Rank 13: Dragon Ball Online
Developer: NTL Inc. and Bird Studio | Platform: PC | Release Date: February 4, 2010 in Korea, later in Taiwan and Hong Kong | Payment Model: Free2Play | Status: Shut down (September 26, 2013 or October 31, 2013)
What do I need to know about the license? Dragon Ball comes from the mind of Japanese author Akira Toriyama and was first published as a manga starting in 1984. Many well-known artists like Eiichirō Oda (One Piece), Masashi (Naruto), or Seishi Kishimoto (666 Satan) claim to have been strongly influenced by Dragon Ball.
Due to the immense success of the manga, several anime series, countless films, and video games about Dragon Ball have followed to this day. There are even live-action adaptations like Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins from 1989 and Dragonball Evolution (2009).
What do I need to know about the game? Dragon Ball Online took place about 216 years after the Buu saga from Dragon Ball Z and introduced Mira and Towa, two antagonists created specifically for the game who significantly disrupted the timelines.
This caused the player character to be dragged through time, repeatedly visiting past events to influence the present through their actions there. However, the setting remained the Earth. In addition to humans, players could also play characters like the Namekians and Majin.
As is typical for the genre, you completed quests to gain experience points and become stronger. Just like Son-Goku and his friends, you were also on the hunt for the namesake Dragon Balls. And of course, one of the goals was to win a big martial arts tournament.
Since the game never made it to the West and was only online for a few years, we can only estimate from a distance how well or poorly Dragon Ball Online was able to depict the franchise in detail. According to dragonball.fandom.com, the game is said to have primarily taken the original manga as a basis and ignored newer elements from Dragon Ball Z, for example.
Since the game’s story did not follow the official canon of the franchise, players could experience what happened to Son-Goku and Vegeta when they ultimately died and could no longer be resurrected. You can read more about it here: An MMORPG about Dragon Ball explained 14 years ago how Son-Goku and Vegeta ultimately die
