Why Battle Stadium DON Was Dead on Arrival
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Battle Stadium D.O.N is a Shonen Jump crossover fighting game featuring characters from Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and Naruto series. The game was developed by Eighting and Q Entertainment and published by Bandai Namco Games. It was released on July 20th, 2006 only in Japan for the Playstation 2 and the Nintendo Gamecube.
Naruto, the youngest series of the Shonen Jump trio, was first published in 1999 with the Bleach series published two years later back in 2001 which also quickly became a popular series. We bring up Bleach? Well because we believe the developers missed the perfect opportunity to have Bleach characters in the game which would have changed the game’s name from D.O.N. (say DON) to Battle Stadium B.O.N.D which would’ve better represented the fighters from different series coming together and forming bonds.
Speaking of the roster, there are a total of 20 characters: 6 for Naruto, 8 for Dragon Ball Z, and 6 for One Piece. If the pattern continued with Bleach, it would most likely have 6 of its own characters featured in the game. Those characters would have possibly been Ichigo, Rukia, Renji, Hitsugaya, Yoruichi, and Byakuya.
Even with these characters, D.O.N. has no real story or lore behind why these characters might have been able to cross-over into the same world. The opening and ending cutscenes don’t tell us much other than that the characters annoy each other, fight, but ultimately get along in the end. Even JUMP Ultimate Stars, which was released months before D.O.N. on November 3rd, 2006 for the Nintendo DS still had something that resembled a story.
It also had repeatable missions with challenging objectives rather than what feels like randomized objectives in the Battle Stadium D.O.N.’s Battle mode.Some of those objectives included crouching for a total of 60 seconds, or to ring out 3 times and still win. Since the objectives are random, you might get a crouching for 60 seconds objective in a scrolling stage like the Forest of Death, which might mess up your Battle mode run. Or worse, you may get a no jumping objective in a vertically scrolling stage like Skypiea. A repeatable, unchanging, but challenging goal-oriented Battle mode would make the single player experience far more enjoyable.
Another issue in Battle mode was unlocking characters and stages with the slot machine. Even if a person beat Battle mode, that sense of victory would be destroyed if the player didn’t get slot machine coins by completing the random objectives. It especially hurts if the player beat Battle mode with enough coins, got to the slot machine, but still failed to unlock characters. Failing means playing Battle mode all over again until you get to the slot machine.
The gameplay itself is odd in that it’s like a mix of the coin mode and the stamina mode in Super Smash Bros. The goal is to hit the enemies and collect the red orbs that fall out of them to eventually have the most health in a shared health bar. This shared health bar really just represents the total amount of orbs in the match. A player would win if the time runs out and has the most orbs or if the player K.O.s every other player in the match.
Battle Stadium D.O.N.’s combat isn’t great either. The aerial animations are stiff, air combos are difficult to pull off, tap jump can’t be turned off, and there’s no directional air dodging or no hitbox when you z-drop items. The items in the game are also not fun to play with. Weapons like the katana, Zabuza’s Executioner’s Blade, or Goku’s Power Pole will limit your light attack moveset to one attack. Items in general don’t even help much with combos, though some items like the growth item will help characters like Luffy have a much wider range of attack for his special move. If the items in Battle Stadium D.O.N. served as tools that aid combos D.O.N. would play much better. In the end, if the game had taken elements from the Super Smash Bros. series and the DS Jump Crossover titles at the time it would’ve been a much better title.
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