Tokyo Game Show 2023

Hands-on With Akira Toriyama's Sand Land Game

After the massive success that was Dragon Ball, manga author Akira Toriyama penned a few more short-lived series in Weekly Shonen Jump. Of those series, the 2000 series Sand Land got the anime movie treatment in 2023. Along with the movie, a video game was developed for multiple platforms. It might seem difficult to adapt a one-volume manga into a full game, but the Tokyo Game Show 2023 had a short demo available to play. And boy was it a doozy to play for someone who uses an uncommon movement layout.

The standard controller layout in the modern gaming landscape places the left analog stick as movement and the right analog stick as the camera. It makes a great deal of sense that most people have better fine motor control with their right hand. Unfortunately, this writer is a left-stick camera, right-stick movement person. This has nothing to do with fine motor control but more so with long hours of practice (and maybe some weird wiring in my brain). What, then, does this have to do with the Sand Land game? Well, for as fun as the game was, due to the controls being locked, it was a slog to get through.

A simple demo, it opens with a fun little chase by a Sand Land monster and avoiding its attacks. This is achieved by tapping left or right on the left analog stick. It was a simple task even for me and gave me the illusion the game has a simple control scheme. But, once past the chase, we get into the overworld. And boy, did the controls fool me. What is a simple task for most players had me fumbling and bumbling around, wondering why the camera was moving when I pushed forward on the right analog sick. Then it dawned on me. Left stick move, right stick camera. This added a new level of challenge to the game as I had to relearn how a controller works and finish the demo's content in the allotted time.

Thankfully, the Sand Land demo didn't have too large of a world to explore. Relatively soon after the chase in the demo, you come across some bandits with a tank. It's a fun little fight to get anyone accustomed to the combat in the game, at least for those who don't use weird controls. Still, I powered through the fight and obtained the all-powerful tank. I could get lost in this powerful vehicle while blowing everything in my path to smithereens. Or so I would if it weren't for my steep learning curve.

The upside to a tank and a man who can't drive it was it allowed me to explore the small overworld to my heart's content. After getting lost for a bit, I came across a blocked archway, and if video games, mainly Halo 3, have taught me anything, “Tank beats everything.” If only I could aim properly. But, taking a second or fifty, I finally got the shot lined up and blasted my way through to the area boss, to a challenge befitting any gamer with a severe handicap.

In principle, the boss fight is there to help players learn about how to dodge attacks. It's a skill to have in an action game like Sand Land, as it's not guaranteed you'll have the tank for the entire game. But there was no time for this man to learn any of that. Only spamming attacks. And after a hard-fought battle, I reached the end of the demo with a sense of accomplishment.

Honestly, the game is relatively easy to pick up and play. It has the standard control scheme expected from a Bandai Namco game—like a Gundam Vs. game. And with the rich imagination of Akira Toriyama as the backdrop, there's much to anticipate about the Sand Land game. While a release date has not been announced yet, expected platforms include the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox systems.

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Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.