Feature: Dragon Ball: Final Bout - The Worst Fighting Game with the Best Opening Movie

you know i LOVED this game when it first came out but yeah it's not well at all, still for many of us in the UK this was our first glimpse of Super Saiyan 4 and it was so mysterious heck we had only just got Super Saiyan in the show so it was a huge thing

now that i think about it this game spoiled quite a lot of DBZ, Adult Gohan, Cell, Buu (DBZ first aired in the early 2000s in the UK and this game was first released in the UK in 2002)

still it's a better game than Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22, if i remember one reviewer from Electronic Gaming Monthly said that "someone crapped in a jewel case and passed it off as a game." and Official PlayStation Magazine gave it a 1/5, now THAT'S a bad Dragon Ball game

@FullbringIchigo For whatever reason I barely remember Ultimate Battle 22 — it's Final Bout that always stuck with me, probably because of the opening movie!

I was shocked to find that a PlayStation publication back in the day gave this game a 9/10. Can you believe that?!

@ShogunRok it was different times i'm sure at the time they believed it was good enough to warrant that score

and yeah that intro really does stick with you, it's awesome

P.S i still have my copies of Final Bout and Ultimate Battle 22, i could never bring myself to get rid of them for some reason

@FullbringIchigo Yeah, I still have Final Bout. Maybe it's because subconsciously I know if anything happens to YouTube I'll be able to watch the intro on my PSone.

@ShogunRok for me i think it's just because i'm a huge DB fanboy, hell i even went to the trouble of importing a copy of Dragon Ball Z Sagas for the gamecube (i have a freeloader for that)

@ShogunRok i found this old photo i took of my DB games years back as you can see Final Bout, Ultimate Battle 22 and Sagas

I can remember getting this game just as I was getting in to DBZ, and having all of the major forms and villains spoiled for me definitely kind of sucked; but that's irrelevant. This game brings back memories of watching the show on a friend's VHS recordings of the original broadcast and sometimes nostalgia (and a kickass Hironobu Kageyama Opening theme) can be enough to carry a bad video game.

Speaking of Hironobu Kageyama, here's another Opening Theme he sang for PS1 3D fighter Psychic Force, a Taito effort that's way better than Final Bout and definitely worth a play if you're in the mood for some janky polygonal fighting -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6bUAP85oRU

@FullbringIchigo Now that's a lot of Dragon Ball.

@ShogunRok i have more now, that's old photo

@FullbringIchigo FighterZ soon to be added! (Unless you're getting it digitally)

@ShogunRok i'm getting it physical

physical over digital unless i have no other choice

@ShogunRok Terrible feature. Your opinion is wrong. In all seriousness, how do you not mention Build-up mode?!

I LOVED this game as a kid. I wasn't allowed many games growing up (3/year max), so I played this for years- memorizing all the cheat codes as a 6 year old. I thought it was the coolest game ever as the dialogue was all in Japanese.
It's the only Dragon Ball game I own on the PS1.

The aforementioned Build-up mode was fantastic!!!
You could level your chosen character to ridiculous levels. The character would also level up based on your playstyle, so you could literally have character throw one punch and drain like 10 health bars- if all you did was punch. However, your super, ki and ultimate's wouldn't even register if you completely ignored them.

The ultimate fan service game for a kid growing up.

I do remember playing a DBZ game that was awful and unresponsive, not sure if it was this one. Thankfully was only asked to play it once.

That opening movie was the reason I got a PSX. Turned out to be a great investment when I later player the games that mattered.

Resident Evil 1&2, Castlevania SotN, Marvel Super Heroes, Tekken 2, Soul Blade, Final Fantasy VII, Parasite Eve and dozen more great games.

But Final Bout (and Ultimate Battle 22) was the reason I got the console in the first place.

I had a good time with this game as a kid, agreed that it hasn't aged well. When I got it, I had only seen DBZ through the frieza saga at the time, so I had no idea who 3/4 of the characters were!

I got this game sometime in 1998. my friends and i played this game everyday before and after school.
We didn’t really have many options for Dragon Ball games at that time so it was good for me.

I didn't get into Dragon Ball fighting games until Budokai 3. By the time I heard of this, GT was about to wrap in the west. I've always heard it was terrible, but after seeing Team Four Star play it, it's safe to say Final Bout is massive jank.

I remember playing this in black and white on my cousin's chipped ps1 just to watch the intro play a few matches, and then go back to playing Hyper Dimension

I remember enjoying my time with it because it was DB, I was young and the concept of improving your character the way you want kept me entertained for quite a while.

Seeing it now... let’s just stick to the nostalgic memories, no need to play this again.

Oh man I loved this game so much! And now I know better. It was garbage!

There was nothing wrong with this game. There were (still are to this day) worse games that were released. The build-up mode was a nice touch that you don't really see in any other fighting game out there. Would be nice if that could be tweaked and implemented into some of todays games. As for the controls... I have no issues with pulling off any of the moves, even when I last played it last weekend when I was showing my daughter the game (she begged for me to unbury it to show her).

Too bad the North American version of the opening isn't posted

My brother and I had the Japanese copy of the game. We had to do a bunch of weird stuff with our PS1 just to get it to read it.

We thought the game was awesome, since it was one of the early 3D Dragon Ball games we had.

Now, it's pretty bad, and the English VA was ABYSMAL. Glad we had the JPN version, to be honest. Crazy enough I still have the disc.

EDIT: Haha, I found it, right next to my soundtracks, and it's the NTSC-J version, like I remembered. Funny that I kept it all these years.

@SilentS "There was nothing wrong with this game".

Really though?

REALLY?

@ShogunRok Yes really. Maybe because I have played so many bad games in the past, this one I find playable. Even if the game itself is a bit crude by todays standards.

Reading this editorial, I was wondering: "Was this that DB game that had Pan, and the chibi characters?".

Then I watched the clip, and it all came back to me, lol. I played this game to bits back in the day, mostly with Pan. I was obsessed with the GT characters and the ones I didn't know already, because the show wasn't broadcasted that far yet. I remember that you could level the characters, and I was completely obsessed with it. Mostly playing with Pan, for some reason.

100's of hours, it must have been. Good times, yeh.

after reading this i decided to look through all my older DB stuff and found the Soundtrack CD to this game

i decided to rip it to my laptop and listen to it and it's still one of the best DB Game soundtracks and "Biggest Fight" is still epic

I actually loved this game and I still do despite the graphics. I think the best feature it had was the versus mode which had many characters and it was easy to play. All the following DBZ games have clumsy VS modes plus boring and time-consuming story modes. Can anybody recommend a DBZ game that is similar to Final Bout for either PS3 or PS4?