Official Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero tournament ends in disaster as finalists fly up and down for 10 minutes straight, which some fans insist is peak performance
Nov. 26, 2024“After the match, we were told to stop and to ‘really play’”
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
The devs behind Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero havemade clear that it’s “definitely not an esports game"from the very start, and that assertion has very much proven true even as officialBandai Namco-sponsored tournaments get underway. The French qualifiers for the game’s Dramatic Showdown tournament ended in disaster as a pair of players showed just how far those intentionally imbalanced mechanics can be broken, and the community’s split on whether it should be fixed.
The Dramatic Showdown tournament has kicked off with an array of online qualifiers in various regions. The most recent of those was for French players, and the whole broadcast was pretty normal for the most part, showcasing high-level play between the region’s best players. Then the final between Hilliasteur and Shiryuu came around and, well…this was the result.
Hilliasteur and Shiryuu just kept flying up and down, over and over and over again. Because Android characters in Sparking Zero don’t use any Ki when they’re dashing, it’s relatively easy to keep your distance from an opponent - so an effective strategy is to try and rush in for the first strike, deal a tiny bit of damage, and then simply keep your distance until the timer runs out. With a small health advantage, you’ll win the match when the counter hits zero.
The issue is that these tournament rules defaulted to a full 600 second match timer, meaning everybody watching had to wait a full 10 minutes while Hilliasteur and Shiryuu played keep away with each other. The official broadcast soon cut away, leaving the commentators to simply make conversation while waiting for the match to end. Eventually it did, with Shiryuu ending up the winner.
Some viewers interpreted this as a bit of collusion between the two players, as a sort of protest of the game’s broken mechanics. Shiryuu seems to be among those demanding an update addressing balance problems like this, retweeting a clip of the finalalongside the message"I WON BY JUST RUNNING WITH ANDROIDS #FIXSPARKINGZERO”
If protest was Shiryuu’s intention, Hilliasteur didn’t seem to be in on it. “Shiryuu and I played seriously for 10 minutes while they cut the live broadcast,” Hilliasteur said ina tweetafter the event. “After the match, we were told to stop and to ‘really play,’ even though I had tried everything, even using giants. The issue is that they warned us we’d be disqualified if it happened again.”
Are Hilliasteur and Shiryuu wrong for making use of what amounts to an in-game exploit? Are the tournament organizers wrong for demanding they change their tactics mid-tournament? Those are the sorts of questions that the community is locked into right now - if you want to see some capital-D Discourse, check thereplies to this thread from content creator Globku- but many are just hoping this all makes Bandai Namco ‘fix’ the game. Of course, that kind of protest might be moot since the devsalready announceda new balance patch is coming in December.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
It’s worth noting that there’s no cash on the line in this tournament, though regional winners will be flown out to the Battle Hour event in Los Angeles this coming January for the grand finals. Thegrand final formatshows that the devs know this can’t be a traditional fighting game tournament, as everybody’s going to be pre-assigned a certain character of roughly equal power levels, with items given to weaker characters to smooth out the imbalances.
But the grand final format also embraces the chaos inherent to the game’s design by allowing players to choose one additional weaker character on top of their assigned fighter. The very same Android characters that facilitated the controversial timer scam win in the French qualifier are among the available options. Here’s hoping that the devs decide to address this specific issue in the December patch, because otherwise a whole lot of players are gonna have to make their peace with a very boring tournament from here.
These are thebest fighting gamesout there.
Upcoming Hunter x Hunter anime fighting game unexpectedly banned in Australia, with no reason given for the decision
Sparking Zero is the best-selling Dragon Ball game ever released in the US and Bandai Namco’s biggest published title outside of Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3
How to link your account in Marvel Rivals
