Better Than Watching The Show...

The enormous success of Dragonball Z has won itself countless numbers of fans. After Dragonball Z came Dragonball GT, which attempted to combine the whimsy and humor of Dragonball with the intense action of Dragonball Z. It did not work to well. Negative aspects of the show easily decimated hat was good about it. But this game was a very pleasant port of the show.

Story
The game follows the first arc of GT which is the Baby saga. The story is that Emperor Pilaf finds a special kind of Dragonball called the Black Star Dragonballs, and accidentally uses them to wish Goku, his rival, from an adult into a child. After use the Dragonballs are now scattered all over the galaxy and Earth explode if not brought back within a year, it's up to Goku and his teammates Pan and Trunks to find them. On their journey, they run into Dr. Myuu and his creation, Baby, who turns against his master and sets out to possess the body of Vegeta to help enslave the entire human race.

Graphics
The graphics are decent, but we have seen much better on the gameboy advance. That was my first when I first saw the game. Goku and the gang look like their anime counterparts while standing still for the most part, and a little less in motion. The movement itself is pretty fluid for the most part, with occasional random glitches when the charcters are moving.

The worlds look pretty good. You can distinguish the mountain, ice and world levels. The monsters inhabiting each world are very well designed though very similar. For example the mountains have brown wolves, while the ice levels has blue wolves. The background items, rocks, mountains, flower, house, etc, look fine for gameboy advance, the only problem I have is that the designers could have made more unique designs for areas.

Sound
The music is in the style of the American anime. Most of the songs are similar. It's not horrible to listen to, however, though it can sound a tad repetitive. The music does differ in boss battles, as the songs are the same except played faster. Now onto sound effects. here are three basic groups of sound effects. One when you punch or hit anything no matter which attack you ear a thud. When you fly or dash you hear a wind type effect. And when you use a special the character would yell, like Goku saying Kamehameha during the Kamehameha. This sounds cool, but really is not since everyone sounds alike.

Gameplay
This is the focalized point of any game. This is the standard beat em up game. Characters can move up, down, and side to side while jumping and attacking a stream of enemies until a little arrow tells them they can move on. This is reminiscent of throwback videogames like Karate Joe and BattleToads. This is not as it was back then. Enemies get far too repetitive, and they can actually be quite hard. In some cases, the boss of a level is easier to beat than a horde of challenging enemies in the level itself.

Each character moves quickly, with a variety of punches, kicks, dashes, and ki attacks, which are the specials such as the Kamehameha. The controls are overly simplistic and the move types are exactly the same as any other beat-em-up, as you essentially just kick and punch your way through enemies.

Besides the normal mode there are other modes to choose from. In Endurance Mode you choose a character and fight against all the enemies of Dragon Ball GT Transformation until you die. In Boss Endurance Mode you fight a swarm of in game bosses such as Baby. And in Robot Swarm you must defeat as much robots as you can.

Replayability
The game has 10 levels, each a different planet. Although the levels can be challenging, you should be able to finish them within a couple of days. Once you beat the game you can unlock about eight different characters. These characters don't play much differently than Goku but those who want to play as the new characters will find something to do after the main game is beaten.

This game overall was better than I expected. The GT anime was bad when compared with greatness of Dragonball and Dragonball Z. This game was seemingly slated to be bad but it was halfway decent.