Dragon Ball Z: Budokai

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, released as Dragon Ball Z (ドラゴンボールZ Doragon Bōru Zetto) in Japan, is a fighting game released for the PlayStation 2 on November 2, 2002, in Europe and on December 3, 2002, in North America, and for the Nintendo GameCube on October 28, 2003, in North America and on November 14, 2003, in Europe. It was the first Budokai game of the series but also the first Dragon Ball Z game to be released in all Europe and aside from specific releases in France, Spain and Portugal like it was with the earlier games. The game was released in Japan by Bandai on the PlayStation 2 on February 13, 2003, and on the Nintendo GameCube on November 28, 2003. It was developed by Dimps and published by Atari.

The North American versions feature English voice acting from the North American Funimation dub, while the European versions feature the original Japanese voice acting and several European languages text translations.

Gameplay
The game follows the Dragon Ball Z timeline starting with Goku and Piccolo's fight with Raditz up to Gohan's final battle with Cell with a total of 23 playable characters. Features included in the game were a story mode, a versus mode, a tournament stage, a practice mode, and an items shop which allowed the player to purchase various customization abilities using money that was gained through the various challenges in the story mode and tournament victories to customize and make the most powerful warriors. The story mode also included a few "what if" episodes to play, retelling iconic events in the Dragon Ball history with a few twists. A cel-shading effect was added to the graphics in the GameCube version.