Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 3

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 3 is a 2D fighting game released for the Super Famicom on September 29, 1994, in Japan and in January 1995 in France and Spain. It is the third installment in the Butoden series and features ten playable characters rooted in the Majin Buu Saga. Notable among the roster changes compared to the previous entry, the game includes characters such as Majin Buu, Dabura, Supreme Kai, Majin Vegeta, and Super Saiyan Goten, reflecting the story arc it draws from. A hidden tenth character, Future Trunks, is accessible through a cheat code.

Unlike its predecessors in the Butoden series, Super Butoden 3 does not include a dedicated Story Mode. The Tournament Mode effectively doubles as the game's narrative through-line, with completion by a given character triggering the credit sequence as though that fighter has been crowned champion of the tournament. This structural choice represents a significant departure from Super Butoden 2, which had built its reputation largely on its branching story content.

Ki charging is notably faster in Super Butoden 3 than in Super Butoden 2, requiring only a couple of seconds compared to the several seconds needed in the prior game. This change accelerates the pace of matches by reducing the time players spend in accumulation states, allowing fights to move more freely between offense and defense.

Super Butoden 3's roster is built around the Majin Buu Saga cast, bringing characters from the later chapters of Dragon Ball Z into the Butoden fighting system for the first time. Super Saiyan Goku, Super Saiyan Goten, Majin Buu, Super Saiyan Trunks, Majin Vegeta, Super Saiyan Gohan, Supreme Kai, Dabura, and Android 18 make up the nine standard characters. The presence of characters like Dabura and Supreme Kai alongside fan favorites from earlier sagas gives the roster a distinctive flavor tied to the specific story arc it represents.

The game draws its characters from a period of Dragon Ball Z that had not yet concluded in Japan at the time of its release, as the Majin Buu Saga was still ongoing in the manga and anime. This meant Super Butoden 3 was providing interactive access to story content that audiences were still experiencing in serialized form, adding a sense of currency to its roster choices. The Tournament Mode framework, while simpler than the branching Story Mode of Super Butoden 2, still offers meaningful single-player progression through the character ladder.

Super Butoden 3 concludes the Super Famicom chapter of the Butoden series before the franchise moved to the Sega Saturn with Shin Butoden. Its French title, Dragon Ball Z: Ultime Menace, and Korean title, Dragon Ball Z: Chomutujeon, reflect the game's multi-territory release in Europe and Asia beyond its primary Japanese market. A brief animated introduction in which Goku and Vegeta exchange dialogue before their battle is referenced in Dragon Ball Super episode 70, giving the game a small piece of franchise legacy decades after its original release.

The decision to remove the Story Mode was a notable creative choice that defined Super Butoden 3 against the previous entry. While this made the game feel lighter in content, the faster ki charging and Majin Buu Saga roster gave it its own identity within the series. Super Butoden 3 is remembered as the end of an era for the Super Famicom Dragon Ball Z fighting games, closing out a three-game run that helped establish the franchise's fighting game tradition on Nintendo hardware.