Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II was released in North America by Infogrames under the Atari brand name on 17 June 2003. The plot of the game picks up where The Legacy of Goku left off, and continues until the end of the Cell Games Saga, when Gohan defeats the evil android Cell (between episodes 118 and 194).
The game introduced several new concepts to the series. The first was transformations, which allowed characters to become temporarily stronger, at the cost of slowly draining their energy bar. It also introduced the scouter, which allowed players to look up the stats of other characters in the game, as well as basic information about them. The game also introduced charged melee attacks, which allowed characters to unleash a powerful physical strike after a short charging period. The game also allowed characters to further supplement their stats with capsules that were scattered around the game world.
Despite being titled "The Legacy of Goku", this game featured the most limited play as Goku, with players starting play as Gohan and gradually unlocking Piccolo, Vegeta, Trunks, and finally, Goku, as playable characters. Once the story is completed, players can no longer play as Goku, but will be able to continue playing as the others to unlock a final playable character, Mister Satan/Hercule, in order to unlock an alternate ending to the game. The game's music is based on Bruce Faulconer's score for the FUNimation English dub of Dragon Ball Z.
Due to the game's success, a second version was released titled Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II International, exclusive to Japan on 23 July 2004. In this version, all characters were given new profile images and their names were reverted to their original Japanese ones. However, Mister Satan still retains his English name "Hercule" on the front of his parade float.