Akira Toriyama was a renowned Japanese manga artist and character designer who is known by many for the creation of the enormously popular Dragon Ball. He is considered to be one of the most influential authors of manga and has inspired other manga authors along the way.
Apart from his illustrious career as a manga artist, he also had a prominent career in the video game industry. He contributed to this industry by developing characters for video games that include seminal JRPGs to some of the most iconic fighting video games. The Dragon Ball’s creator played an important part in the development of the following seven iconic games.
Gyrozetter & Fantasian
Akira Toriyama mostly contributes to video games as a character designer. Apart from this, he also worked as a guest designer for many other projects. Though Toriyama only had a small part in the game Fantasian, he did build a diorama for a Fantasian contest that was later used as the inspiration for a level pack in the game.
Although he had a small part in the card game Gyrozetter, Toriyama was still able to play to his strengths. He took inspiration from his work building cars for his manga series Dr. Slump to create the famous battle robot Beeman 500SS for Gyrozetter.
Tobal No. 1
Developed by DreamFactory in collaboration with Square, the fighting video game Tobal No. 1, came out in 1996 for Sony’s PlayStation. Tobal No. 1 was Square’s initial entry into the fighting game genre. With all of the character designs created by Akira Toriyama, the game made an effort to be unique.
The game managed to shoot to the top of the Japanese sales charts upon its release. With over 900,000 sales, it ranked as the eighth best-selling video game in Japan in 1996. Moreover, the inclusion of the Final Fantasy VII demo disc, a widely anticipated game at the time, is credited with the game’s outstanding sales.
Jump Series
One aspect of Shonen Jump’s popularity as the world’s largest manga magazine is Toriyama’s work. Therefore, when the game was made, Toriyama included characters from all of his manga, and moreover he also created character designs specifically for characters in the game.
His artwork for Dark Raid in Famicom Jump II: Saikyō no Shichinin marked the beginning of his work in the game. However, the majority of players most likely recall his work on the game Jump Force. He created a group of unique characters related to the crossover plot of that game. This featured the cunning Prometheus, the ultimate antagonist.
Blue Dragon
Blue Dragon was jointly developed by the creator of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and by Toriyama. Akira Toriyama’s character designs were a major selling point for the game. The game was based on the comic and anime adaptation. The gameplay incorporates turn-based components from classic Japanese role-playing video games.
Blue Dragon received “generally favorable reviews” as it was praised by many for taking a traditional approach. However, the game only managed to release three entries and then it was stopped. This is because many felt that the traditional style of game-making was becoming old by then.
Dragon Ball universe
There are a ton of video games in the Dragon Ball franchise, and not all of them have had direct involvement from Toriyama. In 1986, he worked on some of the character design for Dragon Ball: Shenlong no Nazo, which was his first Dragon Ball game. Almost thirty-two years later, he created another character for Dragon Ball FighterZ. This character was the Android 21, which made an appearance in Super Hero.
After these, he then created Shallot and Zahha, two characters for the Dragon Ball Legends game. In the video game adaptation of the manga Kakarot, he also developed Bonyu as a brand-new member of Ginyu Force.
Chrono Trigger
Developed by Square Chrono Trigger is a 1995 game and was the first one in the Chrono series. The game was first released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Apart from Toriyama, the game had two other designers.
When it was first released, the game became a critical and financial success, winning numerous awards from gaming magazines. Chrono Trigger is still regarded as one of the most important games for the fourth-generation console gaming and one of the best video games ever created.
Dragon Quest
The most popular Akira Toriyama series with the Dragon Ball franchise isn’t Dragon Ball but rather Dragon Quest. This was one of the longest-running series that Toriyama co-created with none other than Yuji Horii. When Dragon Ball was still in its early stages, the series debuted, and it soon surpassed Japanese manga in popularity.
There are already 11 mainline entries in the Dragon Quest series, and Toriyama created the characters for all of them. Along with creating a plethora of classic character designs, he also designed the popular character Slime. The series became very popular and has a plethora of spin-offs.
