Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden Previews (Electronic Gaming Monthly)

Akira Toriyama
April 5, 1955 - March 1, 2024
(Image Source: Jiji Press)

As I was flipping through my gaming magazines in search of Mario and X-Men articles this past weekend, I came across previews for Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden and its sequels. Although I've seen a little of the anime and tried some of the Dragon Ball video games, I don't know a whole lot about Dragon Ball Z other than its significant impact on anime and pop culture. Unfortunately, Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama recently passed away. He began working on manga (Japanese comic books) in 1978 and launched the Dragon Ball manga series in 1984. Other than his writings and drawings being used, I'm not sure if he was involved with these particular games. During his career he did provide character designs for other video games too, such as Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, and the Dragon Quest series. Of course, Toriyama-san wrote and illustrated other manga as well, including Sand Land, which is receiving its first video game adaption next month.

These previews are all from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), appearing in its coverage of Japan's Super Famicom games. All three released in Japan and Europe but not in North America for the Super NES. More recently the first one was available as a special pre-order bonus for Dragon Ball FighterZ on Switch and the second game was a pre-order bonus at Amazon for Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butōden on Nintendo 3DS.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden (EGM #51 - October 1993)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 (EGM #57 - April 1994)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 3 (EGM #65 - December 1995)