Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
Sales of 1,300,000 copies were recorded 2 months after release, and 9 months after release, in month 12 of the same year, Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 2 was released.
In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Family Computer Magazine,it scored 23.08 out of 30, as shown below.
This score placed it 46th among all Super Famicom titles (323 titles in total, as of 1993).
In addition, in the "Best 30 by Category" printed at the end of the "Super Famicom All Catalog '93", a special supplement to the 1993-8 information issue of SUPER FAMICOM Magazine, it took No. 28 for characters and No. 28 for originality.
The game sold approximately 1.3 million units in its first two months of release in Japan.
It proved to be a commercial hit, with lifetime sales between 1.41 million and, according to Famitsu, 1.45 million units, in Japan alone.
Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden garnered mostly positive reception from critics; most reviewers praised the presentation and gameplay but others felt divided in regards to several design aspects.
Famitsu praised the voice samples, the split-screen feature, ability to avoid special moves via button inputs and auto mode for newcomers.
Spirit, Laurent Defrance and François Hermellin of praised the audiovisual presentation, playability and longevity.
Olivier Prézeau, Grégoire Hellot and Laurent Deheppe of commended the digitized sounds, aerial combat, character roster and sprite animations but criticized various aspects such as the visuals for being poor and the French translation.
Bruno Sol of praised its faithfulness to the original manga, graphics, sound design and number of moves for each character, regarding it as one of the best arcade-style fighting games for Super Nintendo.
The game sold approximately 1.3 million units in its first two months of release in Japan.
Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden was first released by Bandai in Japan on March 20, 1993, and later in Europe on November 30 of the same year.
In 2018, the title was included as a limited pre-order bonus for the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Ball FighterZ, marking its first appearance in North American regions.
Jeuxvideo.coms Rroyd-Y stated that "This first game in a successful trilogy is surely not the best episode of the three.
Ryosuke Furuya of Arc System Works, who was involved in the development of the Nintendo 3DS title Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden, said in a 2015 interview with Famitsu.com that the 2-way split screen in this game was a very advanced technique, and stated that for technical reasons it was not adopted for Extreme Butoden.
Due to the popularity of fighting games at the time such as Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Suzuki stated he chose to work on a fighting game when assigned to a new project due to it being his favorite genre.
Jeuxvideo.coms Rroyd-Y stated that "This first game in a successful trilogy is surely not the best episode of the three.
A download code for this game was enclosed as an early purchase bonus with the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Ball FighterZ, released on 2018-9-27 (for the packaged version, copies produced up to 12-31, and for the download version, distribution up to the same date), but the music has been replaced (see #Music).
In 2011 a music plagiarism issue arose involving Kenji Yamamoto, who also composed for this game, and all of the music in Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden, the early purchase bonus for the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Ball FighterZ, has been replaced.
In 2018, the title was included as a limited pre-order bonus for the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Ball FighterZ, marking its first appearance in North American regions.
The passages quoted on this page are taken verbatim from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) — reusable under those terms. They are the work of the people who wrote them.