The New Dragon Ball Game’s Massive Roster Size Is a Very Specific Easter Egg

In case you’re living under a rock, Bandai Namco is on the precipice of releasing the latest entry of the fan-favorite Budokai anime fighting video game series, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. Previews (including one from yours truly) are raving about it as the definitive Dragon Ball game for its attention to detail, callbacks to both the anime and its gaming predecessors, and its humongous roster. As fate would have it, even the game’s immense roster number is an Easter egg reference hiding in plain sight to the late Akira Toriyama‘s OG Dragon Ball manga.

In a new trailer video, Bandai Namco confirmed that Sparking! Zero will have the most extensive Dragon Ball game history, a roster with a staggering 182 characters. While the number is as overwhelming as it is specific, it’s also a deep-pull reference to the 113 chapter in Dragon Ball, aptly titled Return to the Tournament. In it, Goku makes his grand return from his training sabbatical to participate in the World Martial Arts Tournament alongside Krillin, Yamcha, and Master Roshi (in disguise as Jackie Chun).

Here’s where the reference number comes in. In the chapter, the proctor announces that this year’s Tenka’ichi Budokai has seen the largest increase in participants, and they’ve had to hold tournaments every three years. How many participants do you ask? “An astounding 182.” Unlike the manga, which held preliminary matches to cull the herd of fighters, Bandai Namco is going further beyond by increasing its already overwhelming pool of anime characters, much to the fans’ excitement.

Today’s full roster reveal shocked fans because of how Bandai Namco drip-fed character reveals every month while slowly filling in the full grid. With each passing month, fans took to social media theorizing who Bandai Namco and developer Spike Chunsoft would slot into the game that wasn’t another Super Saiyan form of Goku and Vegeta (to which there are many). It turns out that character grid was a lie too, because today’s trailer showed new pips outside of the hexagonal beehive grid’s character pool to reveal that characters from movies, like Cooler, Tapion, and OG Broly, will be playable on launch alongside kid Goku from the upcoming anime series, Dragon Ball Daima. 

Sparking! Zero‘s neat manga reference will have a shelf life because there are plans in motion for the game to add even more characters from the Dragon Ball mythos. Speaking to GamesRadar+, producer Jun Furutani confirmed that Sparking! Zero will have three waves of characters releases from Dragon Ball Super, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, and Dragon Ball Daima as post-launch DLC.

Nifty manga reference notwithstanding, Dragon Ball fans can look forward to playing Sparking! Zero when it releases on October 11 on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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