Budokai 1 20th Anniversary Thread

[budokaifanatic007]

Budokai 1 turned 20 years old on November 2nd this week, its crazy to think its been that long since that game came into existence. I have a few early memories with this game(Specifically trying to figure out why Goku's Kamehameha was yellow lol). I wonder if Bandai Namco will do anything special on the JP anniversary date(February 13), Any memories or fun stories about Budokai 1 are welcomed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1O-_rEW000

[Bardock God of Time]

Budokai 1 turned 20 years old on November 2nd this week, its crazy to think its been that long since that game came into existence. I have a few early memories with this game(Specifically trying to figure out why Goku's Kamehameha was yellow lol). I wonder if Bandai Namco will do anything special on the JP anniversary date(February 13), Any memories or fun stories about Budokai 1 are welcomed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1O-_rEW000

I'm at least hoping for a new Budokai HD Collection:

Budokai 1 & 3 but with Budokai 2 & Infinite World added

Hope they also add more fitting OSTs that they can use

[Kokos]

Happy birthday to Budokai 1 & the Budokai series as a whole!

Some memories I have of this game, more than I thought I would have:

- The American intro cutscene being a recreation of the Rock the Dragon intro, it was really cool.

- Seeing in-game planet destruction for the first time, I didn't have any DBZ games that had this, I first saw it with Trunks' Burning Attack and thought it was awesome.

- The good looking cutscenes, it took a long time for another game to get to that level, I had no idea back then that I couldn't take it for granted.

- Struggling a lot in the Advanced Tournament, I would always get rung out by the CPU and I didn't know anything about playing well.

- Legend of Hercule & the funny dialogues, I would always get stuck on Goku and Gohan because your health doesn't replenish completely between those battle, eventually I managed to do it.

- SSJ Goku vs Frieza battles, the soundtrack and cutscenes made it epic, but it was hard to stay in SSJ form!

- Finishing off Cell in story mode with Gohan's Ultimate, which was a Super Kamehameha from the air to the ground and Cell trying to dodge it.

- Flailing around with combos just so I could fire a super from a distance There was also this glitch where if the opponent guarded your super, you couldn't finish him off with a super unless it's an ultimate. This annoyed me so many times, but I can laugh about it now

- The one special move that cost 3 bars to do a high speed flurry of physical attacks, many characters had this one. Seeing it for the first time was really cool, my favorite version of the attack is the one where you finish it of with another flurry of punches, I believe Goku and Krillin had this among others.

- Seeing how much more damage your special moves did when you equip two capsules or the Breakthrough capsule

So yeah, happy birthday to Budokai 1!

[AlexFili]

Wow has it really been 20 years? Heck, we're getting old!
I also believe it's the 20 year anniversary of Dragonball Z Legendary Super Warriors which was one of the last retail games ever launched on the Gameboy Colour. We'll have a lot more videogame milestones in the future as well no doubt!

[90sDBZ]

I first heard about the game through this TV ad;
https://youtu.be/iHUWygf2w1o

It was my first time hearing the Japanese voices, and I was taken aback by it. I'd been obsessed with the show for years, and the Fusion saga was airing around this time. I'd long fantasised about there being a DBZ game, and seeing this blew my 10 year old mind.

The only problem was I didn't have a PS2 and couldn't afford one yet. I remember seeing the game in shops and looking at the cover longingly. The PS2 still felt like this big deal next gen thing at the time, so I could only imagine how awesome the game would be.

A year went by and I saw a commercial for Budokai 2, which looked even more awesome. At this point my auntie had a PS2, so I asked for Budokai 2 for Christmas and got it, then played it nonstop on her PS2 for the next 2 weeks. Right after that I got a 2nd hand PS2 with my Christmas and birthday money, and continued playing Budokai 2 exclusively well into 2004.

Eventually I got a copy of Budokai 1 from Toys r us, and played the hell out of that too. I wasn't used to the Japanese voices (B2 actually had the dub voices), but still enjoyed the hell out of the game. The subtitles had some very weird translations which are well documented (Vegeta calling the Androids Aunt Sallies).

Also the load times on duel mode were stupidly long for some reason. The PAL version of Budokai 1 had its issues for sure, but I still go back to it from time to time.

