When I was growing up (which wasn’t too long ago), there was a cartoon that I would need to be home by 4:00 p.m. to prepare for: “Dragon Ball Z.” Many games have been made about this anime series, but none seem to compare to “Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi 2” (DBZBT2) on the Nintendo Wii. Not having a conventional controller helps with this game.

“DBZBT2” is a not-so-traditional fighter. It has a very fast pace and smooth feel to the game that is not usually felt in a fighting game. It also looks very good and clean. There are no real glitches that I could find in one of the 15 levels that you can fight on. The levels are all very destructible and give some wonderful “Oooo’s” and “Ahhh’s.” I could just watch someone play this game for a long time.

The awesome environments come with a large soundtrack. Most of the songs are incredibly awful. It seems that the people who made the music were trying to make that crappy rock that “DBZ” is infamous for. Congratulations!

I give them an 11/10 in that area. “DBZBT2” has sound effects that are awesome. The punches, the kicks, the blasts, the teleporting and the sound of the spirit bomb blowing up the side of whatever planet you are on, making it a wasteland, is friggin’ sweet!

There are few things in life that are as cool as throwing a giant ball of energy at your enemy’s face, and one of them is throwing a giant ball of energy at your friend’s face. The multiplayer is unbelievable.

There are over 100 characters that you get to eventually play as. Even the ones that you start out with seem like enough.

Each character has their own special abilities, and they all look cool when they do them.

But before you do them you need to know the controls. This is probably the hardest part of the whole game.

There is a fairly large learning curve on this game with the controls. When you first have a character, you need to go to the pause menu and look at their skill list.

The skill list is essential because without it, you will be flailing your arms around like an idiot.

However, there are a few problems within the game. Whenever I do a what I like to call super dash, I can’t get out of it. That means I will be flying aimlessly around the map until my energy runs out. It prevents me from going as fast paced as the rest of the game is.

Another issue is that after almost each cut scene, there is a loading screen. The voice acting can also get annoying throughout all the menus.

You won’t be putting “DBZBT2” down for a while especially with its 60 hour single player game that goes all the way from “Dragon Ball Z” to “Dragon Ball GT.” It’s border-line nuts and fun at the same time.

This game is very fun once you get past the first frustrations of the controls. Any “DBZ” fan will love this game, and I even think that a non-DBZ fan would enjoy it, too.

Even though this game is a fighter, it is one of the best launch titles for the Nintendo Wii. The bottom line: “Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi 2” for the Nintendo Wii 8.5/10.