In 2001, Broccoli acquired the Beyblade license for video games from Hudson Soft and Rokumendo. At the end of 2001, the company released its first Beyblade title: Bakuten Shoot Beyblade - Gekitō! Saikyō Blader. This was to be the start of a trilogy for the Game Boy Advance, with Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Ikuze! Gekitō! Chō Jiryoku Battle! following in the middle of 2002 and Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Gekisen! Team Battle!! coming in at the end of that year. The trilogy's story is based on the anime, but takes some details from the manga and is an Alternate Continuity to the second season. The games are exclusive to the Japanese market.
Gameplay consists of various stages through which the player has to rank up to become the champion. Each stage features four or less opponents that have to be defeated in best-out-of-three matches multiple times. The story unfolds through dialogue before and after the stages in the style of a Visual Novel, which isn't surprising coming from Broccoli. Winning a match earns the player beyparts (attack ring, weight disk, or blade base) at random to customize their own bey with, and winning a stage earns the player a new shooter. There's also a leveling system by experience earned in battle and various new abilities are unlocked this way.
- Bakuten Shoot Beyblade - Gekitō! Saikyō Blader (Bakuten Shoot Beyblade - Fierce Fighting! The Strongest Blader) gives the option to pick from either Takao Kinomiya or Daichi Sumeragi as player avatar. Gameplay differs in terms of stats and special moves, but nothing big. The overall story is unaffected by the choice either bar for character-specific interactions. For instance, as the game follows from the first season of the anime, Daichi is new to everythin, while Takao gets to meet up with his BBA teammates during the tournament. The final opponent is Kaoru Amō, a character exclusive to the trilogy.
- Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Iku ze! Gekitō! Chō Jiryoku Battle! (Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Let's Go! Fierce Fighting! Ultra Magnetic Battle) only offers Daichi Sumeragi as playable character. The gameplay is mostly the same from the previous game, while the overall story incorporates elements from the previous game and the anime's second season. The final opponent is Kaoru Amō once again.
- Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Gekisen! Team Battle!! (Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Fierce Battle! Team Battle) goes Pokémon with two versions:
- Seiryū no Shō ~Takao Hen~ (Seiryū's Chapter ~The Takao Compilation~)
- Kōryū no Shō ~Daichi Hen~ (Kōryū's Chapter ~The Daichi Compilation~)
- The reason it's cut up is that "Team Battle" bit. Where before the player handled a single character, now the player handles a team called the Excite Four. Potential teammates are unlocked by winning a lot, sometimes with a specific character, but it depends on the version which characters are open for it (without the need for codes). Kaoru Amō returns and is recruitable, as are the members of his new team.
Bakuten Shoot Beyblade contains adaptation examples of:
- Art-Shifted Sequel: The first game is based on the art style of the first season of the anime, while the second game takes after the second season. Because there was a major art shift between these seasons, so too there is in the games. Of note in this is that, with the possible exception of the exclusive characters, Broccoli did not do any character design themselves and definitely did no redesigns. As a result, Non-Standard Character Design creeps in with the second game, which uses season 2's character designs but has no design changes for Sēichi, Daichi, Kaoru, and Chizan. The third game goes even harder, which mains the S2 style but utilizes S1 designs for characters without S2 designs.
- Ascended Extra: It's not by that much, but Genta's role as part of the ABK does him better than his deal in the anime.
- Retool: The first game follows from Season 1 the way Season 2 does: it's a sequel alright, but not everything that happened before necessarily counts as truth still. Notably, the games sometimes override anime canon with manga canon, such as mentioning that Kai's father develops beyblades or referring to Team Psychic as Team Cyber.
Bakuten Shoot Beyblade provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Played straight with Daitenji and implicitly subverted with Rinko in the Daichi route of the first game. Daichi has run away from home to become a good blader and when he wins in Akebono, Daitenji takes him along to compete in China and later in wherever the finals are held. It apparently never occurs to him to ask about or seek contact with Rinko. When Daichi then wins the finals, he announces in his victory speech how his mother has no idea where he is. Once Blader DJ has recovered from the realization, he addresses Rinko through the broadcast and asks her to go easy on the boy because in the end he did win.
