Recently, Amazon offered an unusual pre-order bonus for purchasing Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden for the Nintendo 3DS. Bandai Namco had given the retailer Nintendo eShop download codes for a Virtual Console release of Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 2 for Amazon to distribute to people who acquired a copy of the game through them.
This offer was unique for a number of reasons. For starters, Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 2 is a Super Famicom game. Its presence makes it the first Nintendo 3DS Super Nintendo Virtual Console game. In addition, it’s an import game. The title is presented completely in Japanese with no translation. It’s the strangest thing, the sort of title that prompts a person who normally wouldn’t purchase a Dragon Ball Z game to get one so this rarity can be on their system. (Someone like myself, who still has yet to even open the copy of Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden I ordered to get this.)
The first thing someone would notice about Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 2 is that the game doesn’t get an icon when its being downloaded. All someone sees is a blank, grey box above the game’s title. The game gets a unique icon on the Nintendo 3DS Home screen’s lower menu and very basic logo on the top screen when highlighted, so it’s odd that the Home icon didn’t appear during the download process.
This is an untranslated game, so anyone playing Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 2 is going to encounter a lot of Japanese. You could almost consider it a precursor to Arc System Works’ fighting games with visual novel storylines. In addition to the standard Duel and Tournament modes, where some fights it out, the Story mode lets people follow Gohan, Trunks, Vegeta, or Piccolo’s story. Depending on what dialogue options you choose, as well as if you win or lose matches, the story proceeds in different ways. These decisions and matches take people through the Cell Games and fights against the Galaxy Soldiers Bojack and Zangya. If you choose the three or four level of difficulty after selecting your character in the Story mode, you can even unlock an additional, subsequent tale of additional fights against Broly.
It’s one of those games where people who don’t know Japanese can still enjoy the Duel or Tournament modes, and probably manage their way through the Story despite not knowing what’s going on. To make things easier, I took screenshots in the most old school of ways (with my cell phone) and used my most impressive photoshopping skills (MS Paint) to offer translations of the menu screens. As a note, the Manual option on the bottom screen basically brings up the button combinations needed to trigger character’s special attacks. Also, the Options menu on the title screen is more of a sound test area where you can hear music and sound effects from the game. Also, in the Duel mode, a player can choose between a fight against the computer or to watch as two computer controlled characters fight, since there’s no two-player option in this Virtual Console release.
Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden is immediately available for the Nintendo 3DS. If you didn’t pre-order the game, then there seems to be no other way to get a digital copy of Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 2 for the system.
Published: Oct 27, 2015 01:30 pm