The first thing you’ll notice when turning on Legacy of Goku is the impressive FMV opening. It isn’t as sharp as I’d like, but the animation is smooth and lifted (as far as I can tell) directly from the show. Luckily, the in-game graphics are just as true to the series, and without the compressed look. :-) Visuals are definitely a strong suit for Legacy of Goku, with Akira Toriyama’s timeless character designs shown off nicely with detailed, colorful sprites and backgrounds. The animation is pretty good as well; even the enemies have blinking eyes. Sound is also nice, with decent effects, very catchy music (though I’ve yet to hear the show’s theme song) and even a little voice sample when you let loose a charged-up Kame Hame Ha.

Yes yes, but how does it play? Actually, the game feels a lot like Zelda III, though not as polished. You can talk to various NPCs from the series, and their dialogue, though heavily condensed from the snail-crawl pace of the show, stays true to what you’d expect. Combat is done real-time and is fairly tedious, unfortunately. Goku can punch with A and use Ki abilities with B, but it turns out that your attacks just aren’t very effective against the enemies. Standing punches are practically worthless, and you only seem to do decent damage if you punch while running...which doesn’t even have a different animation. Not intuitive at all. Your first Ki ability is a little fireball that goes about halfway across the screen, and it doesn’t do much damage either until you level up a few times. Using that fireball ends up being the best tactic though, because your Ki meter regenerates very quickly and you can just hit-and-run with projectiles until the enemy is dead. There is no way to tell how much you’ve damaged a baddie, and I’ve spent literally five minutes throwing fireballs at a dinosaur until it finally died. The combat is screaming for more effective melee attacks and some sort of numerical damage system.

Battles do get to be a little more fun as you level up though. Goku’s speed will occasionally increase, and that lets you run away from annoying enemies and get a better chance to shoot Ki at others. Still, I’m at level 10 or so and I’m still in danger from even basic enemies sometimes. Wolves, dinosaurs, etc. seem to do a proportionately large amount of damage to Goku, and the only way to regain health that I’ve found is to consume precious healing items. Surely there’s an inn in one of these towns...not even Chi Chi, Goku’s wife, offered to give him a rest! Show a brother some hospitality, geez.

The game’s hit detection is weird enough that it deserves some explanation. Projectile attacks seem to be very forgiving...I can often shoot a little snake or squirrel (yes, you can kill squirrels) from across the screen, yet connecting with a simple punch seems to be left to chance. When you’re being chased by a wolf, it would be nice to turn around and punch it right in the nose; unfortunately, doing so only seems to work about fifty percent of the time. Flying is another problem altogether. By pressing the R shoulder button, you can make Goku fly for a limited distance. (That distance depends on how many “wing” points you have in stock, and the max number of “wing” points increases with level ups.) The problem with flying isn’t so much hit detection (although that part isn’t great), but rather figuring out where you can fly to. The game’s design is such that you can only fly over certain surfaces; for instance, you can fly up most rock walls, but not if they don’t face the screen. You can fly over water, but not over most other substances...except in certain places where the game tells you specifically to fly, such as over some trees to collect flowers for a little boy. It’s all very confusing and not explained at all within the game. Hopefully the final version’s manual will shed some light on this 2D flying logic.

The other problem with my preview version is a bug that causes Goku to get trapped between two NPCs. It’s happened to me twice, both times when I was returning one NPC to another (first a cat, then a little girl). In one case I was able to escape by flying; in the other, I had no flight left and therefore had to reset the game. Thank goodness the newest GBA flashROMs now have save capabilities! I’m sure the bug will be squashed before the game reaches shelves, but it’s worth mentioning, especially since it happened twice in similar situations.

Now to get away from that negativity... Fans of the anime series should be very happy with Legacy of Goku’s presentation. The graphics look just like the show, the characters stay in character, and the anime’s style and, more importantly, story, are well preserved. Goku, true to form, is as nice as can be and helps out everyone with even silly tasks, like gathering magazines for Master Roshi. As I noted above, the story is condensed but very well represented. In just a couple of hours, I’ve met Raditz, lost Gohan, killed Raditz, saved Gohan, died, fallen off Snake Way, escaped from Master Yemma’s realm, flown to King Kai’s planet, completed King Kai’s training, and come back to life. All this should be familiar territory for any fan of the first season, and it seems that every major and even some minor events have been reproduced faithfully. A warning to anyone not already versed in the DBZ lore: the story and characters didn’t make a ton of sense to begin with, and they could be a lot harder to pick up on in the game if you don’t already know what’s going on. What took several episodes to transpire in the show (training with King Kai, for instance) can take less than five minutes in the game, and a lot of the drama from those sequences is kind of inferred more than actually conveyed. A good example is when Raditz first shows up and explains that Goku is actually an alien whose nature is to destroy mankind. Goku and his friends seem to take the news VERY well and the conversation immediately jumps to Gohan being kidnapped and what to do about that. Like I said, fans of the show will be delighted to see the story represented in the game, but the uninitiated will likely be very confused.

So far, I’m more or less impressed by The Legacy of Goku. Despite some unsettling flaws in hit detection, the game is fun and continues to get more fun as I learn new abilities and grow more powerful. It’s been a few years since I saw the first season of DBZ, so I’m also looking forward to reliving some of those events in interactive form. The graphics and sound are quite nice, and everything but combat is highly reminiscent of the series. Hopefully Webfoot Technologies and Infogrames will be able to clean up the rough parts and deliver a great game later this spring. What I’ve played certainly holds a ton of potential.

(Look for a massive Legacy of Goku preview update in a few days with more info on the controls, leveling up, Ki abilities, etc.)