To preface my review of this game I want to ensure readers that I have personally played the collectible card game and understand its mechanics. I have collected these cards since their debut and am well acquainted with their uses and power. Regardless, I wouldn’t call the DBZ CCG necessarily fun or easy to understand. The way matches are played and won is somewhat complicated and would take quite a bit to flesh out here. I personally don’t believe the card game should have been adapted into a video game and, even if it was adapted, it could never have been successfully adapted on the limited technology of the Game Boy Advance. All of this is to say, that the Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game video game was doomed from the outset.

Dragon Ball and its central character Goku are cultural icons. Together with its creator Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball has shaped the world of manga and anime several times over and continues to do so nearly 40 years after its initial release. The popular anime was eventually brought over to the West and started airing on Cartoon Network’s popular Toonami block in 1998. The show would continue its run on Toonami and continue to grow in popularity throughout the early 2000s. During this time, Score Entertainment, a trading card design and manufacturing company from Texas, released its first trading card game based on the Dragon Ball property - the Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game (hereinafter “DBZ CCG”). While never reaching the heights of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Magic, the Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game did eventually find success and, by 2006, had released eighteen expansions.

In an effort to drum up support for the card game during its infancy, Score Entertainment along with ImaginEngine and Screaming Games began work on a Game Boy Advance title that was intended to be a virtual recreation of the DBZ CCG. The Game Boy family of systems was no stranger to card battlers and had seen the release of prosperous Pokemon Trading Card Game and Yu-Gi-Oh! games on the platform for the past several years. With the hopes of reaching similar success, Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game for the Game Boy Advance was released on May 29, 2002. To say the game failed to meet expectations, failed to drum up support for the fledgling card game, and was a complete failure as not only a virtual recreation of the card game but also as a video game in general would be a severe understatement. Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game, in short, was nothing more than a deplorable cash grab by Score Entertainment to sell more cards and a pathetic attempt to capitalize on the Dragon Ball Z franchise as a whole. Let’s talk about why.

The Dragon Ball property has always been known for its interesting characters, engaging story, worldbuilding, and beautiful artwork. The Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game video game craps on all of this.

Characters in the game, basically a still image of a character's face, are pulled from either the anime or from images extracted from the Score Entertainment trading cards themselves. These images or anime stills, originally beautiful artwork, are then shrunken down to fit the Game Boy Advance screen leaving them as compressed and contorted ugly masses of pixels. While a fan of the series will recognize these masses as familiar Dragon Ball Z characters, the characterization of these individuals - the cockiness of Frieza, the pride of Vegeta, or the child-like innocent of Goku - is completely gone. The game truly lacks any sort of soul and is more akin to a fan-made early 2000s flash game than anything that should be officially licensed as a Dragon Ball product.

The engaging story of Dragon Ball Z, at least from the entrance of Radditz to the demise of Cell, is non-existent. There is, in fact, no story content to be found in this game as you simply move from battle to battle with little care as to who you are battling or why you are battling them. There are moments where the player, playing as Frieza, is tasked with defeating Frieza’s henchman and member of the Ginyu Force, Guldo. Why does the player have to do this? Why would Frieza need to defeat his own henchman who at this point in the story was already beheaded by Vegeta? I have no idea, and neither does the game or its developers. While I understand card battlers are not known for their engaging and thought-provoking plots, there were other card battlers available on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance that had an interesting story to tell, i.e. Pokemon Trading Card Game and Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories.

Another aspect of Dragon Ball Z praised by fans is its music. Whether it is the original Japanese audio or the Bruce Faulconer score, fans have always enjoyed the epic pieces of music that accompany every climatic fight in Dragon Ball Z. This game, instead of incorporating pieces to fit the theme of the battle occurring, opted to recycle the same 8-10 seconds of one Bruce Faulconer track. This not only gets incredibly tedious and annoying as you spend your time battling an opponent and hoping for the right card to magically appear in your hand, but it is also just disappointing. By the time the Cell Saga occurs in Dragon Ball Z, Faulconer had produced hours of music for the anime to use. Iconic tracks like “Heroic Trunks”, “Gohan Fights Frieza”, “Vegeta Fights Frieza”, and “SSJ Transformation” all could have been used to set the mood for this game better than the 8-second loop that was used.

To add to this myriad of failures, the game is also plagued with bugs and glitches. From battles freezing at the worst moments to unexpected crashes, it's clear that the game was rushed to market without adequate quality control. I honestly believe that no one could have playtested this game in its entirety before he hit store shelves. Not only from the sheer boredom that would entail but because the game is just so damn bad.

In summary, Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game for the Game Boy Advance is a disgrace to the Dragon Ball Z franchise, to the card game it attempts to emulate, and to video gaming as a whole. It fails to capture the essence of what makes Dragon Ball Z great, delivering pixelated, lifeless character representations and a complete absence of a compelling narrative. This lackluster adaptation is nothing more than a cash grab and a missed opportunity to offer fans an engaging gaming experience. As I previously stated, the Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game would have been incredibly difficult to properly adapt as a video game even today, so this game was doomed from the outset and is an experience best left in the past, forgotten alongside other failed attempts to capture the magic of Dragon Ball.

This game is trash, I know you can fill the damn sea with nothing but Dragon Ball shovelware but I seriously loath this game.

I go on a lot about presentation and charm in games sometimes, it can seriously go a long way in making a game a ton more appealing to play despite it maybe being mediocre or above average at the core of it's gameplay. But this thing has absolutely ZERO pizazz, there is NOTHING here. The graphics? Just compressed and shitty stills from the anime, including pictures of the TCG cards themselves which also use screens from the show. The music? I shit you not, a fucking EIGHT SECOND LOOP of one of the tracks from the Bruce Faulconer score that the original Funimation dub used. The only time it stops is during the beginning and end of the match, which also steal music from the Faulconer soundtrack. Christ, the fucking sound effects are the most stock shit you'll ever fucking hear, it even uses one of those stock screams that wouldn't sound out of place in the music for the Hell stage in Earthworm Jim.

I bought this for 20 bucks at a Toys r' Us for my birthday, for some extra oomph my birthday is literally right after Christmas. So as you could imagine, prior to me ever holding a job I only got games once a year maybe. That 20 bucks may as well had been 500 bucks, fuck this goddamn game. What a harsh lesson to learn, never trust a license to carry anything especially something that gets out of control like DBZ.