The Dragonball franchise is a global juggernaut today, fondly remembered by westerners and Asian fan alike. After failing several times to catch on with North American audiences, the late Akira Toriyama's Dragonball Z gained traction on Cartoon Network's anime block Toonami and YTV in Canada by 2000. Its predecessor, Dragonball, had a rougher start, floundering on syndication for about seven years. And when it comes to rougher starts, the first piece of Dragonball media we got in the US came in the form of...Dragon Power.

Ah, Dragon Power. One of those things that years later would alert me to the practice of localization; when something is just too Japanese, slap the most commercially generic American anachronisms and such all over it. Games like Circus Caper, Kid Kool, Totally Rad, Kendo Rage were all subject to getting Americanized. 

Dragon Power is a Yank'd up reskin of Dragon Ball: Shenlong no Nazo. It was developed by Tose, who has developed a handful of Dragonball games, and released on the Famicom in 1986. It's an overhead adventure game that abridges the first six volumes of the manga, culminating with the confrontation with Emperor Pilaf and the first wish. After that, the game kinda invents its own story. Perhaps Toriyama hadn't finished much going forward, but there's Red Ribbon Army references towards the end. 

The localization retains Goku's name, but everyone else is rebranded. Bulma is Nora, Oolong becomes Pudgy, Master Roshi is simply known as Hermit, and Yamcha the Desert Bandit is Lancer. And the Dragonballs themselves are simply the Crystal Balls. Hindsight being 20/20, it's goofy the protag retains his name, but no child in America would've picked up on the context anyway.

Localization or not, I could never stand the way it plays. For comparison's sake, imagine if you took the mobility of the Game Boy Advance's Legacy of Goku, blasted it in the knee with a Kentucky long rifle, and you could only play the game with your ring fingers. The easy comparison is of course The Legend of Zelda; traverse the terrain, get power-ups, defeat enemies. Reaching the end of a stage presents a boss fight, generally a taller foe that chuck projectiles.

The hit detection is inconsistent, and the power-ups either make the game too easy or don't last long enough to be of any significant value. Making matters more frustrating, the timer and life bar are tied together, so damage you take reduces the counter. Food replenishes your health, but it's so random what appears where regarding some items, it's best to just get to the end of the stage and forego exploration. At least until you get a good read on the layout of the map. The screens are small enough, but Goku's general movement is sluggish. The jump seldom comes in handy, you can't attack while in the air in the first place. For the boss battles, there's no strategy. Since I can't afford to waste time, I just run forward and wail on them until they're defeated. No variables, little in the way of ebbs and flows. It's as mindless a game as it can get. 

As for the graphics, Dragon Power is a strain to look at for me. My eyes are already bad, and the overuse of beige and mucus greens clashing with Goku's skin tone makes the screen radiate like a vapor lamp. Regarding the reskins, only Goku and Master Roshi are given any overhauls. Gone is the signature salad that adorns Goku's dome, replaced with a short buzzed fade and a doofy wide-mouth grin. Ironically, he ends up looking more like the monkey protagonist from the initial Journey to the West story of which Dragonball is based.

And of course, the perverted Master Roshi (and really a LOT of the pervy moments in Dragonball) wasn't going to make the cut. In the manga, when Master Roshi is asked to use the Kamehameha to diffuse the flames on Ox King's mountain, the reward in exchange is Roshi wanting to fondle Bulma's chest. So she convinces the shapeshifting Oolong to pose as her instead tp seal the deal. In DRAGON POWER, grabbing boobies is retconned into Pudgy as NORA feeding the hungry hermit "burgers and sandwiches". A more prudent decision. 

Dragon Power is bad. At best, it's an easy enough game to speedrun, and if you're a Dragonball fan and stumble across it, you might find some amusement out of the novelty of indulging in what is best served as a trivia question. As a piece of software, it's repetitive, lacks any real depth or game design to warrant revisiting. This is one of the original NES carts we had when our parents picked up an NES, and I still have it. Not sure why. This really does begin what would be a trend of dodgy and sub-mediocre Dragonball titles on console for quite a while.