He debuted in 1978 with the Wonder Island story published in Weekly Shonen Jump, and gained fame for Dr. Slump, serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984.
He is probably best known for the Dragon Ball series. This series was one of the linchpins for what is known as the Golden Age of Jump. Its success "forced" Toriyama to work on Dragon Ball from 1984 to 1995. During that eleven-year period, he produced 42 volumes. Each volume has an average of 200 pages, so Dragon Ball extends for almost 10,000 pages! Moreover, the success of Dragon Ball led to an animated television series, feature-length animated movies, video games, and mega-merchandising.
His clean line and design sense led to jobs designing characters for the phenomenally popular Dragon Quest series of video games (called Dragon Warrior in the United States). He has also served as the character designer for the Super Nintendo RPG Chrono Trigger and the popular Tobal No. 1 PlayStation fighting game, and continues to produce the occasional manga story. His works after Dragon Ball are short (100-200 pages) stories, including Cowa, Kajika and Sand Land.