Official Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero tournament ends in disaster as finalists fly up and down for 10 minutes straight, which some fans insist is peak performance
The devs behind Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero have made clear that it's "definitely not an esports game" from the very start, and that assertion has very much proven true even as official Bandai Namco-sponsored tournaments get underway. The French qualifiers for the game's Dramatic Showdown tournament ended in disaster as a pair of players showed just how far those intentionally imbalanced mechanics can be broken, and the community's split on whether it should be fixed.
The Dramatic Showdown tournament has kicked off with an array of online qualifiers in various regions. The most recent of those was for French players, and the whole broadcast was pretty normal for the most part, showcasing high-level play between the region's best players. Then the final between Hilliasteur and Shiryuu came around and, well… this was the result.
Amazing competitive game. The commentators just gave up on commentating after this lol pic.twitter.com/gZq37u8KpzNovember 25, 2024
Hilliasteur and Shiryuu just kept flying up and down, over and over and over again. Because Android characters in Sparking Zero don't use any Ki when they're dashing, it's relatively easy to keep your distance from an opponent - so an effective strategy is to try and rush in for the first strike, deal a tiny bit of damage, and then simply keep your distance until the timer runs out. With a small health advantage, you'll win the match when the counter hits zero.
The issue is that these tournament rules defaulted to a full 600 second match timer, meaning everybody watching had to wait a full 10 minutes while Hilliasteur and Shiryuu played keep away with each other. The official broadcast soon cut away, leaving the commentators to simply make conversation while waiting for the match to end. Eventually it did, with Shiryuu ending up the winner.
Some viewers interpreted this as a bit of collusion between the two players, as a sort of protest of the game's broken mechanics. Shiryuu seems to be among those demanding an
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