5MVG: Five-Minute DBZ: The Legacy of Goku

[Zeke]

Ready for something silly and self-indulgent? No? Too bad, it's my birthday. Here's a new fiver for a game even I barely played!

I grew up at the right time to be a big fan of Dragon Ball Z, but there have always been two obstacles to doing anything with it on this site. One is that we specialize in one- or two-hour content here; the fiver format doesn't lend itself to shonen anime, whose individual episodes are short but whose arcs are massively long. The other is that DBZ Abridged is already out there. 5MV predates the Abridged fad by about a decade, but I'm not so jealous of its greater popularity that I can't appreciate the standouts. DBZA is absolutely drop-dead hilarious, and fivers of DBZ would always be in its shadow.

But you know what does fit our format? DBZ video games! There are all too many of them, most not very good (sound familiar, Trek fans?). My favourites are the GBA games, generally called the Legacy of Goku trilogy (although the third one had a different name). Games 2 and 3 in that series are phenomenal. Game 1? So bad that to this day I struggle to believe the same people made it. Bad news for players, but good news for me, since it lets me tackle the first two DBZ arcs and a very flawed gamification of them in one swoop!

Here's Five-Minute Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku. Spot the joke I've been waiting for a chance to make since before 2005!

[Nate the Great]

*waves*

[Wowbagger]

I have to admit, the wildest parts of this fiver for me turned out to just be canon.

HFIL = "Home for Infinite Losers." That's incredible.

Goku really did train in "100x normal gravity." Incredible.

However, this right here united me with so many other video games, past and present, and thereby made me smile:

Krillin: Hey, I wasn't even here a second ago! This is total -- GAK!
Seeing his friend die filled Goku with rage!
Goku: How could you?! I NEEDED HIM TO TRIGGER THE GLIIIIITCH!
Uh, yeah. So anyway. Super Saiyan.

[NAHTMMM]

No interest in DBZ but this was a very fun read.

King Yemma: Goku, this series' cosmology is like an onion in two ways. One, no matter how many layers of gods you find, there's always one more.
Goku: And two?
King Yemma: Looking at it too close will make you cry.

ANYWAY, Goku returned to Earth, wished back by the Dragon Balls!
Goku: Hey, where am I? Did the dragon just put me "on Earth", not anywhere specific?
Why? You got somewhere to be?
Goku: YES!

Sucker.

Frieza, 1st Form: Surprise! You're supposed to be meeting me in my final form, but you're so weak I don't feel the need!
Goku: I get to fight all your forms, but not Guldo? Weird.
Frieza, 1st Form: All? As if you'll even be getting past my --
(Moments later)
Frieza, 2nd Form: Okay, but --
(Moments later)
Frieza, 3rd Form: You fought a lot of my guards, didn't you?

Congratulations! Let's celebrate your victory with glorious FMV!
Goku: That abbreviation makes me SO MAD!
Huh? What for?
Goku: Dunno. I'm just mad at everything right now.

There it is.

[Zeke]

I knew you'd spot it! (Wowbagger doesn't count, I pretty much told him.) I know the basic premise of that joke goes back farther than 2005 because that's when we stopped officially using the abbreviation "5MV" for a decade or so. At that point, y'all stopped annoying me by calling it FMV and started annoying me by sticking with 5MV instead of 5M or 5M.net. (Can't believe it took me ten years to realize I could just have it both ways.)