Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, released as Dragon Ball Z (ドラゴンボールZ, Doragon Bōru Zetto) in Japan, is a fighting game released for the PlayStation 2 on November 2, 2002, in Europe and on December 3, 2002, in North America, and for the Nintendo GameCube on October 28, 2003, in North America and on November 14, 2003, in Europe. It is the first Budokai game of the series and the first Dragon Ball Z game to be released in all of Europe instead of having specific releases in France, Spain, and Portugal like earlier games. The game was released in Japan by Bandai on the PlayStation 2 on February 13, 2003, and on the Nintendo GameCube on November 28, 2003. It was developed by Dimps and published by Infogrames and later by Atari as a Greatest Hits title for the PlayStation 2 in North America.
The game includes a total of 23 playable characters, and the story follows the first three chapters of the Dragon Ball Z timeline starting with Goku and Piccolo's fight with Raditz in the Saiyan Saga, up to Gohan's final battle with Cell in the Android Saga. Features include a story mode, a versus mode, a tournament stage, a practice mode, and an items shop which allows players to purchase customization abilities using money gained through challenges in the story mode and tournament victories to make custom fighters. Story mode is divided into special chapters, initially having the player fight predominantly as Goku and Gohan through the Saiyan, Namek and Android Sagas before unlocking bonus chapters from different perspectives like Piccolo and Vegeta. The story mode also includes a few "what if" episodes to play with the villains of each saga, retelling iconic Dragon Ball events with different outcomes. A cel-shading effect was added to the graphics in the GameCube version.