Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is the long-awaited return of the series Western players grew up calling Budokai Tenkaichi. Developed by Spike Chunsoft and published by Bandai Namco, it launched on October 11, 2024 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, seventeen years after Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (2007), with a staggering 182 playable characters on day one.
What it is and how it plays
The core is pure Tenkaichi: a behind-the-back camera, free flight around huge destructible arenas, melee strings mixed with ki blasts, dashes across the map and well-timed counters. Spike Chunsoft layers new systems on top, such as Skill Count, which governs special techniques, the Revenge Counter and Vanishing Assaults, the teleport-and-strike exchanges that recreate the anime's blink-and-you-miss-it chases.
You can fight one-on-one or in teams of up to five. To stop a squad of gods from steamrolling everything, the game uses a cost system: every character is worth points based on their strength, and each player has a fixed budget. The developers said openly that Sparking! Zero was not designed as an esports title. Characters who are weak in canon stay weak, and cost is what keeps things fair.
Main modes
- Episode Battles: the story mode, told through eight protagonists (Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Gohan, Future Trunks, Frieza, Goku Black and Jiren). It covers the arcs of Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super, but at key moments it branches: win a fight in a specific way and you unlock a "Sparking! episode", an alternate what-if ending.
- Custom Battle: a scenario editor with dialogue, win conditions and cutscenes, shareable online.
- Online, tournaments and training: ranked and casual matches, local tournaments and a tutorial that explains the systems, though several reviews found it less than intuitive.
Roster and DLC
You start with 100 fighters unlocked and buy the rest with Zeni earned in play. The total counts individual forms, so Goku alone appears in a long list of versions, from his kid days to Ultra Instinct.
The Season Pass delivered three packs:
- Hero of Justice Pack (January 2025), with eleven characters from Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, including Gamma 1, Gamma 2 and Cell Max;
- Daima Character Pack 1 and 2 (April and September 2025), built around Dragon Ball Daima, with "Mini" Goku and Vegeta, Glorio, Panzy and Gomah.
Shallot, the lead of Dragon Ball Legends, followed in June 2025. Then, on July 30, 2026, came Super Limit-Breaking NEO, the biggest expansion so far: 33 new characters from every series, GT included (Super 17, Nuova Shenron, GT Trunks), four new Episode Battles, four stages and a solo mode, Limit Breaker Journey, where you power up one fighter through escalating battles. It launched on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, with Switch versions announced for a later date.
Platforms and reception
After the 2024 launch, the game reached Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on November 14, 2025. Metacritic lists generally favorable reviews. Critics praised the visuals, the sheer volume of content and the fan service in the Episode Battles, while knocking clunky menus, repetitive AI opponents and a control scheme shared by the whole cast. It was nominated for Best Fighting Game at The Game Awards 2024.
Sales were huge: Bandai Namco reported more than 3 million copies sold in the first 24 hours and 5 million by February 2025.
Did you know? In Japan the Budokai Tenkaichi games were always called Sparking!. Sparking! Zero is the first entry released in the West under its original name.
Who it is for
This is the game for anyone who wants to feel like they are inside the anime: flying, mountain-splitting beams, mid-fight transformations and a roster where almost everyone shows up, from Yamcha to Beerus. If you want a tight, technical tournament fighter, Dragon Ball FighterZ is the better pick. If you would rather relive the story while exploring the world, look at Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.
Our take
Sparking! Zero does one thing and commits to it: it takes the formula a whole generation wore out on PS2 and rebuilds it with modern tools, without diluting it. The branching Episode Battles are the nicest surprise, giving you a reason to replay arcs you already know by heart. The weak spot is depth: after a few dozen hours fights start to blur together, and the tutorial does little to surface the advanced mechanics. Even so, it is the best "Dragon Ball simulator" you can play today, and an easy spot on our list of the best Dragon Ball games.