In mid 1999, a fanmade illustration of Super Saiyan 5 Goku with a "Dragon Ball AF" logo was submitted to a Spanish magazine called Hobby Consolas.
The following year, a young admin named "majin" or "Kelvin" of a DBZ fan site called majin.com started posting updates about the existence of a new Dragon Ball series called "Dragon Ball AF".
The evidence majin showed that he was being elaborately rused no longer exists, so it's really just speculation at this point as to what happened.
Regardless, his initial blog posts spawned a fringe community of Dragon Ball fans for nearly a decade to come. There were two types: those who started making fan art and fanfiction storylines for Dragon Ball AF in good fun, and those who were hungry after GT and desperately wanted to believe that AF was real.
Being really young and naive, I was of the latter camp.
With the advent of YouTube and other video hosting sites, people started making fanmade trailers, AMVs, and previews with MS Paint recolors of existing Z and GT footage, spanish dubbing, gratuitous use of Linkin Park tracks, and Prince Negaafellaga's Introduction.
And man, did I eat that shit up.
Dragon Ball AF Mugen
Back in 2007/2008, Ristar87 released a Dragon Ball AF MUGEN game with many characters including Super Saiyan 4 and 5 variants of the main cast, OC characters like Xicor and Evil Goku, and hypothetical fusions like Vegetunks and Brojak.
It was really exciting when it initially came out and the game seemed to be polished to my young eyes, but in retrospect, as with any MUGEN pack of the era, the characters are pretty broken and unbalanced.
For most people, that would probably be a negative, but it's such a charming kind of garbage. Me and Slime messed around with the game recently, and had alot of fun with it.
Playing MUGEN with an arcade stick is a such great time after being accustomed to playing the game with a keyboard or gummed up Logitech controller for so many years.
I've provided a link to the game below, definitely give it a try.
In the mid 2000's, there was a spanish bootleg Dragon Ball AF DVD called "Dragon Ball AF (el DVD)".
It was essentially a clipshow of trailers, MS Paint recolored fights, and AMVs.
It's a steaming pile of shit and I love it so. There are so many stand out moments I could mention, but do yourself a favor and experience it for yourself.
It's such a trip.
Below is my personal rip of the disc without watermarks and other bullshit.
If you want to make your own copy, here are some links to the image file
Bid for Power started out in 2000 as a total conversion mod for Quake III Arena with Dragon Ball Z characters and stages, but it eventually became its own standalone game.
Link to the original Bid for Power site from 2000
Bid for Power doesn't really play anything like Quake, as it's a third person arena game with more of a focus on flight and energy attacks.
It gained a significant following in the early to mid 2000's among DBZ and Quake III fans, but it slowly faded into obscurity.
Funimation sent the developers a cease and desist letter back in 2004, but they continued to distribute the game with just their OC characters.
Despite no longer being developed, fans continued to make asset packs for the game, with Bid for Power v5.0 Final being the last release in the late 2000's.
Quite a few Dragon Ball AF characters appear in the asset packs.
The game can best be described as a clunky clusterfuck when the room is full, but the chaotic nature of it makes it so much fun to play with friends.