Then in summer 2004 I got Internet access and started seeing images of Budokai 3. Never in my life have I been so hyped for a game. I followed it obsessively, read all the rumours, saw the fake great ape image, and couldn't wait to play as GT and Movie characters. When the game came out it took a few weeks to find a copy, but the excitement I felt when I spotted it in Virgin Megastore made it all worth it. It dwarfed the first 2 games, and is still one of my favourite games to this day.

I enjoyed each Tenkaichi game a lot as they came out, but always went back to Budokai 3. When Infinite World was surprisingly announced in 2008 I was ecstatic. I didn't care that it was a low budget upgrade, it was one last Budokai game by Dimps, and I had to get my hands on it. Needless to say I enjoyed the hell out of it, and had learned to do cancel combos by this point.

The HD collection was another pleasant surprise in 2012, even without Budokai 2 and the OG music. DBZ games had gone downhill at this point with the mediocre 7th gen games, so a Budokai remaster was a breath of fresh air.

[NitroEX]

The first Budokai was awesome. The story cutscenes were so well made and Kenji Yamamoto's soundtrack (in spite of the plagiarism) left a lasting impression on me as it was clearly composed with high production quality. I almost wish tracks like these (or versions of them) had been in the anime as they're iconic to me and feel integral to the series in my mind at least.

I still feel fortunate to have played the PAL version first as I grew to appreciate the Japanese performances long before the days of being able to watch the anime in its native language. Prior to that, I had only heard snippets of the Japanese cast while playing Ultimate Battle 22 and Final Bout for the PS1 (which always elicited a chuckle from me and my friends) whereas in Budokai, it was full performances that I could take seriously and I still feel they suited the tone of the game much better than the US dub.

Although, In hindsight, I do sometimes think of what could've been and part of me wishes the PAL version of Budokai had an Ocean dub as it would've been the one brief window for them to appear in a DBZ videogame (before the English games became homogenized with the US Funi cast) but I'm at least grateful for the Japanese voices in the first game as I wasn't so taken aback like US fans were years later.

I skipped Budokai 2 and eventually got Budokai 3. I loved that game too but for very different reasons (mainly gameplay related). I was still able to appreciate the first Budokai as its own thing due to the different storytelling approach and presentation.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

If you had told me at the time that the wave of Dragon Ball games that Budokai kicked off would still be going strong 20 years later, I would not have believed you. Wow.

I do not mean to be contrary for drama's sake, but I can tell you truly I never liked Budokai 1. My strongest memories are actually of its stiff controls and terrible hit detection! The story mode's presentation was novel and ridiculously detailed, (name me another Dragon Ball game that shows us Goku's hospital room after the Vegeta fight!), but the overtly blocky character models and bad Funimation cast voice overs took some of the wind out of it. It really did feel like a vehicle for that story mode at the expense of the game itself, and the recent developer interviews confirming the game was scrapped and restarted explain a lot. I do not hold that against Dimps, of course, they made things right with the sequels, and they were not the only developer to end up having to release an unpolished game as a final product.

The first Budokai was awesome. The story cutscenes were so well made and Kenji Yamamoto's soundtrack (in spite of the plagiarism) left a lasting impression on me as it was clearly composed with high production quality. I almost wish tracks like these (or versions of them) had been in the anime as they're iconic to me and feel integral to the series in my mind at least.

This I must second, Yamamoto's music was easily the highlight of that first game and stuck in my head as readily as anything from the anime. That too only got better going forward once Tower of Power got involved.

[Hellspawn28]

Hard to believe the game that help kick off the new DB game boom is now 20 years old. It was a big deal because it was the first major DB game that we had since 1997, and it was going to be on new consoles at the time. I don't think the gameplay holds up well, but the story mode was cool though.

[budokaifanatic007]

The Japanese's anniversary of Budokai is February 13th so I really hope they acknowledge it and do something special, maybe they will announce something at the Dragonball games battle hour 2023.

[Android 50]

I remember starting up the game and the intro being a 3D version of the anime intro with rock the dragon blasting out of my tv. I knew this game was gonna be something special when I saw that. Before this the only DBZ video games I had played were poorly emulated ROMS of the Super Butoden games on the school computers. So going from that to Budokai in 2002 was like when I went from my uncle's Mario Bros 2 copy to Mario 64 in 97'.

[Raki]

The only time I liked the Rock the Dragon song was in this game. So many nights as a teenager were spent with Budokai 1.

[Jord]

I remember how hard it was to maintain the transformations such as Goku's SSJ1. The KI meter drained like crazy. One punch and you're back to Kaioken....I mean King Kai fist.