The cover was made using canva and bitmoji. All the screenshots in this post were taken directly from the game by me.
While I know I've talked about Dragon Ball Advance on several occasions, every time I spend a couple of hours with it I'm amazed all over again by the ability of a Gameboy Advance game to perfectly portray the soul of Akira Toriyama's 2004 creation, a task that even the latest generation consoles seem to have trouble replicating.
The key? Although it's a fairly simple beat em up (and with a little dedication it can be completed in a long play session), DB Advance understands that sometimes less is more, and each of its elements (the gameplay, the graphics, the music, the story, etc.) exists in perfect harmony, creating an extremely replayable experience and following a scheme that I would honestly like to see more regularly in modern DB games.
In fact, despite working so well in the beat-em-up format, there are few examples of the franchise using the genre (I can only think of The Revenge of King Piccolo for Wii and the infamous Dragon Ball Z Sagas for sixth-generation consoles). But the result is one of the most timeless titles inspired by the adventures of Goku and his friends. If that weren't enough, Dragon Ball Advance goes beyond what is necessary, offering a battle mode with a whole roster of characters to control (Yamcha, Krillin, Muten Roshi, etc.), as well as the possibility of completing the story mode again with several of them.
There are multiple collectibles, mini-games, and it's even possible to play the battle mode with a friend who has another Gameboy (using the link cable), and all of these options are presented to the player organically, in short, it's full of surprises.
As I've always said, it would be great to see a remake or sequel that follows the same scheme but takes advantage of the possibilities of a new generation console (whether portable or not), and instead of another sequel to Sparking Zero or Budokai I would like this to be the route that a new Dragon Ball title would take: arcade, fun and with several game modes.
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