The only other game I own that’s based on the original Dragon Ball series, “Revenge of King Piccolo” is essentially a Wii version of the previous game, Advanced Adventure, only focused solely on the Red Ribbon and Demon King Piccolo arcs with less modes and playable characters, BUT all in 3D, so… hooray, I guess. I brought it hoping it would be a modernised take on the GBA game but instead found a pretty safe, generic game instead. How does it hold up in 2023? Well, funnily enough, it’s much the same in that it’s a safe, generic action platformer. Let’s take a deeper look anyway… well, as deep as such a shallow game can go anyway!
Background:
Just because it skips over the original arc doesn’t mean you can’t fight a bear-man bandit with a big sword!
Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo was released in Japan first as “Dragon Ball: World’s Greatest Adventure” on July 23rd 2009, with the English language releases coming on October 20th and 30th 2009 for the US and PAL regions, respectively. It’s exclusive to the Wii and due to being a licensed game has yet to see any kind of digital re-release.
Gameplay:
Trapped with no choice but to POW! some wolves! … and a moss-covered robot with two axes?
The gameplay follows the same template as Advanced Adventure in that the core gameplay is a simple platformer crossed with a generic beat ‘em up complete with a melee combo and a chargeable Kamehameha as your only options, except this time they’re triggered via the Wiimote and Nunchuk, which is… not very fun in long play periods like so many other motion controlled games, but thankfully you can also switch to a regular control style and use the Wii Pro controller, which is what I did. The platforming would be a bit of a challenge but they put in a Sonic-style auto lock-on thing where you can press a button to head to that specific platform or enemy with a single button prompt, so good if you’re young, pretty dull for me (both then and now) There are mini-bosses and moments where you’re locked onto one screen and have to defeat a certain amount of enemies but in general it’s not super-exciting, and the level design leaves a lot to be desired.
When you have a bigger one-on-one fight though it switches to a fully 3D arena-fighter style mode, so again much like the GBA game except this time using the 3D graphics and console “power”. You have a few more combos but generally there’s a lot of button pressing and/or controller waggling and very little in the way of strategy, plus they seem to have got the health bars a bit off as a lot of the fights go on forever and a day.
I used the phrase “arena fighter” but the arenas in question are pretty damn small…
That’s it, pretty much. You can unlock a straight up VS mode called “World Tournament”, where you can play as any character that had a one-on-one segment in the game (once again, like Advanced Adventure) in both a tournament or standard VS. match up, but beyond that the only other modes are a shop where you can buy items, music and gallery pictures using Zeni you collect in the game, and a museum where you can view or listen to those same music and pictures, plus any cutscenes from the game.
Graphics and Sound:
Catching a lift in an extremely bland cave.
The graphics are pretty good for the Wii honestly, at least for the character models. They went with something in between cell-shading and regular 3D models and with plenty of black lines and detailing makes it works well. That being said the platforming levels are sparsely detailed and very generic and cheap looking, which does make them a bit more of a slog than it might have been if they were a bit more visually eye-catching.
Soundwise is good though, plenty of music from the series plus some pretty fitting new pieces, sound-effects are good and again series-accurate and the voice cast is on usual form (well, again the Japanese one, no idea on the English dub). In otherwords, pretty good on the sound front.
Story:
Is anyone ever truly prepared to die? Well, unless you live in a world where you know your buddies will revive you with the Dragon Balls, anyway…
As mentioned it focuses in on the Red Ribbon Army and Demon King Piccolo arcs, but does pay lip service to the stories before and in between via recaps and dialogue. Also like in Advanced Adventure some things are left out in order to make the game a straight adventure focusing only on Goku. Fun if you’re already familiar with the source material, confusingly brief if you’re not.
Thoughts Then:
Wait, why is the classic Red Ribbon mech browny gold rather than purple like the anime?
At the time I heard of this and saw the screenshots I was hopeful that this would be a 3D transition of Advanced Adventure but what I got instead was a really simple action platformer with a rather dull arena fighter thrown in for good measure. I enjoyed some of the cutscenes and seeing the original series get the full 3D treatment but once I’d ran through it once I never touched it again…
Thoughts Now:
Instead of physically waggling the Wiimote you instead have to waggle the analogue stick… thank God for that.
Now? It’s much the same. It’s a simple action platformer with a dull arena fighter thrown in, the only difference is that now the super-dull level designs and muddy graphics stick out to me even more. I’m happy it exists (or existed, I guess) but it’s not worth tracking down in 2023.
Hogan Reviews 