A lot of the major fighting games are built on legacy. A new Street Fighter game might have new mechanics, characters, or concepts, but it will still fundamentally be a Street Fighter game. Some things change, but the core of the game is still there. But Dragon Ball FighterZ, as players have told me, is an entirely new system. Marvel might be the closest comparison, as both are three-on-three team fighting games, but mechanics from many other games have seeped into DBFZ. It has super dashes and auto-combos. Beerus’ orb bouncing reminds me of Venom from Guilty Gear. And Piccolo has some very Dhalsim-esque moves, evoking Street Fighter.

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The game is a blank canvas. The last few weeks have been a flurry of Twitter videos and hastily compiled aggregations of tech, as players attempt to innovate and “solve” the game. Every time one incredibly powerful strategy emerges, another takes its place. Android 16’s slam-jammin’ grapplin’, Vegeta’s incredible assist, Hit’s—well, it’s stance-based counters and a strong ground game, but in motion it looks like dark sorcery.

Players are still just breaching the surface on what’s possible and top pros, like McLean, are bringing new perspectives and ideas every day. He’s been gradually filling his Twitter timeline with new discoveries, and he told me over the phone that understanding multiple fighting games has really helped him dive into DBFZ.

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“It feels like a brand new thing, you know?” said McLean. “It’s like, nobody knows the proper way to play [Dragon Ball FighterZ] yet, so everybody has been trying to take their experiences that they’ve had in other fighting games and trying to apply it to this game. But the reason why it’s so hype is everybody just wants to be the best, so it’s like, let the game be its own brand new IP. Everybody’s going to be coming around and trying to see what they can apply.”

So it’s a brand new game with no established upper echelon of players. It’s based on a classic that many players likely watched growing up as kids. But what could make Dragon Ball FighterZ more than a passing fancy for the fighting game community? To start, a stellar Evo tournament.

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Dragon Ball FighterZ was one of two new fighting games announced for the Evo 2018 main stage. If FGC is the umbrella term for all fighting games, then Evo is the umbrella championship. For most if not all games, winning Evo is like winning the world championship for your respective practice. For Dragon Ball FighterZ, players aren’t just expecting a solid turnout—several told me it could be looking to topple records.

“I mean, if it had over 3,000 entrants I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Chen. “In fact, I would almost kind of consider that kind of low. Like I would expect probably a good, maybe like 4,000 entrants or something like that. Will it get to Street Fighter V first year, 5,000 entrants level? Hard to say.”

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To put those numbers in perspective, here’s last year’s registration numbers: Street Fighter V topped out at 2,622, followed by Smash 4 and Melee at 1515 and 1435, respectively. That was a down year compared to 2016, when 5,065 entrants signed up for Street Fighter V’s first year at Evo, but both Smash games garnered comparable shares at 2,637 for Smash 4 and 2,350 for Melee.

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It helps that the other potential Vs.-style game, Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite, was snubbed for the main stage. In fact, players have already been eyeing DBFZ as a potential breakout game. With the number of signed and sponsored players fighting game players steadily rising, a game that’s booming in popularity and already set for an Evo debut is appealing to competitors. Barthelemy is an unsigned player known for Guilty Gear, but he tells me that for now, DBFZ is his focus.

Things aren’t perfect, obviously. Network issues have made playing online frustrating for players, and bugs still pop up, shared around on social media. This morning, game producer Tomoko Hiroki laid out the road map for addressing the game’s current issues.

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Current players are hoping that Bandai Namco addresses the technical stuff, but really, don’t want the game to be overbalanced just yet. “I’m just saying, let the game rock for now,” Barthelemy tells me.

The allure of Dragon Ball FighterZ isn’t just playing out your favorite What If scenarios against friends. It’s that this new game, forged from a melting pot of different game mechanics and ideas, could bring together the disparate genres within the FGC and create something new, unlike anything we’ve seen in a while. It’s already created one rivalry that seemed highly improbable just a short time ago. What else is possible?