Dragon Ball Z – Super Butouden II is a 1993 fighting video game developed by Tose and published by Bandai for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Based upon Akira Toriyama‘s Dragon Ball franchise, it is the sequel to Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden, which was released earlier in 1993 for SNES. Following the Cell Games arc and a side-story about characters from the films Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan and Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound, its gameplay remains relatively the same as the original Super Butōden, consisting of one-on-one fights using a main six-button configuration, featuring special moves as well as three playable modes.
Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 was developed by most of the same team who previously worked on the first Super Butōden entry shortly after its completion. The team wanted to increase the number of playable stages, implement adventure elements to the tournament mode, as well as feature characters from the Dragon Ball Z films in the project. Super Butōden 2 garnered positive reception from critics; most reviewers praised the presentation, visuals, audio, gameplay and improvements made over its predecessor but others regarded it to be similar to Super Butōden and felt mixed in regards to various design aspects. It was followed by Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 3 in 1994.[1]
Gameplay – Dragon Ball Z – Super Butouden II
See also: Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden § Gameplay
As with its predecessor, Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 is a fighting game similar to Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.[2] Players fight against other characters in one-on-one matches and the fighter who manages to deplete the health bar of the opponent wins the bout and becomes the winner of the match.[3] The game features three modes of play and a roster of 8 playable characters and their respective transformations, with two additional characters being unlockable via cheat code.[4] Characters available are Goku (unlockable), Vegeta, Gohan, Trunks, Piccolo, Cell, Cell Jr., Broly (unlockable), Bojack and Zangya.[5][6]
Super Butōden 2 uses a customizable six-button control scheme.[3] Special moves are present in conventional format, with most commands consisting of button combinations.[3] Characters can also dash back and forth by pressing L and R respectively.[3] Players can also charge their Ki gauge by holding the Y and B buttons to unleash a Ki blast attack.[3] Returning from the first game is the split-screen feature;[5] the view is split to keep fighters that are far away in the playfield shown in a single screen, while their positions are kept via an improved on-screen radar.[5] New to the sequel are the introduction of water-based arenas, the ability to counterattack special moves, as well as meteor combos to perform consecutive attacks for most characters (only Goku had one such move in the previous game).
