Yamcha is definiitely in the movie and the way he makes his entrance is about what you would expect from his character while he was in Dragonball. I was hoping for some wolf fang fist from him, but unfortunately that did not happen. He get some pretty decent screentime, though he shows up in the second half of the movie. He was not the focus naturally, but he proved himself to be useful and Bulma and him got that doe eyed look from each other that existed from the start of DB to like the middle of DBZ until she mysteriously got together with Vegeta.

As for his character. I would say that made him a little too much of a surfer dude in his voice, but apart from that he was not horrible. I would imagine if he is your favorite you will probably find plenty of faults in his character. He is not sidelines material yet. ^^; He's got a couple movies before that happens.

Yeah, a bigger budget would be nice. I think with more money to throw at it they would be able to get a little closer to the right feel of the world. Because it is pretty clear that they did not have the money to do everything, so they made due with what they could. Its certainly not stupidy low budget, the special effects are decent. But they could have done a lot more with a better budget.