- Amazon Brigade: By means of codes, it's possible to unlock bladers not found in one version of Gekisen! Team Battle!! or the other. This means one can put an all-female team together from four of six female bladers: Mao, Emily, Mariam, Salima, Makoto, and Haruka.
- Story Branching: Due to being able to put your own team together in the third game, not only do you have the usual dialogue possibilities for meeting, winning, tieing, and losing, but there's also many, many, many different dialogue possibilities depending on who is in your team and who you are facing. For instance, recruiting anyone from another team and then facing another from that team with said recruit present will yield unique dialogue about the way the characters regard each other now. These aren't always in-depth, but some are worth the effort.
- Break the Haughty: A mirror case in the first game.
- Normally, Kai is the better-than-almost-everyone-else-and-he-knows-it blader. But his attitude towards Kaoru is different. Kaoru is someone he admires and he gets more than a little desperate when Kaoru gives him the cold shoulder when they finally reunite. Even worse, Kaoru calls him a disappointment for not being his opponent for ownership of the Beyond Beyblade.
- Kaoru gets his comeuppance for treating Kai like that when he loses against either Takao or Daichi. It wasn't something he thought a possibility and the shock is enough for him to start opening up to Kai. It's cut short when Chizan comes in raging over the loss and tells Kaoru he never wants to see him again. Kaoru's reaction to this is the same Kai earlier had to Kaoru's disapproval.
- Boring, but Practical: You start off with two attacks: "Attack", which is weak but only takes a little bit of charge, and "Jump Attack", which is a little stronger but takes longer before allowing you another attack. Later on, you learn "Super Attack" and two special attacks and for a while you'll forget about "Attack". Then opponents start using defensive maneuvers and hitting them becomes less likely than wasting your energy and charge. The best tactic to get around this is to unleash a barrage of low-damage but quickly-recharged "Attacks" to provoke the opponent into wasting their energy on defense, which has the perk they can't use that energy for special attacks either. Once their defense is reduced to the freebie moves, it's time to see how unleashing a strong attack will work out.
- Canon Foreigner: There's seven. Sēichi and Michiru of the ABK and Masamune Chizan, Kaoru Amō, Makoto Amō, Haruka Chizan, and Shōgo Namba of Team Chizan. Sēichi, Kaoru, and Masamune are present from the first game on, Makoto first shows up in the second, and the rest joins in the third game.
- Can't Catch Up: Three cases for the third game:
- Genta, Michiru, and Sēichi don't have bit-beasts and therefore lack a lot of potential. They're your starter team in both versions and are to be replaced asap.
- Low-tier bladers will never become strong bladers no matter how much they battle, because their stat gain is not as good as that of top-tier bladers.
- Bladers with stat specializations will have an advantage in that area at first, but there's a cap on all stats and such bladers will hit that cap soon enough. After that, the game continues to put experience in these stats even though they can't get higher. As a result, Jack of All Stats bladers will inevitably exceed.
- Childhood Friends: Kai and Kaoru are this. Few details are provided, but Kaoru's older and was a protector of sorts for Kai before they lost contact. Finding Kaoru is a major factor to Kai's participation in the tournament of the first game.
- Counter-Attack: Late in the game, it becomes possible to execute a counterattack at the cost of some energy. The outcome depends on the beys' stats but is largely random. The one who unleashes a counterattack can either come out with no damage, damage done to the opponent, and the opponent's energy wasted; or they find themselves not only taking a hit but losing the energy of the counterattack too.
- Death by Origin Story: Kaoru's and Makoto's father died a long time ago, shortly before they'd come to meet Kai. It's his death that pushed them to reinvent themselves. Their mother isn't mentioned but given the circumstances, she's not likely to still be alive.
- Evil Former Friend: Daitenji and Chizan are this, although Chizan may be less evil and more antagonistic. Presumably for old time's sake, Chizan remains okay with the other addressing him by his first name.
