Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World

A screenshot of the gameplay, showing a fight between Goku against Super Janemba in Supreme Kai's World. The green bars at the top represent each character's health, with the yellow bars underneath it displaying the amount of ki that can be used to perform special attacks and transformations.

The game's mechanics are essentially the same as the Budokai games, with some elements carried over from Burst Limit. Players take control of and battle various characters from the Dragon Ball franchise. 42 characters are playable, in comparison with Budokai 3, which had thirty-eight characters in its roster.

The story mode, called Dragon Mission, is displayed as a map with various objective missions icons that retell some of the battles within Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT. Players take control of their icon, a Goku avatar, by walking or running to an available mission icon. These missions range from standard and timed endurance battles. Other missions include mini games such as on-foot searches, races to reach a destination or find an item, timed button sequence responders and first person shooters.[3]

Skill capsules are carried over from the Budokai games. They allow players to customize characters with a variety of special techniques and attributes. The capsules can be bought with Zeni, and the more of the same capsule a player buys, the stronger their effects become. This differs from the Budokai games, where skills had to be placed multiple times on a character for them to become stronger.[4]

A mode called "Fighter's Road" becomes available after certain goals are met. Players participate in a series of battles on four of the maps from the Dragon Mission mode. Like Dragon Mission, players are rewarded a certain amount of Zeni after every victory. They are also rewarded more Zeni according to how many battles they've won when they exit.[5]

One of the minigames where players must race through rings to achieve an objective. The top right hand side represents the player's time remaining, while the meters at the bottom left represents the player's ki and in some levels will contain a health meter.

The game was first announced in August 2008 by Atari's French website. The announcement stated that the game was in development by Dimps and would retain many of the qualities found in the Budokai series, yet they would include new innovations such as the Dragon Mission mode and a simplified combat system from Burst Limit. It was also promised that the game's roster would include up to forty playable characters, not including transformations and was given a European release date of sometime in December of that year. Included with the announcement were several screenshots which revealed gameplay of the combat system and four of the mini-games from both the Saiyan and Android sagas.[6] This was followed by an announcement posted on Atari's North American page revealing that they would retain the Infinite World title and a release date sometime in November.[7] Around the same time, V Jump announced the game would be released in Japan and that the game would also utilize the Infinite World title.[8] In September, more information was released stating that the capsule system would be brought back and the audio would include the both English and Japanese voice talent.[9] In October, Famitsu posted more screenshots revealing more mini-games within the Frieza and Cell sagas.[10] On October 15, Atari released a press statement announcing that the game was completed.[1][11] A few days later the game was unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show.[12][13]

According to producer Riyo Mito, the game's title Infinite World implies the immense gameplay of the epic Dragon Ball universe within the scope of the game's Dragon Mission mode, he also said that this is the fourth installment of the "Budokai" series. The game was specifically chosen for the PlayStation 2 to target fans that did not have access to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles to play the previous title, Burst Limit, at the time.[14]

Composer Kenji Yamamoto returns to provide music for the game along with Kanon Yamamoto, with both credited as Kenz and Canon respectively.[15] There are twenty-two pieces created exclusively for the game, with the rest carried over from the previous three Budokai games. The game's theme songs "Hikari no Sasu Mirai e!" and "Dragon Ball Party" were written by Yuriko Mori and performed by Hironobu Kageyama.[16] However, the game's North American packaging only features Kageyama as a contributor, and the game's instruction manual does not list any music credits,[17] causing people in the gaming community, not familiar with the material, to believe that Kageyama was the game's composer. Some game critics have gone on to record in their reviews citing the music as the superior part of the game.[18][19][20] The new music was released as Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World Original Soundtrack by Lantis on January 7, 2009,[21] while the theme songs were released as a single by King Records on Christmas Day 2008.[22]

The game went on to only sell 200,000 copies in Japan and 80,000 copies in the United States as of August 2010. However, Infinite World went on to become Japan's second top-selling game in 2008, selling 76,452 units the first week in the country right behind Professor Layton and the Unwound Future.[23] It was reported that the game, along with Backyard Baseball and Alone in the Dark, helped Atari out of their financial slump with a net 44.5 percent increase.[24]

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 50.80%[25] Metacritic 48/100[26] Review scores Publication Score GamePro [27] GameRevolution D[28] GameSpot 5.5/10[29] GamesRadar+ [30] GameZone 6.1/10[31] IGN 3.5/10[32]

During its initial release, Infinite World received mixed reviews. Many felt the game was identical to Budokai 3, while others thought the game's story mode and mini games were too daunting, and that the game was geared more towards hardcore fans instead of casual gamers. It earned aggregated scores of 48/100 on Metacritic, a score of 50.80% on GameRankings, and IGN gave the game a 3.5; a score lower than that of the critically panned Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22. However, the game has been accepted more positively by the fans throughout the years and received a cult following, with many reviewers praising the game's improved visuals and gameplay along with the inclusion of extra characters missing from the previous Budokai games. Ironically the back of the box says "The Best of the Budokai Series".

• Official Japanese Website (in Japanese)