Play Datach - Dragon Ball Z - Gekitou Tenkaichi Budou Kai (Japan) Online

Game Overview

Man, Datach - Dragon Ball Z: Gekitou Tenkaichi Budou Kai was wild for an NES game. You'd slap these weird cards onto a scanner peripheral (which felt like magic as a kid) to make Goku or Vegeta throw Kamehamehas mid-battle. The whole thing played like some bizarre hybrid of a fighting game and a card battler—way ahead of its time for 1992.

It’s janky by today’s standards, sure, but there’s something charming about how hard it tried to cram DBZ’s energy blasts and flying chaos into 8-bit. The card gimmick actually made fights tense—screw up your timing or pick the wrong move, and you’d eat a Spirit Bomb to the face. Still one of the most creative attempts to adapt the series before the PlayStation era.

If you’re into retro oddities or just want to see where DBZ games started, this Japan-only relic is worth digging up. Just don’t lose the scanner.