they even sometimes provide battle powers for characters not given specific numbers in the series or guidebooks.

The latter is what we will focus on and detail. This page is not an in-depth look at the games in question, but rather a quick look-through of what battle power numbers the various games give to characters from the main series — original characters may come at a later point in time. Most of the information here comes from the games’ Japanese Wikipedia page, as well as a guide to The Violent God, Freeza!, and a play-through of Goku Soaring Legend.

Since different games often provide wildly varying numbers for the same characters, and since many battle powers in games seem to be determined mostly for game play reasons, rather than try to pick which ones are “good enough” to use in our combined battle power list, we will leave them out entirely.

Battle Powers in Video Games

Dragon Ball Z: Assault! The Saiyans

The earliest Dragon Ball game to make use of battle powers, this one is notable for giving numbers to Garlic Junior and his henchmen — they are incorporated into the story of the Saiyan arc. It also has the two “Ancient Saiyans” from TV filler material who Tenshinhan and company fight in the past, who the game names “Pumpkin” and “Brocco” (a palette-swap of Pumpkin called “Onion” also appears). As we see with a lot of these games that use battle powers as an actual RPG stat, sometimes they change things around for the sake of gameplay. Here, Ōzaru Gohan is an even 10,000, rather than ten times whatever his regular battle power was. Also, Ōzaru Vegeta is at 70,000. This does not directly contradict anything in the manga; regular Vegeta is supposed to be 18,000 at the time, but his power drops when he produces the Power Ball, so who knows what his exact Ōzaru power is? Still, most of the games ignore that and just have Ōzaru Vegeta at 180,000.

Dragon Ball Z: The Violent God, Freeza!!

This game is essentially a sequel to Assault! The Saiyans, covering the Namek and Freeza story arcs. It is notable as the first game to use what became the standard battle powers for Zarbon’s regular form and Dodoria (23,000 and 22,000), which were eventually featured in Daizenshuu 7. Many later games use them, but the battle power for Zarbon’s transformed state varies wildly between games.

Dragon Ball Z: The Super Saiya Legend

This Super Famicom game is like a compendium of the two Famicom RPGs, and it is probably the best known of the various Dragon Ball RPGs. Appule and his anime clone Oren are used as enemies in random encounters (along with several palette swaps of themselves), and their battle power varies depending on the encounter.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Legend of Goku

These two games (“Chapter of Assault” and “Chapter of Awakening”) share the same RPG system, and cover everything from Goku meeting Bulma up to Super Saiyan Goku’s fight with Freeza. In the games, battle power is used to power your attacks and can be charged up in typical Dragon Ball game fashion. As a result, your battle power is constantly going up or down. Unlike the other games listed here, it does not seem as if too much effort was made to correlate the game’s battle power numbers with those found in the series. During his fight with Piccolo Daimaō, for instance, Goku’s battle power is around the high hundreds to low thousands (although this varies depending on how you play the game). Goku tops out at about 3 million as a Super Saiyan. As far as we have been able to discover, the games provide no information on what your enemies’ battle powers are.

Dragon Ball Z: Goku’s Soaring Legend

Released in 1994 in the later days of the series, this Game Boy RPG covers the 23rd Tenka’ichi Budōkai up through the Saiyan arc. While many video games give Raditz and Nappa’s battle powers as 1,500 and 4,000 — figures some fans take issue with — this game is unique for instead using 1,200 and 7,000. The Saibaimen are placed at 3,000 and Vegeta at 15,000, so who knows what they were thinking?

Dragon Ball Z: Goku’s Legendary Fierce Fighting

A sequel to Goku’s Soaring Legend, this covers the early Namek and Freeza arcs. Notably, 530,000 is used as the power of Freeza’s second form rather than his first, and Ginyu starts at 120,000 as in the manga, but can raise his power up to a maximum of twice that.

Dragon Ball Z: Sagas

One of the few US-produced video games, this is actually not an RPG but a 3D action game. It covers everything from the beginning of Dragon Ball Z until the Cell arc, and assigns power level numbers to all of the Saiyan and Freeza arc bosses. Notably, the game uses 12 million for full-power Freeza, a number which as detailed elsewhere in this guide originates in a fan mistranslation of Daizenshuu 7. In the game “Soba” is the name given to an inhabitant of Planet Yardrat who trains with Goku, rather than the original name given to Pilaf’s dog henchman in the manga (later changed to “Shu”).

Dragon Ball Kai: Attack of the Saiyans

In many ways this game is a throwback to the old Dragon Ball Z RPGs, as it covers the 23rd Tenka’ichi Budōkai up to the Saiyan arc, similar to Goku’s Soaring Legend. The biggest novelty here is the inclusion of characters from Goku’s childhood adventures and the filler from the end of the original Dragon Ball anime. For gameplay purposes most of these characters are far stronger than they really should be. On the flipside, Broli makes a cameo in the game and clocks in at a measly (for him) 999,999. As mentioned above, battle powers in this game are just a label used to give a sense of how strong characters are, rather than as actual stats plugged into damage formulas and the like (the real enemy stats are not given in the game and you need a strategy guide for them). The biggest example of this is that Ōzaru Vegeta is given a battle power of 180,000, while his actual stats are lower than that of regular Vegeta.