TOBAL - The Fighting Game Series Designed by Legend Manga Artist Akira Toriyama
Fighting games include masterpieces such as Street Fighter, Tekken or Virtua Fighter.
However, you might not have heard about the TOBAL series, designed by the renowned Dragon Ball mangaka Akira Toriyama. TOBAL series is composed of 2 games, TOBAL No.1 and TOBAL 2 released respectively in 1996 and 1997.
TOBAL No.1, published by Square and developed by Dream Factory, founded by Seishii Ishii, father of world-famous Tekken series (Namco) or Virtua Fighter series (Sega), was the first entry for both companies into CD format with the Sony PlayStation. Having both Akira Toriyama, father of Dragon Ball and Tekken’s leading director Seishii Ishii reunited on one game production is totally incredible and makes TOBAL series a real gem.
Akira Toriyama was not only responsible for character designs like with Dragon Quest series or Chrono Trigger, but was also in charge of the whole world design. The characters composed of different races such as humans, aliens and robots are unique to iconic Toriyama’s work of art showing that retro futuristic design that we all love.
TOBAL No.1 plot, takes place in 2027, where an Earth space probe accidentally discovers the planet Tobal, full of mormoran ore, the ultimate energy source, and has gathered many aliens. The king of Tobal Emperor Udan, a martial-art maniac, holds once every 200 days a tournament called "Tobal Number One". The winner is awarded a large sum of money as well as the title of “Super Tobal Man”. The story of TOBAL No.1 unfolds at the "98th TOBAL No.1" tournament in the year 2048.
Would you imagine having Akira Toriyama as a playable character in the game? No matter how amazing this sounds, the Dragon Ball’s creator inserted himself as a special character called TORI or TORIX in the 1997 sequel TOBAL 2, unlockable once you clear all the dungeons.
Even if there is very little chance that the game series would see a sequel or a remastered version, PlayStation holders should definitely grab the game because TOBAL games being ones of the most underrated retro fighting games that exists on this day and it is totally worth it.
