Note: The Wiire editors will be updating this page throughout E3 as further impressions are gathered.
Shawn White, The Wiire Senior Editor
Twenty years old and counting, Dragon Ball is a one billion dollar franchise still holding on to fertile popularity. Games in the series have begun to come into their own in the latest generation of consoles, but Atari is determined to make Wii the first new machine to give home to the next generation of Dragon Ball Z, in the form of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2.
With this new fighting game for both PlayStation 2 and Wii, players can choose from over 100 characters in the Dragon Ball Z realm, taking to the skies or battling on the ground using numerous combos to pummel combatants.
Visually, the Wii version looks marginally improved over the PlayStation 2 edition; not a bad thing, mind you, since the title is fluid, running at a solid framerate with many destructible environments and excellent cel-shading on all the characters to recreate their anime look as much as possible.
Regarding control scheme, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is a surprisingly solid experience. Players will use the Nunchuk and Wii Remote in tandem to initiate attacks and defenses. Hold the trigger on the Wii remote and swing in the direction of your opponent to attack; swinging in different directions will cause different combinations. By using the Z trigger on the Nunchuk unit and accelerometer together, players can quickly fly around the stage, tilting the Nunchuk in the direction they want to blast off to. Holding both triggers on the Nunchuk and Wii Remote will cause your character to charge energy for more powerful strikes.
The demo only allowed a fraction of the final game's available characters as well as only one mountainous, desert stage to fight in. However, those were sufficient for displaying the potential of the title as the first serious fighter on Wii. Although the learning curve is rather high, there's a great potential for combo depth, and the movement of swinging the controller to smash opponents - especially if they go crashing through a mountain range - is highly satisfying when you get the hang of it and start learning said combos.
Given the strength of the Dragon Ball Z license, as well as the strength of the Budokai sub-series of games, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi is turning out to be a pleasant first fighter for Wii that could help assure the world, including other fighting game developers, that Nintendo's new console is a viable platform for the genre.
