Dragon Ball Z - Final Bout

This is an original pirate game based on Dragon Ball Z. Thanks to Frank Cifaldi at The Video Game History Foundation for dumping this, and d4s for cracking the copy protection. By: Evan G Last updated: June 17, 2017

This page is one of the oldest on the site, and perhaps it was high time for an update! Back in 2001, when I was just starting up SNES Central, I was scouring Ebay for interesting SNES related auctions. That summer, there were a couple of pirate Dragon Ball Z games, including one with the title Dragon Ball Z - Final Bout (the other being Dragon Ball Z 2). Some of the images I saved are below:

cart

box

There was another auction I saw in November 2002 that had a clearer image of the cart:

Cart from the 2002 auction

Fast forward 16 years, and Frank Cilfadi was sent a cart of this game:

Cart

One thing that is obvious is that the label on this cart is different than the versions that were sold on Ebay many years ago, and that is more closely matches the artwork on the box. The serial code "SNS-TN-USA" belongs to The Terminator. Even though the artwork is different, it is pretty obvious the company used the same template for both versions of the label.

Most pirates have copy protection on them (ironically), and Dragon Ball Z - Final Bout is no exception. However, such copy protection is no issue for SNES master d4s, and we can now play this. As might be expected, the game is absolutely horrible. The sound is directly ripped from Street Fighter II. The controls are not very responsive. The frame rate is so terrible that often the character will just suddenly appear in different places on the screen. And it is simple enough to beat the game just by button mashing, unless you get hit by one of the insanely overpowered fireballs that some characters have. The character graphics appear to have been based on the DBZ Super Butouden series, but as far as I can tell they are not directly ripped from those games.

Character Select	Relatively decent portraits before the match

Son Goku vs Majin Boo (here spelled Buwu)

No idea where "Bethida" comes from. Obvious glitch in the name, too. I don't follow Dragon Ball, but I think the character is supposed to be Vegeta.	Final boss, Zeru is actually the name of a character from Yuu Yuu Hakusho

After beating the final boss, the character portraits come up	I beat the game so you don't have to!

Download here