dragon-power

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  • Virtually Overlooked: Dragon Power

    by 
    JC Fletcher
    JC Fletcher
    03.27.2008

    There is no way Dragon Power could have been good. It's a collection of awful components that amounts to more awfulness than the (negative) sum of its repulsive parts. Bandai (strike one, amirite) created a Dragon Ball game in 1986 (i.e. before third parties were really making decent games), and then, for whatever reason, decided to bring it to the American market. The problem, of course, was that in the mid-'80s, nobody in the U.S. had any idea what the hell Dragon Ball was. We had yet to even enter the "$20 for two episodes on a VHS tape" phase of anime fandom, much less the "Dragon Ball on cable" phase. So Bandai did what must have seemed like the logical thing: they didn't release the game hacked out all the recognizable Dragon Ball parts.What was left was a licensed anime game with no license -- and, therefore, no reason to exist.