It’s time to wrap up the final story arc of the original Dragon Ball series… well, it would be if this was the manga (though that was technically just called “Dragon Ball” the whole way through) but ignoring the post story filler arc, this is the big finale as Goku and Piccolo do battle in one final epic Dragon Ball battle before the beam-fests and teleporty fights that follow in Z. How does it hold up? Why, let’s take a look, shall we?
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It’s time to squeeze in a quick modern anime review as the new season of Jujutsu Kaisen is nicely split into two arcs and as this one is only five episodes it’s already ended (in fact it ended a couple of weeks ago, actually…) then it made sense to do it now rather than wait for the official end of the season. That being said it’s despite its short length it’s certainly no less important for it, so let’s take a look!
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After what seems like forever it’s time to wrap up the original Dragon Ball series with the final arc (and that mini filler arc the anime team added afterwards…) What always strikes me about this arc is how it’s the exact opposite of the 22nd TB arc in that there is very nearly no filler whatsoever making it back-to-back fights with little breaks. The one-day tournament is back to actually being a one-day tournament! So let’s take a look at the preliminaries and the opening round, shall we?
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I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t you just say how much you hated Ultimate Battle 22 and you waited until the PS2 games came out?” Why yes, and that’s still true, but what I did do was at some point in between Budokai 1 and 2 I found Final Bout in a second-hand games shop for a couple of pounds and thought “why not?”, assuming it was a poorer man’s Tekken or Street Fighter EX, not knowing of course that it was literally UB22 but with 3D graphics instead. *sigh*. Still, by covering this now it means whenever I get to the first chunk of Z films I can review the Budokai trilogy one after another, so that’s nice, plus there’s something fitting about review a GT-heavy game while reviewing the Dragon Ball film that was released while GT was airing and featured GT elements… It sort of matches! Let’s take a look!
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The fourth Dragon Ball film is a real oddity as it was actually created after all 13 Dragon Ball Z films and was released as Dragon Ball GT was airing, meaning there is a noticeable uptick in animation quality; some of the designs were redone, especially Goku as he is literally the Kid Goku from DBGT complete with yellow trousers and pink armbands (at least later in the film), and there are moments of definite Z/GT style “powering up”. Despite all this though it re-adapts the first story arc (again!) but adds in the Red Ribbon Army instead of Pilaf (I’d say “again!” but the RRA here is mostly the characters not used in the previous film) so it definitely fits into the same mould as the three previous DB films, just with higher production values and a longer runtime. Does it work? Let’s take a look!
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It’s time for another CG Resident Evil movie set within the canon game timeline that will inevitably not actually be mentioned in the games! Hooray! Seriously though, as a die hard Resi fan since day one I do love these as a guilty pleasure and boy oh boy does Death Island play to my fanboy heart: Chris, Jill, Leon, Claire and Rebecca all in one story? Actually following up on character development from Resi 5 and 6? A villain with an actual interesting backstory?! (before becoming a generic villain in the end) Yes for this fan this was a great 90 minutes, if you’re not a fan then… well, let’s take a look…
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Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 was the first Dragon Ball game I played, being released here at the start of the newly emerging but quickly expanding English speaking Dragon Ball explosion but way after the game was in any way relevant. Hell, the PS2 was already out and well established by that point! I brought it cheap thinking it would “tide me over” until the PS2 DBZ games came along (which they thankfully did quite quickly!) but I barely played it because it was so… SO bad. Even my newly minted DBZ hype couldn’t cover the slow, clunky gameplay. Guess what? It’s not any better now! Let’s get this out of the way, shall we?
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The third Dragon Ball movie is an odd one as it doesn’t feature any new characters at all but instead takes a good chunk of them from the Red Ribbon Army and 22nd Tenkaichi Tournament arcs and mushes them together, then throws in a new location for a bit of set dressing, plus Chiaotzu is some sort of Emperor now for some reason. The weird thing is that I find it really works, this is far and away my favourite of the four original Dragon Ball films, but then again I love the RRA and 22nd TB arcs, so maybe it’s not that big a shock. Well, either way, let’s take a look!
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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!
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Dragon Ball’s second theatrical feature sort of picks up from where the last one left off, in that the previous film adapted the first 13 or so episodes of the show / story arc of the manga and this one riffs on the next one, where Goku meets Krillin and they train under Master Roshi… well, then it sort of stops to tell a mostly original story, though adding in a few missed beats from the previous film and of course favourite side-character Lunch, who gets a much different introduction here! Let’s take a look…
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Hogan Reviews 