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SOJ Tobal No. 1 ยท Vintage Fighting Games
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Who Designed Tobal's Characters?

Akira Toriyama. Every one of them.

The credit is not a guest spot. Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball and character designer of the Dragon Quest series and Square's own Chrono Trigger, is credited as the artist of Tobal No. 1, and the game's full roster, starters, bosses and one secret robot, came from his pen.

It nearly did not happen that way. Director Seiichi Ishii had wanted to work with Toriyama from the start, and the team's first idea was to borrow an existing Toriyama cast rather than commission a new one. The original roster exists because Toriyama himself proposed drawing one.

THE TWO COVERS

Same game, two shelves
Tobal No. 1 North American PlayStation box art
North America
A computer rendered Chuji lunges off the North American box, and the selling point sits under the logo in yellow: Final Fantasy VII, Sampler CD Included. Squaresoft and Sony Computer Entertainment, 1996.
Tobal No. 1 Japanese PlayStation box art
Japan
Japan got Akira Toriyama's own illustration instead: Chuji in the foreground, Ill Goga behind him, under a plain Squaresoft wordmark. This is the art the game's character designer actually drew.

HOW IT HAPPENED

An ask, a prototype, an offer
THE REQUEST
Director Seiichi Ishii wanted Toriyama on the game. In his 4Gamer interview, reported by AUTOMATON West, Ishii explained that Trunks had recently appeared in Dragon Ball and he wanted a character like that in Tobal. Square had the relationship to ask: Toriyama had just designed the characters for Square's Chrono Trigger, released in March 1995.
THE GAME THAT WASN'T
The first plan was not an original cast at all. DreamFactory began prototyping a fighting game using the cast of Chrono Trigger. During that prototype, Toriyama came back with an offer, in Ishii's telling: he would draw new characters instead. Tobal's roster is the result of that offer.
HOW SQUARE WORKED WITH HIM
Square's arrangement with Toriyama ran on trust and distance: one initial meeting to discuss the project, after which the artist submitted his designs to the company. He also contributed the game's basic story and world, which DreamFactory then fleshed out.
DRAWN FOR POLYGONS
Toriyama illustrated the fighters so they could be expressed easily in 3D, with body proportions that made their movements look natural. He gave them distinct physical attributes on purpose, so the game could stage mismatches honestly: smaller characters beating larger ones, and humans against non-human opponents.

THE ROSTER HE DREW

Eight starters, three bosses, one robot
THE STARTING EIGHT
Chuji Wu, Oliems, Epon, Hom, Fei Pusu, Mary Ivonskaya, Ill Goga and Gren Kutz. A human and alien cast competing on the planet Tobal for the rights to the Molmoran ore, with their backstories carried in the instruction manual rather than the game.
A RIVAL, MADE TO MEASURE
Gren Kutz exists because Ishii asked Toriyama for a rival for Chuji. The two were given exactly the same age, height and weight to underline the rivalry. Gren joining the roster pushed Mufu out of the starting eight and into a boss role.
BOSSES AND THE SMALL PRINT
The bosses are Mufu, the emperor Udan and the enormous Nork. Nork was judged too large to be playable without breaking the game's balance, so his unlockable form is Snork, a pint sized version. Beat a boss in Quest Mode and you could play as them.
TORIYAMA ROBO
The deepest secret in the game is the designer himself. Clear the 30 floor Udan's Dungeon in Quest Mode and you unlock Toriyama Robo, a robot fighter named for Toriyama, who appears nowhere else in the game.

THE TWO BOXES TELL THE STORY

His art at home, a render abroad

You can see Toriyama's standing in 1996 in the packaging. The Japanese box is his illustration, full stop. The North American box replaces his drawings with a computer rendered Chuji, because, as Ishii noted, Toriyama's style was not yet widely recognized outside Japan and there were plans, abandoned for lack of time, to alter the characters themselves for the overseas version.

Inside the game, none of that caution survived. Every fighter on the select screen, from the robot Hom to the emperor Udan, is Toriyama's work, which makes Tobal No. 1 the only 3D fighting game of its era designed end to end by the most famous manga artist alive.

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