Great Ape Vegeta Fight

About

Great Ape Vegeta Fight refers to a boss battle in the 2024 fighting game Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, developed by Spike and based on the Dragon Ball manga and anime series by Akira Toriyama. The boss fight depicts a memorable moment in the series in which Goku fights Vegeta in his Saiyan great ape form. The boss and encounter became infamous online in early October 2024, roughly a week before the game's official release, due to the overwhelming difficulty of the fight, leading to many reactions and memes made about him from players.

Origin

On October 7th, 2024, early access to Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero was released^[1] for players who purchased the preorder version of the game. In the game's story mode, one of the earliest bosses recounts Goku's confrontation with Great Ape Vegeta, testing many players' skills and patience.

Also on October 7th, YouTuber^[2] and streamer @Goresh uploaded a gameplay clip showing the Great Ape Vegeta boss fight (seen below), which amassed over 27,000 views and 1000 likes in three days.

One of the earliest viral memetic mentions of the boss difficulty was uploaded on October 7th, 2024, by X^[3] user @JRads47, who posted a still image of Gohan beat up on the ground, captioning "Great Ape Vegeta fight." The tweet (seen below) amassed over 29,000 likes and 2,700 reposts in three days.

Spread

As more players began to fight Great Ape Vegeta in early October, his online presence increased on social media. For example, on October 7th, 2024, X^[4] user @BarretDokkan posted a gameplay clip of the boss fight, writing, "Ape Vegeta fight in a nutshell," which received roughly 5 million views and 56,000 likes in three days.

On October 8th, 2024, the official Bandai Nanco US^[5] X account posted a GIF of Great Ape Vegeta mocking the boss's difficulty, writing, "A win is a win. Lower Difficulty and Retry." The tweet (seen below) amassed over 3 million views and 36,000 likes in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References