- Exposition Fairy: Kyōju takes this role, unsurprisingly. He shows up at the end of each match to comment on either loss or win. He is the one who tells you which bey part you've won, which shooter you've acquired, if you have gained a level, and if you have gained a new ability. He also indicates with a happy, doubt, or tired icon how a given bey part holds up to the previous one: an improvement, an equal, or a downgrade.
- Fair-Weather Mentor: Masamune Chizan is this to Kaoru in the first game. He's trained him for years, then drops him in a fit of rage when he loses the tournament against either Takao or Daichi. The sad part is that he and Kaoru enjoyed mutual respect until their hubris caught up to them. It's worth noting that this is the only time in the franchise that a coach drops their charge rather than the blader telling the coach to take a hike.
- Gotta Catch Them All: Bey parts in all games follow this trend somewhat, but it's really the third game with the unlockable teammates that qualifies for the trope. Even if a team can only consist of four bladers, there's 20-21 to choose from.
- Level Scaling: Opponents level along as the player does, making leveling as good as pointless but for acquiring new skills. Opponents will also learn these, however, and some opponents are always one or more levels ahead of the player and therefore get those skills earlier. In a few cases, notably regarding the ability to launch an attack before the match even begins, this leads to temporal Empty Levels.
- MacGuffin: The Beyond Beyblade ("Maboroshi no Beyblade" in Japanese), the prototype beyblade that formed the basis for all others. It's introduced in the first game as the prize for winning the championship and either Takao or Daichi is challenged over it by Kaoru and Masamune. It is said to have marvelous power, but you never get to handle it. It's also not said why Chizan wants to have it: power or honor?
- The Overworld: The beyblade arenas are the equivalent to this. When no attacks are launched, the game provides a topdown view of the arena and the two beys. There's a default slow drain on the health bar as the beys lose spin energy and the spin energy additionally lowers when the beys hit. When an attack is launched, the view switches to a battle screen.
- Remember the New Guy?: Nobuo and Akira are part of Takao's and Kyōju's circle of friends in the anime and Genta is, at least, known about. Michiru and Sēichi, however, are new, but treated as if they've always been part of the group.
- Stat Meters: There's four. From top to bottom they are:
- The Life Meter does what it does in every other game. It increases as you level up, but how much it's filled up when you start a match depends on how well you launched your bey, because it's equal to your spin energy. Launching a bey is done by pressing "A" when a quickly charging and decharging bar is full.
- The Energy Meter becomes useful when special offensive and defensive moves are acquired. It charges up with each confrontation and allows the user to "pay" for two special attacks, two special defenses, and the possibility to attempt a counterattack.
- The Search Meter indicates how close your bey is to the other. Only with a full bar is the distance small enough to launch an attack. Better bey parts allow an attack over a bigger distance.
- The Charge Meter indicates when you have the charge to launch an attack, no matter if said attack is free or requires energy. The stronger an attack, the longer it takes for the Charge Meter to fill up again. That said, no attacks are impactful enough that they drain the entire bar, making a good portion of the meter pointless but for the first few seconds of a match when it still has to fill itself.
- Version-Exclusive Content: Goes for the two versions of Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Gekisen! Team Battle!!. Long story short, unlockable teammates are divided as such:
- Takao Hen: Takao, Genta, Michiru, Sēichi (ABK), Rei (BBA), Olivier, Giancarlo, Johnny, Ralf (Majestic 4), Ivan, Sergei, Boris, Yuriy (Borg), Jim, Gōki, Salima, Kane (Team Psychic), Shōgo, Makoto (Team Amō), and Kennosuke Shishi.
- Daichi Hen: Daichi, Genta, Michiru, Sēichi (ABK), Max, Kai (BBA), Rai, Mao, Kiki, Gaoh (Bái Hǔ Zú), Emily, Steve, Eddy, Michael (All Starz), Yusuf, Mariam, Dunga, Ozma (Saint Seals), Haruka, Kaoru (Team Amō), and Kennosuke Shishi.
- We Will Meet Again: Masamune Chizan vows to this after his defeat in the first game, insisting the Beyond Beyblade will be his one day.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Akira and Nobuo are missing in the third game. Michiru and Genta are their replacements.
