Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero full roster at launch will include 182 fighters with 20 Gokus, 15 Vegetas, and naturally, just one lonely Krillin
"Goku Mini" from Dragon Ball Daima is a pre-order bonus
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero's full character roster has been revealed, and it has all the variations of DBZ's main heroes one could dream of, plus a ton of side characters. Notably, and perhaps fittingly, poor ol' Krillin is all by himself without any other variation in the roster.
You can check out the full character roster on Bandai Namco's website, but since information online is a little inconsistent, I hand-counted all of the characters and there are a whopping 181 included. However, as shown in the roster reveal trailer, a character being referred to as Goku (Mini) from the upcoming Dragon Ball Daima anime series will be available at launch as a pre-order bonus, effectively raising the total roster at launch to 182 fighters.
I also had fun hand-counting each and every variation of some of the most popular heroes from the Dragon Ball shows and movies. In total, there are 20 different Gokus, 15 Vegetas, 11 Gohans, nine Friezas, nine Trunks, and five Cells (if you count the Cell Jrs). And yeah, as mentioned before, there's only one Krillin, at least at launch.
Despite his reputation as the series' good-natured underdog who inexplicably dies all the time, I think the least Bandai could do is add the version of him with hair to the roster, but maybe we'll see that as DLC later on. Bandai has already said there will be "20+" more playable characters across three planned expansions, so it's entirely possible.
This is a pretty dramatic expansion over the previously revealed 164 character slots, and producer Furutani has a good reason for that. "Since the number of characters is one of the most important elements in the series, we have dedicated effort since the early stages of development in order to implement a significantly larger number of playable characters than in previous entries," Furutani said.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero launches on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 11.
Check out our Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero hands-on preview to see why we think it has the potential to reinvigorate anime arena fighters.
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After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.