Arc System Works to Develop New Dragon Ball Fighting Game

Dragon Ball fans, your time has come! In Japanese press release from Bandai Namco Entertainment, an upcoming game known as Dragon Ball Fighters is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam. The game is going to be developed by famed anime fighter developers Arc System Works, the team behind high-speed fighting games series like Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.

Dragon Ball Fighters is planned for a Quarter 1 2018 release. The game will sport a “2.5D” art style in the vein of Guilty Gear Xrd. The fighter models will be cel-shaded and fully rendered in 3D, but the art style makes the fighters look like they’re 2D. It’s a really neat effect and if you want to see an example of this for yourself, check out this demonstration video of Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2.

We’ve only got a rough Google translation of the press release, but so far we can confirm that the game will sort of be like a Marvel Vs. Capcom fighter. Battles will be 3-on-3, a new take on the Dragon Ball fighting game series. This is a pretty interesting direction as Arc System Works usually deals with one-on-one engagements, but we have faith in them! In fact, Arc System Works is no stranger to the Dragon Ball franchise, as they’ve developed the Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors games for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. They also developed Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden for the 3DS.

The most exciting thing about this is the prospect of a “legit” Dragon Ball fighting game. When we say legit we mean a Dragon Ball fighting game that’s enjoyed by lots of players and maybe even played at eSports events, like EVO! The previous Dragon Ball fighting games enjoyed moderate success but they deviated a bit too much from traditional fighters, thus giving them limited tournament scenes. We trust Arc System Works to build a fresh and fun fighter with all of the super fast and frantic flashy fights that Dragon Ball is famous for.

We’ll have more news on Dragon Ball Fighters hopefully around E3!