Ya know, it’s still kinda crazy to me that Arc System Works, one of the most well-regarded fighting game developers of the last twenty years, actually took a stab at a licensed 2.5D Dragon Ball brawler. A match truly made in fans’ wet dreams. While ArcSys are no stranger to licensed games, what's weird about FighterZ is that it feels like such an outlier compared to their usual style.
Especially in their original IPs, ArcSys typical favour extremely loud, bold, over-the-top character designs, each one a unique snowflake you could recognise by silhouette alone. You can expect to see some pretty-boy swordsmen with too many belts, a deployment of standard issue waifus with weapons larger than their body mass, and a helping of conceptually bizarre freaks that make the Darkstalkers cast look tame in comparison. With lovingly crafted 2D character sprites — or more recently, 3D models painstakingly made to look like 2D sprites — their games very much define the look and feel of "anime fighters" as a sub genre.
Alongside Hokuto no ken, Dragon Ball is one of the oldest franchises ArcSys has worked on. Both series have more than their share of cool, over-the-top designs, but are generally more grounded than the usual "hyper anime" style ArcSys are most partial to. Hokuto no Ken is mostly all ripped muscles, biker leather and shoulder pads (with the occasional fat bastard like Mr. Heart), whereas Dragon Ball is all orange Kame gi, spiky hair and shoulder pads (with the occasional fat bastard like Majin Buu). Comparing them to "modern" animesque designs from Guilty Gear and BlazBlue is like comparing Walt Disney to Terry Gilliam — the styles broadly fall under the same categorisation, but closer inspection reveals they aren’t that similar at all.
With Dragon Ball, you also have the elephant in the room: the fact that so many characters look exactly like Goku. I’ve seen many fighting games players that were unfamiliar with Dragon Ball criticise FighterZ for this, as if it’s something the developers had any control over, lmao. Curiously, the developers went the route of splitting the Super Saiyan transformations into separate character slots. They rarely create offshoot characters like that unless there's a clear narrative reason and the "transformed" versions are visually different enough to justify a separate slot (e.g. Holy Order Sol from Guilty Gear XX Slash). Since this is the approach taken by many other recent Dragon Ball games, I believe this was a decision from Bandai Namco rather than Arc System Works.
In terms of licenced games, ArcSys have recently tackled RPG game adaptations with Granblue Fantasy Versus and DNF Duel, which feel more in line with their usual style. They've recently said that they want to be more proactive in working with more IP holders, so that begs the question: what's next?
Most Western fans want them to tackle the other popular shōnen manga franchises, mostly from WSJ) — Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, etc. The usual suspects. Or better yet, a 2D tag team crossover between all of them, which would be quite nice. While all of those are high possibilities and I’m sure the Arc Sys devs would be ecstatic to work on any of them, I think they also like to go for slightly more offbeat IPs that allow them exert more creative freedom. They came up with some funny, creative ideas for their Granblue game (e.g. Lowain's victory poses reveal that the in-game matches are fake self-aggrandising stories he tells to his bros at a café). While they were allowed to do some offbeat stuff with Dragon Ball as well, I think Namco hamstrung them to follow certain rules, like to always promote the most recent series or movie with the DLC. Of course, ArcSys always gave it 110% effort. I imagine similar rules would apply if they were to adapt the neighbouring Jump franchises.
I personally want them to go really offbeat, maybe even diverge from their patented sprite-inspired art style. I might come back with some game concepts later, but for now, what some of project would you like to see Arc Sys tackle next?
