Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22

Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 is a PlayStation fighting game developed by TOSE and released in Japan and France in 1995 and 1996 by Bandai, respectively. It would not receive an American release by Funimation and Infogrames until 2003, and a Europe-wide release until 2002. The game‘s title comes from the fact that the game features 22 characters (there are 5 unlockable characters with a code; getting them retitles the game as "Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 27").

Why It Sucks

 * 1) An ugly graphical mix between 2D sprites and 3D backgrounds, which where very outdated by the time of the game‘s American release.
 * 2) Terrible AI.
 * 3) No storyline.
 * 4) Long loading times.
 * 5) The single-player mode has you fighting all of the game‘s characters. To make things worse, beating the single-player mode doesn‘t reward you with anything, let alone unlockable characters. The manual flat-out tells you to unlock them using a cheat code.
 * 6) Bare-minimum localization; the game‘s Japanese voice acting wasn't dubbed or subtitled. The western versions also do not include the pre-match voices that the original Japanese version had.
 * 7) *In the U.S. version, Gogeta is erroneously called Vegito. This is probably because the movie Fusion Reborn (the movie Gogeta debuted in) hasn't been released yet in the country.
 * 8) The Europe-wide/U.S. version came out nearly 6/7 years later and made no improvements along with the barebones localization mentioned above!
 * 9) * The fact that the Europe-wide/U.S. versions were released not too long after Dragon Ball Z: Budokai made the releases way too little, way too late as the game was totally outdated compared to Budokai in every way by the time the Europe-wide/U.S. versions came out.
 * 10) The special intros exclusive to the Japanese version have all characters moving their mouths constantly whether or not they are speaking and their mouths move at the same speed. The scene that shows Goku and Frieza in particular looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint when all other scenes look mostly straight from the anime.
 * 11) The special moves all look pathetic. The Kamehameha looks like a regular energy projectile!
 * 12) Some characters and character variations are missing such as Android 17, Full Power Frieza, Jeice, and Dr. Gero.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Controls are very similar to the Super Butoden series in the SNES.
 * 2) Has a very good (if repetitive) soundtrack. The music is very fitting for each character.
 * 3) Two-player mode fixes the issue with the old SNES Super Butoden series: projectiles.
 * 4) Has an amazing opening.

Reception
Like fellow Dragon Ball PlayStation game Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout, the game received mixed reviews in the Europe but extremely negative reviews in the USA. In fact, this game is considered by some to be even worse than Final Bout. It‘s only the icing on the cake that the game‘s U.S. commercial was deemed to be a fitting analogy.

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