“People of Earth, Lend Us Your Energy!” – How Modders Kept the Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 4 Dream Alive
Dragon Ball fans across the world right now are currently in a frenzy of euphoria, feeling like they have just swallowed a Senzu Bean.
During the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour, Bandai Namco gathered the energy from millions of Dragon Ball fans and conjured up a proverbial Spirit Bomb. They then unleashed it on us in the form of the Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 4 trailer. The game that many of us grew up adoring, after 16 long years, is seeing a successor with next-generation graphics and gameplay.
This confirmation is a surreal moment for fans who believed that the Budokai Tenkaichi line was lost to the archives; YouTubers reacted in a craze and viewers of the FighterZ tournament threw up their hands for what is the undisputed biggest news fans of Dragon Ball games could have ever hoped for. The trailer showcases the previous games, taking us down memory lane hinting at a potential HD collection. But, instead, the trailer climaxes with Goku in full next-gen beauty transforming into Super Saiyan Blue and announcing a sequel.
The first 3 of the series are undeniably known as some of the best DBZ games we’ve ever received, and even today are still being played religiously. This is down heavily to modders, who years before this announcement have regularly been keeping the community alive by providing updated characters, move lists, stages, and transformations by modding Budokai Tenkaichi 3. YouTube is sprawling with content creators playing the mod, and it would not be farfetched to speculate that this is an indicative sign of why Bandai chose to bring the series back.
Modders have even gone so far as to add in single-player content with updated story arcs allowing players to experience the likes of the Tournament of Power, which has yet to of made an appearance in any DB video game as of yet, and even content from the manga yet to be shown in the anime. Although very little information has been released for Budokai Tenkaichi 4, the confirmation trailer is more than enough to whet our appetites.
