The world lost one of its most important creators and viosionaries of modern media with the death of Dragon Ball Creator Akira Toriyama earlier this year, but his legacy continues to carry on both sentimentally and quite literally.
His protege and successor as the manga artist of Dragon Ball Super, Toyotarou, recently paid tribute to his sensei by illustrating a classic fighting game character designed by Toriyama himself.
As shared on the official Dragon Ball website, the latest addition to the monthly “Toyotarou Tried to Draw” series takes us all the way back to 1996 with a character we haven’t seen much of in over two decades.
Featured in the entry is a cool illustration of Chuji Wu from Tobal No. 1 putting on his battle gear attached with a special message.
“In addition to providing the character designs for this fighting game,
Toriyama even helped come up with the setting and with the worldbuilding,” wrote Toyotarou. “I have fond memories of playing this game to the break of dawn with friends back in the day!”
Although it doesn’t get as much recognition in the present, Tobal No. 1 served as an important turning point for the genre as a fighting game developed specifically for the original PlayStation instead of arcades, which allowed Square to put much more emphasis on single-player content like the unique Quest Mode at the time.
The artist was even directly referenced in the game with the Toriyama Robo secret fighter.
Not only did Tobal feature Toriyama coming back to work with Square after Chrono Trigger, but original Virtua Fighter Designer and Tekken Director, Seiichi Ishii, carried those roles over to this game with more 3D fighting game experience than probably anyone in the era.
It also helped that the game included a demo disc for Final Fantasy 7, which pushed sales (especially in Japan), though not enough to give Tobal true staying power.
Unfortunately, the sequel Tobal 2 never released outside of Japan, and Square Enix hasn’t really done much to acknoweldge the series since.
Toriyama’s influence on video games hold almost as much weight as his manga career with the aforementioned titles along with of course Dragon Quest, the recently released Sand Land adaptation, and more like Blue Dragon, which Toyotarou also illustrated last month too.
Dragon Ball’s saga will carry on under the vision of Toyotarou and more of the staff that worked alongside Toriyama for years plus the upcoming Dragon Ball Daima anime, which the creator helped craft before his untimely passing.
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