Image: Game Science/Nexusmods
Dragon Ball’s Journey to the West references come full circle.
Black Myth: Wukong has become hugely popular since its launch last week, peaking at 2.4 million concurrent players and becoming one of the fastest-selling games ever in no time at all. The action-RPG is based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, which also happens to serve as inspiration for another classic story: Dragon Ball.
As such, it was only a matter of time before fan mods made Dragon Ball Z’s Goku playable in-game, bringing the iconic manga franchise full circle. A new mod spotted online has swapped Sun Wukong for Goku, albeit without the inclusion of a kamehameha.
Black Myth: Wukong mods make Goku playable in-game
Black Myth: Wukong has proven to be immensely popular on PC via Steam, so it was only a matter of time before fan mods of the game began popping up. Still, it took barely a week for modders to make Goku from Dragon Ball Z the game’s main playable character, in the place of Sun Wukong. This mod was made in clear reference to the fact that Dragon Ball Z took heavy inspiration from Journey to the West, borrowing elements from the Monkey King like his power pole and short-lived monkey tail.
This mod is a simple character model swap for fans of Dragon Ball, but it doesn’t give Goku any additional powers to take on Sun Wukong’s enemies. The mod is available on Nexusmods, and more mods for the game are popping up by the day. Some of these offer quality-of-life fixes like an in-game map and better technical performance, while others are purely cosmetic swaps of in-game character models and items.
For example, you can give Sun Wukong a double-bladed lightsaber, play as Tifa from Final Fantasy 7 or even give him two diamond pickaxes from Minecraft. The possibilities are truly endless. If you’d rather play as Goku in an actual Dragon Ball game, a 4v4 Dragon Ball Z MOBA is also in the works.
Black Myth: Wukong's jaw-dropping sales numbers can be attributed to its immense success in China. According to games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, over 93% of the game's 250,000 reviews at launch were written in Simplified Chinese. Of those reviews, 97% were positive. The action-RPG has clearly been met with positive reception locally, to the point that it's managed to ship a whopping 10 million copies in just three days.