The Rarest (& Priciest) Dragon Ball Game May Be Sitting In Your Closet

Longtime "Dragon Ball" fans are feeling extremely nostalgic right about now. Everyone's been blown away by "Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero" so far, and the excitement around the new game has been bringing up warm memories of "Dragon Ball" games long past. Some of us spent countless hours playing the "Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi" games with friends, mastering combos and getting repeatedly smacked into the ground until it was time to switch to a first-person shooter. It's been nearly 20 years since "Budokai Tenkaichi 3" released (yikes), and even though Bandai Namco kept making great "Dragon Ball Z" video games, very few have managed to capture the magic of the games from the early 2000s.

Maybe you haven't thought much about those games in a long time, but with all the excitement around "Sparking! Zero," it might be worth taking a look through your old collection. It turns out some of those "Dragon Ball" games from the aughts are real collector's items now, and people aren't just looking for copies of the original "Budokai Tenkaichi" trilogy. In fact, the most valuable "Dragon Ball" game for collectors is actually a Game Boy Advance game from 2006: the appropriately titled "Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure."

What is it that makes "Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure" so valuable, you ask? It's a fair question, because when the game first debuted, it was met with a somewhat muted response. IGN's review praised "Advanced Adventure" for its excellent (albeit simple) beat-em-up mechanics and for including a wealth of side content, but the reviewer ultimately concluded, "Unless you're a huge fan of the series there's really nothing new and amazing in the product for you." The game stands as a capable-enough 2D adventure, but the target audience was clearly true "Dragon Ball" diehards.

And that's exactly who the game really connected with. GameSpot's review noted, "This isn't just another quickie cash-in developed to siphon money out of fans' wallets. While going through the game, you get the impression that great care went into making it jibe with ["Dragon Ball" creator Akira] Toriyama's vision." The game does its best to adapt the entirety of the original "Dragon Ball" series into just a handful of levels, and that's a big part of why fans today remember it as one of the best games the franchise has ever seen.

The gameplay in "Advanced Adventure" is solid enough, but it's just not the main draw. Looking back, from the story decisions to the art direction, it seems like "Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure" was almost tailor-made to be a "Dragon Ball" collector's item. It feels like a compact celebration of the excitement of the original series. That's probably why a graded copy of the game was able to sell for a thousand dollars in 2024.

Before you start tearing through your boxes of childhood memorabilia desperately looking for an old copy of "Advanced Adventure," you should know that selling it isn't a guaranteed path to the sweet life. There are definitely more valuable games that could be in your closet. Loose copies of "Advanced Adventure" have sold for less than 90 bucks, and even an unsealed copy will probably only net you a few hundred dollars. That said, if you happened to be a pretty avid "Dragon Ball" game collector back in the day — and you kept them in tip-top shape — you might have a small fortune tucked away in your room.

For instance, PlayStation 2 copies of "Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3," have sold for a few hundred dollars in the past. A copy could be worth even more if it includes the limited edition bonus disc. Meanwhile, if you were exclusively a Game Boy Advance player, you could potentially sell a mint condition copy of "Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku I & II" for $400 or more. Older games are going up in value, but the Venn diagram of retro gaming enthusiasts and diehard "Dragon Ball" fans probably isn't quite big enough to carry you to an early retirement. When it comes to "Dragon Ball" collectibles, the real money is in the figurines and trading cards. Still, if you're truly a fan, the memories attached to your collectibles might be priceless.